Engineering has always been about solving problems—but today’s problems are bigger, greener, and more complex than ever before. From cutting carbon in concrete to tunnelling under major cities, the pressure is on to build infrastructure that’s not just strong, but sustainable.
In this episode, we explore what it really takes to deliver major engineering projects while meeting ambitious climate targets. We’ll hear how to lead under pressure, manage high-stakes decisions, and unlock career-defining opportunities through mentorship and curiosity. Plus, we look at how engineers can drive innovation from within—by asking the right questions, building strong teams, and embracing failure as a pathway to growth.
Our guest Ross Cullen, Group Chief Engineer and Head of Engineering Services at Sisk, brings over 20 years of hands-on experience across some of the UK and Ireland’s biggest civil infrastructure projects, including Crossrail, the Limerick Tunnel, and the Luas Cross City. He’s passionate about decarbonising construction and shaping the next generation of engineering leaders.
THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
● The importance of people skills in the engineering industry
● The challenges in working on engineering projects underground and underwater
● How sustainability and decarbonisation play a role in engineering today
● The need for innovation and continuous improvement in an ever-evolving industry
● Career development and ownership, and the importance of being inquisitive.
GUEST DETAILS
Ross Cullen is Group Chief Engineer and Head of Engineering Services at Sisk. He is responsible for developing and leading Engineering strategy for the organisation supporting pre-construction and current projects under construction across Ireland, the UK and Europe. In 2018, Ross established an Engineering Services department in Sisk, growing a business out of the Civil Engineering unit and created an internal consultancy to provide construction engineering consultancy services to the wider Group
Ross is a Chartered Civil Engineer and Fellow of Engineers Ireland and the Institute of Civil Engineers. His background extends from working on complex infrastructure schemes, where he has been central to the design management process. His experience extends across multiple sectors including Infrastructure, Civil Engineering, Marine, Data, Energy, Life Sciences, Commercial and Residential.
Ross is passionate about sustainability and seeking out carbon savings in the construction industry. Ross is chair of the Sisk Low Carbon Concrete working group and is actively involved in several collaborations with industry and academic institutes to support the development of new low-carbon concrete solutions.
QUOTES
"Be inquisitive, ask questions, because people are incredibly generous with their time if you ask the questions and you show an interest." - Ross Cullen
"You need to take some ownership for your own career. You need to decide fairly early what you like, what you don't like, because it's important to rule out certain things." - Ross Cullen
"You learn from problems. You learn from what's caused you pain. You don't learn from what goes well." - Ross Cullen
"Coming up with a good idea is the easy bit with anything… sometimes making it better isn't the right thing to do." - Ross Cullen
"Construction is a people business, and that's what makes it exciting. You meet different people, different skill sets, extremely diverse." - Ross Cullen
KEYWORDS
#Infrastructure #Engineering #Procurement #Decarbonisation #Mentorship #Sustainability #ProblemSolving #CareerDevelopment #Design #PeopleSkills
TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription
Dusty Rhodes 0:00
Right now, on AMPLIFIED, we're about to find out what it takes to build big, build green and build better. Straight from an engineer who's done it.
Ross Cullen 0:08
They changed the plan, and they said you're not going to have a shaft to remove the tunnel machine. So instead, we had to come up with a way of taking the entire thing apart and collapsing it in itself and dragging it two kilometres back through the tunnel we had built. And these machines are 130 metres long and weigh 1000 tons.
Dusty Rhodes 0:25
Today, engineers are expected to deliver complex infrastructure projects and at the same time achieve sustainability targets. While the idea is great, what are the practicalities when you need to tunnel 40 KMs under a major city or tear up half of a suburban landscape for a rail track. We're about to hear some stories about that, plus how to discover the next great thing in engineering and advance your own career. Our guest has 20 years of experience in all of this to share with us, from achieving 70% carbon reductions to tunnelling under the City of London. It's a pleasure to welcome Group Chief Engineer and Head of Engineering services at Sisk, Ross Cullen. Ross, how are you?
Ross Cullen 1.04
I'm very well. Thank you for having me on your show.
Dusty Rhodes 1:06
Tell me, Ross, how did you get into this weird and wonderful career we have called engineering.
Ross Cullen 1:12
It's called by accident. Jesus, I dunno,I have to go all the way back to spending many years probably lying on my stomach playing with Lego
Dusty Rhodes 1.22
Good! And it was just in your head?
Ross Cullen 1.24
Yeah, everyone sort of said, you know, you're quite creative, or you're good at figuring things out. But you know, to be honest, I spent most of my playing sports and enjoying myself. And, you know, thinking about being an engineer was the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, knowing what an engineer was, probably I didn't have a clue, you know everyone say, Oh, you'd be great engineer here. I don't know what that is, but yeah,
Dusty Rhodes 1:45
Very good. Ross, tell me when you were first getting into the career you saw an ad for Sisk, what attracted you to them in particular?
Ross Cullen 1:53
Well, it wasn't even and so my career journey after I left college was that I stayed in college. I didn't fancy going out into the big bad world, so I did research for for three years, actually, playing with fresh concrete. And then, you know, seven years was probably enough. Yeah, it's time to go out to the big bad world. But a piece of advice I was given was, you know, what's the rush? Once you start working, you're in. That's it. So, you know, took your time, I suppose. I followed that, and I went and worked for a consultant in the UK on the on the design side. So I did that for for a short period, and then I wasn't scratching the itch. Yeah, it wasn't meeting my needs, I suppose. So I then reached out to Sisk and interesting story, I met two great individuals that were able to give me a better insight of myself than I actually knew, which opened my eyes up to how people can change the trajectory of your career in instant almost.
Dusty Rhodes 2:49
Why do you say that? What what happened?
Ross Cullen 2:53
So It was a great interview. We chatted away for about two and a half hours. I went back to back to Birmingham, and I got a phone call the next day, and it was, we're delighted to tell you that we're not going to offer you the job that we thought we were going to hire you for.
Dusty Rhodes 3:04
Oh, that's nice.
Ross Cullen 3:06
So I was like, you're very upbeat about how you're delivering this message. So he's like, Yeah, well, we reckon you're going to get bored and leave. Oh, I said, that's interesting. Tell me more. And they said we got the impression you'd like to be challenged. So we have a proposition for you to come and work with our current chief engineer and to learn from him and to be challenged. And I was sort of like that sounds like, sounds interesting, sounds exciting, and nothing to lose. Why not?
Dusty Rhodes 3:41
It must have worked quite well, because you've been with Sisk ever since. What are the pros and the cons of being loyal with one company?
Ross Cullen 3:50
As long as I'm challenged, as long as you're challenged, there's something to achieve, or there's something you can give. You can add value. That's what's important. And I don't see it as 20 years I see it as working on part of a project, another part of a project, different project team. You're working with different people. The beauty about my role as an engineer, that kind of looks after loads of areas, means I get to help lots of projects, lots of teams, and get to work with different people all the time. So that's it's dynamic. It's exciting. I'm helping them, and they're giving me work that challenges me and my team. So it's interesting. Construction is a people business, and that's what makes it exciting. You meet different people, different skill sets, extremely diverse.
Dusty Rhodes 4:35
Tell me a little bit about your role, because the official title is group chief engineer and head of engineering services. What is it that you do on a day to day to day basis?
Ross Cullen 4:43
So I have a team of highly skilled engineers that are broad experience and experts of nothing is the way we control ourselves. So we like to take people's problems on sites. So how do we build a bridge across a big river? How do we get the tower cranes to stand up? How do we get the double basement? To support themselves and not impact the neighbouring buildings. So we take those challenges and we work through them and come up with solutions for the project team. So project teams have endless lists of problems that they're dealing with. We are there to help them take a problem that's frustrating them, we get to work in it and give them back a couple of options or solutions. So we're helping we're helping them. So we get to do that on all the projects across Ireland, UK and Europe, in all the sectors, from data to life sciences to civil engineering to buildings. So it's a variety.
Dusty Rhodes 5:35
I’m just thinking for somebody who's listening now, and the kind of the more the day to day engineering side of things if they want to make the transition from technical engineering to kind of management or leadership, what kind of skills do you think that they need to brush up on?
Ross Cullen 5:49
It really is people skills. You need to have a grounding of good knowledge in your discipline. So as an engineer, you pick up all your skills. You come out of college, you're trained as a problem solver, everything else you have to learn on the job. And you learn from your supervising engineer, your senior engineer, the subcontractors you work with. You're constantly building up knowledge. And you learn from problems. You learn from what's caused you pain. You don't learn from what goes well, because when something goes well, it happens and you go through the motions. But when something goes wrong, you go, Well, what went wrong? And we're trained to think about analyzing, why did that happen? How can we improve it? What are we going to do the next time? So you're constantly learning, and there's different solutions and different tools for every situation. So as you're increasing your toolbox of skills, the more you have in your toolbox, the more equipped you are for then progressing through your career
Dusty Rhodes 6:43
If you need people's skills, then, is that something that you pick up if you play sport, or is it something that can be learned by doing a course? Or is it just something you pick up as you go along?
Ross Cullen 6:54
As you said, every facet of life but sport is certainly, I think, if you compare construction and you compare sport, there's a lot of similarities. People in construction like to be part of a team. They work well as a team. And you know, similar dynamics to sports. So you know, you're working for a common goal, and there needs to be alignment on that goal. And obviously a good leader is able to galvanise the team by getting consensus of what that goal is. Because the goal, you know, is is obviously to to ensure everything happens safely, the quality of workmanship is is right, and things are planned and happen on time. And also, the goal is recognising that not everything is going to go to plan all the time. And how do we react defines us. So how do we stop? Assess the situation, figure out what went wrong or what's going to go wrong, reset, move forward.
Dusty Rhodes 7:42
All right, Ross, let's chat about some of the projects that you've worked over your career. How many projects would you normally work on at a given time or in a year?
Ross Cullen 7:50
Oh gosh, we could consult on nearly under projects in a year. But that's like everything from, you know, the gate at the side entrance.
Dusty Rhodes 7:59
Okay, well, listen, let's pick up on some of the bigger ones. One of the first ones I know that you worked on was the tunnel at Limerick under the Shannon. Tell us a little bit about that.
Ross Cullen 8:15
Yeah, that's turning back the clock now, dusty. I know, I know it was your first baby. It was my
first baby, and I was, I was sent down. So, yeah, I was learning. Is the only way to describe it, but we all have to learn somewhere. But what a fantastic job it was. It was a four way joint venture, and it was constructing 500 meter long sections of tunnel in the dry dock that we had excavated out of the north of the river. And then we constructed temporary structures through the river banks, and we essentially flooded the dry dock, and one by one, we floated up the 100 meter long tunnel sections and brought them out into the river and sunk them down into a dredge channel and linked them all together. So it was, it was a fascinating job, but I suppose what really stuck by me was I was sort of looking after coordinating a lot of the marine works. And big thing about marine works is you've nowhere to stand. So when people are planning work, you always have to be thinking, Well, where are the people going to be? Where's the equipment going to be? And rule number one of marine works is, get out of the water. Don't get your feet wet. You know, keep everything up on land or structures that you build out in the water that's not going to rely on the tide. So it was interesting, and I got to work with a lot of really experienced people. So there was a number of people working in that job that worked on the jetty and all niche back in 1979 and they had all ended up, after being all over the world with different companies back on this project, some of them towards the tail end of their careers. And someone said to me, pulled me aside one day, and was like, you realize the opportunity you have. Working with all these people, with all this experience, your job is to go and speak to them, extract stories knowledge, get to know them, and try and learn from them. And. And they were all so generous with their time, incredible mentors, and just they challenged me, and I was getting information from them the whole time, and it really gave me a good foundation going forward. So as an engineer, or advice to people coming out of college is Be inquisitive, ask questions, because people are incredibly generous with their time. If you ask the questions, and you're you show an interest, and I genuinely was interested, and I believe that really helped me get my understanding so my my foundation elements.
Dusty Rhodes 10:28
Do you have any examples of because they say there's no such thing as a stupid question, all right, have you ever asked a stupid question in your life, and how did you feel when you got the answer? I
Ross Cullen 10:38
I don't have any examples, but I ask stupid questions every day, and I think the more experience and the higher up you get in an organisation, you need to make sure that you're asking questions in the room. And even if it's a silly question, you can ask a question that's sort of segueing off that yeah, because it then shows everyone else that they should be asking questions and invite them in. So providing safety to people to know that you need to be inquisitive. There's no problems with that. In Sisk, everyone asks questions all the time, and it's good to confirm.
Dusty Rhodes 11:13
It's an engineering trait to ask questions anyway, isn't it? Yes. So there you go. Listen. Another big project that you worked on over the years was a Crossrail in London. Now that's a huge thing. It was going, was going from the west of the city, over near Heathrow, right underneath the city, and over to the far side, to the east, 42 kilometres long. What's the one outstanding memory you have of that gig?
Ross Cullen 11:33
Oh, it has to be the team. The team. So we were involved in tunnelling from East London through to Farringdon, which is in the centre, and we met the other consortium tunnelling from the west into Farringdon. So they arrived before us, and they swung a hard left and a hard right, and they buried their tunnelling machines. But they got there before us, and we arrived then with our tunnelling machines, and there was nowhere for them to go or to be buried. So the biggest memory, or the best, one of the best memories, was a couple of memories, but some of them were like, you're approaching a station, you have to extract the machine out of the head wall and into the station and drag it through. And you'd be trying to figure out what, how are we going to do that? And you'd be trying to, you'd be working on the engineering, about trying to know, how will we safely receive it into the cavern? Yeah, but you'd be tumbling, and you'd be going towards and every day, it's getting closer and closer and closer, and you're still arguing about, should we do it this way? Should we do it that way? And there comes a point where it's like, we gotta decide. We gotta make a decision, because we're not stopping, you know, so it's pressure comes on, and that they were the best times it was. It was healthy debate, but then it was like healthy debate, but we had a deadline, so let's, let's crack on.
Dusty Rhodes 12:49
Can I ask a stupid question? Absolutely, you said that you went left, right, and then you buried the machine. What do you mean exactly by that?
Ross Cullen 12:58
The the tunnelling machines, they've an outer skin, and then you have all the equipment inside it. So what they do sometimes in tunnelling, if it's, yeah, the tunnel machine is bigger than the tunnel that you make, so you can't take it backwards. And because they were tunnelling first, they had nowhere for it to go, because there was no shaft to take it out. So what they do is they just go off the alignment and and go into the ground. And then they take the machine apart and just leave the outer skin. And then they pump the skin full of grout and leave it there. So, because there was no space left for us, and we were meant to receive a shaft to take it out, and then they they changed the plan, and they said you're not going to have a shaft to remove the tunnelling machine. So instead, we had to come up with a way of taking the entire thing apart and collapsing it in itself and dragging it two kilometres back through the tunnel we had built. And these machines are 130 meters long and weigh 1000 tons. So the first 120 meters are easy to take out, but that the 1012, meters at the front, that's bigger than the tunnel that's that's quite a challenge. So that that was interesting. It was, but we had a we had a great team. Worked with some really, really creative people, solved the problems. It was good.
Dusty Rhodes 14:19
Listen, getting away from that. You were back in Ireland then, and you were involved in the Lewis cross city project. Did you learn anything from Crossrail, doing the underground tunnels that you were able to apply to overground with Luas?
Ross Cullen 14:31
I suppose the whole time you're improving your skills and how to deal with people. So different challenges, but the challenges are always with people or involved people. So how do you how do you agree on something? How do you convince people that change is required? Coming up with a good idea is the easy bit with anything. So as engineers, we're always trying to make things better. Sometimes making it better isn't the right thing to do, because. But what's the impact? Is it add value? Does it increase functionality, or does it reduce risk? Is it safer? So you got to weigh up, what are all the elements? And then you got to go, right, okay, we now have to sell this to all the stakeholders that we want to change the plan. And sometimes you have to weigh up, how long is that going to take? How much time and effort is worth it. So I suppose, from cross trail, my learning was, pick your battles. Don't go after everything. Pick, pick what's important, what's going to add the most amount of value? And this is infrastructure we're talking about. It's going to be in place for 100 years plus. So, you know, short term gain or long term so it's about what's right for the stakeholder, what's the ultimate user of this? Is there a benefit to them?
Dusty Rhodes 15:45
Moving on. Then you were also involved in Pearse Street, the train station in the centre of Dublin, quite a big project. Tell me about that?
Ross Cullen 15:53
Yeah. So we had to replace the existing structure, the roof structure, over an operational railway line. So we worked with with the client, Irish rail, and the original plan was to close the railway for, I think it was like 13 weekend possessions. And that's fine, in a way, but you've gotta, you've gotta mobilise all your workforce to work these long weekend possessions. So if you do one possession, you know that's okay. It's an awful lot of planning involved. But to do 13 of them is, is the challenge for the supply chain, for the site team, for everyone involved, and it's, it's high pressure, repeated, because you have to hand back the railway after every possession so that the trains can run and people can get to work. Get to work on a Monday morning. So we developed with Irish rail. We have a great relationship with them, and we developed a solution where we built a steel structure over the platforms and over the tracks and the overhead lines, and we built a steel deck, and then we put a platform which moved along the station with a high up crane. So, you know, the knuckle boom cranes that you have on the back of trucks. We bought one of those, and we modified it and put it on a steel steel frame, and we had that above the railway tracks, and we used that to demolish the existing roof and to build the new roof in stick base. So we took a truss and we installed it in sort of three components, and prop it as we as we put it together. So we moved this window along the whole length of the station of taking the trusses out, putting the new ones in, doing the glazing and the finishing works. And it meant that we could operate on a Monday to Friday during the daytime. We could have all our steel and glazers and our fitters all working in a normal sort of shift pattern. So you have people that are, you know, not working all weekend. You're not dealing with fatigue, you're not under high pressure situations to hand back the railway after each weekend. So there are benefits to it. And ultimately, we ended up with replacing the roof successfully. The client got what, what they wanted. Our supply chain wanted to work a normal shift pattern. And it was, we was a great success, but it shows that you know, you have to have good relationships between the contractor, between the client, you have to have trust, and you have to make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons. So we were doing it ultimately, for safety, really, because it's a high pressure situation, and if you're against the clock all the time to hand back an asset, it's not a position you want to put people in working late at night, long hours.
Dusty Rhodes 18:41
Ross, I'd like to move on to a topic that is just huge in engineering and for the planet in general, and that's sustainability and decarbonising and that whole thing. I know you're quite interested in decarbonising construction. When you talk about decarbonising construction, what do you mean?
Ross Cullen 19:00
I mean using materials that emit less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in their production. Okay, so if you take concrete, for example, is made with cement, and typical cement is produced by burning limestone and shale, and it emits that process emits carbon dioxide. So 8% of global emissions of carbon dioxide is from the producing cement.
Dusty Rhodes 19:23
Okay, is another silly question. Is there such a thing as decarbonised concrete?
Ross Cullen 19:29
There will be, I suppose. And this is the question, yeah. So there's lots of talk about different technologies which can be developed. But if you take the existing process, which is universal, there are talking about trying to do carbon store and capture, so taking the carbon that's emitted during the chemical process, and you're capturing it and storing it somewhere. That's one way. Or there's other products, like geopolymer type cements and concretes that actually don't involve. Of burning limestone and emitting carbon dioxide, so that there are other technologies, but the likes of a geopolymer concrete, you're never going to create the same volume that's required to replace all the cement that's produced globally. Okay, so I think when we talk about decarbonising construction, I think first of all, we got to look at so before looking at any sort of technology improvements in producing cement or different products, we need to use our resources wisely. So that means making sure that we have efficient designs that use the appropriate amount of concrete. So that means leaner design. But at the same time, we're designing the infrastructure that lasts for 120 years, so you have to make sure that you strike the right balance. So it's really important. It's a safety issue.
Dusty Rhodes 20:49
So keeping all that in mind, then, are you working on it, on any initiatives, or anything new to do with low carbon concrete?
Ross Cullen 20:55
Good question Dusty. So we have a couple of initiatives that we've been involved in. So we're working with universities here in Ireland to assist in developing cements using industrial byproduct. So that's research that that's ongoing, and our part to play as a contractor is we want to support and facilitate. So when it comes to doing, say, a site trial that we will we will facilitate and make some resources available and some space available to produce this concrete and build a small, say, demonstrator of test piece on our project, so that we can then see how it performs, because what's done in the lab needs to be replicated in real life. Yeah, so that that's one example. And then another example was in the UK. We applied for funding, and we were successful in a consortium of seven bodies, and we built a low carbon, scalable demonstrator in the UK, and we achieved a 70% carbon reduction, which isn't insignificant. And the whole purpose, or the what was interesting about it was, it was, how do they call it? It was described as boring. So the concrete looked the same, right? Flowed the same, yeah, set the same. So, in terms of using a product that's globally the same, well, not all concrete, it's the same, but it flowed the same. It went into the shutters the same. When the shutters were struck, it reached the same strengths. And, you know, so, so we were able to demonstrate that that a low carbon concrete technology is the same, but with less carbon,
Dusty Rhodes 22:29
When you're trying to do something new and you're trying to bring it, and this applies not just to your team, but also when you are, you know, kind of working with other people, like clients or interested parties and that kind of thing, and you're trying to do something new. What kind of kind of approach do you take if they're kind of gone “ah I'm not sure.”
Ross Cullen 22:48
As engineers, we base everything on on fact, on numbers, yeah, on being able to predict what it's going to be, how it's going to behave. So we deal in the in the black and white. Absolutely.
Dusty Rhodes 23:00
Listen. Let me ask you about looking for those things and finding newer ways of doing things, and how to how do you find these things?
Ross Cullen 23:11
Well we've got a great team here, and we explore what's out there in the market, different techniques, different materials. There's always people innovating. And if you talk to enough people, you'll find out who's innovating and who's coming up with different products, and it's just about exploring them or different forms. Or let's just take a building. Typically, people don't want any internal columns. They want big free spaces. But in apartment buildings and stuff. You don't need all those big free spaces, because the grids can be rationalised. So you can, you can then economise on the size of the columns. You can reduce the floor thickness. You can use less concrete and all these type of areas, and not really impact on the on the structure. And if you, if you sort of refine every thing in the building a little bit, you make a big saving. So it's incremental. Our marginal gains is where there are, where there are savings
Dusty Rhodes 24:09
And it’s just kind of keeping your radar open. I mean, do you solely rely on talking to people within the industry to find new things, or do you look at particular websites or YouTube channels or particular TV shows?
Ross Cullen 24:19
That’s a good question. I mean, I suppose we're all dialled into everything. It comes down to our networks. And if I roll back to right at the beginning of my career, talk to people, learn from them, and the more people you get to know, the more bits information you get you you know, you read you read the trade press, and you find out what's going on. And as contractors, we're always trying to push the boundaries. We're always looking for what's the next thing out there. How can we deliver? Because it's a very competitive market, how can we deliver savings to the customer and not impact the functionality of what's being delivered? So and they the customer is also challenging us more and more, especially. And sustainability perspective, how can we lower the embodied carbon in our assets? They're asking us. So we're then coming along and well, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this, and it becomes a shopping list, but sometimes that shopping list then pushes the price up. So what's the cost that they are willing to pay? Sometimes to reduce because to use less materials. So if you go back to say, maybe the 70s or 80s. And you go around say, UCD, you'll see what's called, like waffle slabs. So you'll see the soffit of the roofs, and they're all waffle shaped. And that's because it uses less concrete. Less concrete is less carbon, less materials. But to build waffle slabs is it's slower, uses more labor. So you know, material versus labor versus time. Time is money. Labor costs money. Yeah
Dusty Rhodes 25:48
Everything has to be factored in. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions just about kind of moving on in your career, because I believe that you speak about how understanding yourself is key to owning your career. What do you mean when you say that?
Ross Cullen 26:04
That's a good question. When we have graduates come in, we do a day talking about, you know, engineering and what we do in technical services, or engineering services in terms of providing support to the projects. But I always spend a bit of time telling them, I suppose my story about, you need to be inquisitive. You need to you need to take ownership for your own career. Because people, they leave university, they enter into graduate programs, and we're very structured graduate programs to try and give as much opportunity to learn in an accelerated fashion. These engineers to get them across all the disciplines and to learn, but they reach a point where they get to the end of that graduate program, where it's sort of being laid out in front of them, and we need to, they need to learn from an early stage that you need to take some ownership for your own career. You need to decide fairly early what you like, what you don't like, because it's important to rule out certain things. And if you want to stay motivated, you need to do what you love. You know I love what I do, I skip into work every day, and that's because I was clear about what I didn't want to do early in my career, and I wanted to be challenged. So that's the route I went. Yeah, yeah. So people need to own their careers. That's my advice to young engineers. Ask questions and figure out what you don't like as well as what you do like.
Dusty Rhodes 27:18
And I think you've also said that engineering is a passport to opportunity.
Ross Cullen 27:23
That's correct. Yes, I mean, gravity is the same the world over. There are obviously intricacies in terms of codes and standards. It's a very much. It's a people on the contracting side. It's a people business. So, you know, you learn how to deal with people and problems. So look, if you're a good engineer, the possibilities are the opportunities are endless, and that's how I ended up in in London for five years. It was, here's an opportunity. Yep, let's go. And so it's a great opportunity to travel and learn different cultures and learn from people with different cultures, because that's how you you know that's how you hone your skills. You can't just work with the same people all the time you won't learn. You need diversity. And construction is a very it's very diverse.
Dusty Rhodes 28:04
When you were coming up the ranks yourself. Ross, did you ever have a mentor? Did you use somebody like that?
Ross Cullen 28:10
Yes, so my previous chief engineer was, was my mentor. He kind of challenged me all the way through my career and and let me make my mistakes to learn in a safe way. And I think it's really important to build a good relationship with your mentor. And it works both ways. And you know, it's it's really important, but you can have a mentor or a line manager, but there you can have several, because, you know, you learn off each other, so that there are always accidental mentoring opportunities for everyone in the industry. I think,
Dusty Rhodes 28:47
Well, if you'd like to find out more about Ross and some of the topics that we spoke about today, you'll find notes and links and details in the description area of the podcast. But for now, Ross Cullen group, Chief Engineer and head of engineering services at Sisk. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing so much with us.
Ross Cullen 29.04
Thank you, Dusty.
Dusty Rhodes 29.06
If you enjoyed our podcast today, please do share with a friend in the business. Just tell them to search for engineers Ireland in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland, for advanced episodes, more information on engineering across Ireland or career development opportunities. There are libraries of information on the website at engineers ireland.ie Until next time from myself, dusty roads. Thank you for listening.