Rethinking Ireland Inc: Colette O'Shea, Director at AECOM (member-only)

Building a stronger “Ireland Inc” means rethinking how we plan, deliver, and promote our engineering and infrastructure capabilities on a global stage.

Today, we’re diving into how Ireland can overcome some of its most pressing infrastructure delivery challenges—from modernizing procurement strategies to fostering more inclusive and resilient engineering teams. We’ll also explore why staff wellbeing, visibility, and collaboration are now essential pillars of successful project delivery, and examine the persistent barriers facing women in the profession.

Joining us is a chartered engineer and one of the youngest ever Fellows of Engineers Ireland, with over 20 years of multidisciplinary experience. She brings a rare combination of technical expertise and a deep passion for people, policy, and progress. It’s a pleasure to welcome Collette O’Shea, Head of Strategic Procurement for Ireland at AECOM.

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

How personal values and purpose can shape career direction
The role of creativity and continuous learning in engineering success
Transforming Ireland’s procurement models for infrastructure delivery
Work-life balance and the reality of burnout in engineering
Women in engineering and the promise of AI

GUEST DETAILS
Colette O’Shea is Head of Strategic Procurement for Ireland at AECOM, she also holds the role of Project Director on several strategic infrastructure projects. A Chartered Engineer and one of the youngest individuals to attain Fellowship with Engineers Ireland, Colette has over two decades of multidisciplinary experience and has contributed to major public sector initiatives, including projects for the National Development Finance Agency, Irish Water, and Dublin Airport Authority.

Her academic background includes a BE in Civil Engineering from University College Dublin, complemented by further qualifications in project management, law, and coaching. A passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, Colette chairs the Women in Engineering Group at Engineers Ireland, where she works to support and advance women in the engineering profession.

https://ie.linkedin.com/in/colette-o-shea-8178391a

MORE INFORMATION

Looking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer. https://www.engineersireland.ie/

Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.

QUOTES

"While there are rules in engineering, it's about applying them to the situation in front of you, which is different all the time". - Colette O’Shea

"I don't know if it's a problem. I think I prefer to think of it as a challenge". - Colette O’Shea

"We need to make the industry sustainable, and certainly in the infrastructure space, to make it attractive for companies". - Colette O’Shea

"One of the main things that I learned from burnout was that having it and experiencing it was the complete opposite of failing at my job". - Colette O’Shea

"You can make any mistake once and we will learn from it, but if you make the same mistake twice and don't learn, we'll have an issue". - Colette O’Shea

KEYWORDS

#Infrastructure #engineering #procurement #inclusivity #wellbeing #visibility #water #AI #burnout, #energy

TRANSCRIPTION

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

Dusty Rhodes 00:01
What happens when a nation's infrastructure ambitions outpace its engineering capacity?

Colette O'Shea 00:07
So Ireland, Inc, we have an amazing business plan for the world to invest in. We're just not the best in the world for coming together and selling that business plan, and that's what's happening at the moment.

Dusty Rhodes 00:19
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes, and you're welcome to AMPLIFED the Engineers Journal Podcast. Today, we're exploring how Ireland can overcome critical delivery challenges, from evolving procurement strategies to building inclusive teams. We're looking at the importance of staff well being and to the barriers that still exist for women in engineering, along with why visibility, well being and collaboration matter more than ever. Our guest is a chartered engineer and one of the youngest ever fellows of engineers Ireland with over 20 years of multidisciplinary experience plus a passion for people, policy and progress. It's a pleasure to welcome the head of Strategic Procurement for Ireland at AECOM. Collette O'Shea Collette, how are you?

Colette O'Shea 01:00
Hi, Dusty, I'm good. How are you?

Dusty Rhodes 01:01
Excellent. So listen, let's kick off and tell me what sparked your interest in this wonderful career of engineering we find ourselves in.

Colette O'Shea 01:10
Well, I'm going to blame my dad, so it'll go go right back to being a child. So my dad works in construction. He's a quantity surveyor, not an engineer, but we won't hold that against him. So he worked, I suppose, in construction my entire life. So I was always around it. My brother works in it as well. So that kind of mindset, and My poor mom had to listen to that at the dinner table every night. So it was that kind of problem solving, and both of them work in buildings. So it was always the iconic so like steam is green Shopping Center. My dad worked in the square and Tala and stuff like that. They did a structural steel so I could always visualize it. And he was always really good at explaining how things go together. Now, his dad, my grandfather, was an engineer as well. So it's kind of in the family. So that's where it came from. I understood, and I think that's a woman, what helped me. I understood from a very early age what an engineer actually meant, and it wasn't digging holes, and kind of maybe the dirty, cold vision that a lot of people have of being out on site. I could see that it was iconic buildings, and I could see the output.

Dusty Rhodes 02:22
So you knew, you knew from a very early age what it was that you wanted to do, which is a blessing in life.

Colette O'Shea 02:28
I think I did, but I didn't,

Dusty Rhodes 02:33
All right, but engineering was one of the top ones anyway, when you were in school then, did you have a problem with trying to get the subjects that you needed in order to progress onto engineering, and if you did, how did you get across? How did you get around the teachers?

Colette O'Shea 02:49
Luckily, again, I was my parents. My parents fought the school in terms of allowing me to study science subjects for my leaving cert. So I did the three science subjects, chemistry, biology and physics, but the school were very hesitant to let me do that, even though the timetable allowed. They wanted me to do accountancy or Home Ec, or, you know, something else, and accountancy, like they made me sit it for two or three weeks, and I was just brain dead. It was like, I can't sit here. And I No offense to accountants, but it just didn't work with my brain. So luckily, my parents fought the school, and also luckily that my parents could afford to send me to grinds for honors maths and Applied Maths, because the honors maths level and the school was wasn't particularly great. There was six of us, and all six of us went to the same grounds teacher and applied math wasn't offered whatsoever. So I suppose I was lucky that I had the support of my family, and my family had the resources to support me on what I wanted to do.

Dusty Rhodes 03:53
You also mentioned Colette about how being an engineer is more than digging holes. What do you mean by that? When, when you're talking to people?

Colette O'Shea 04:03
So for me, I suppose I describe myself as a creative person, so I write, and that's saying and stuff like that, which is very important to me, and that's what has helped me in my engineering career, because it's all about solving problems. There's no project in the 20 plus years that I've worked on that's the same, maybe similar. So you need to be able to kind of apply knowledge, take what you've learned from one project, and think about it in a creative space. So it's if you're very much kind of like, well, no, these are the rules, and I stick to the rules, and I can't think outside that. You may struggle to be successful in engineering, because while there's rules and engineering, it's about applying them to the situation in front of you, which is different all the time. So for me, like that creative streak and that being able to kind of like think laterally as well as like straight down, has helped hugely. In that space.

Dusty Rhodes 05:00
Well, rules are there for a reason? Aren't they to be broken?

Colette O'Shea 05:06
Well, not all in engineering. There's like safety issues that we have to work with.

Dusty Rhodes 05:12
You said that you like a challenge, and you've got very involved in kind of water engineering, which is like one of the if you're looking for problems. Hello, water. What? What attracted you to that side of engineering?

Colette O'Shea 05:25
It was, I suppose, because I could see maybe how it was going to help and kind of improve things. So I love water as a person. So I'm attracted to it, and I love like I live close to beach, the beach, and I love, you know, spending time near it. So it was that, I suppose, greater greater good, if you want to put it like that. And it also made sense to me. I deal a lot, and I don't know whether it's a bit strange for an engineer, but on my senses and what makes logic to me so, understanding how water is treated, how it flows, how and I worked in flooding for a number of years, too. So how it does destruction and kind of countering that, but keeping it within the natural environment, so is always conscious of all the projects that I was doing while we were like water treatment and wastewater treatment while we're improving the environment, it was great to work to kind of maybe put in a cycle path, or, you know, things like that, and improve the environment that we were building something quite hard and structured in at the same time. So while you're improving the environment that maybe people can't really see, you're also giving back a little bit and restoring the nature of it.

Dusty Rhodes 06:41
So that's how it meant a huge amount to me that's kind of going over and above what the project is do. I mean, like, you're kind of, like taking a step back and you're looking at it as a whole, and there's a certain amount of creativity in there that, I would say, or a bit of imagination. Do you think creativity is an important skill for engineers?

Colette O'Shea 06:57
Yes, absolutely, because you need to be able to take the knowledge that you learn and apply it differently. Because no matter what area you work in, like I've Well, I specialized in water. I ended up doing some structures. I did some roads. You do some energy, and it's trying to connect the dots, and they're not the same dots on every project. So you need to be able to go, Okay, that sounds like it was that and or it might connect to that, or we might be able to do like on the energy space at the moment, you know, we might be able to use some of the processes that are running in treatment plans to generate energy to run the treatment plan. So therefore taking it off the grid. But it's kind of thinking that way and trying to apply ideas that you learn to the problems that are facing you. But it's not, and it sounds stupid, because someone will go, it's the same treatment plant. It's like, it's not, it's slightly different. It's different this. You know, there is variances. It's not just one size fits all.

Dusty Rhodes 07:58
So you're kind of taking an engineering problem, and you're looking for a solution, and you're also kind of saying, Well, how can we make this better? That's very easy to say. To do that. Where do you get your creativity from? I mean, how do you keep your mind so open?

Colette O'Shea 08:12
Just by, I suppose, reading new ideas and like spending a lot of time reading articles, talking to my colleagues and my friends. So I have a wide network of friends and colleagues across all the different areas. So just having a chat like that coffee, you know, that coffee at lunchtime, or what are you working on? What are you doing? I'm doing this. I think we could do something together, but I don't know what, and sitting down and having those conversations and being open to learning. So lifelong learning, for me is something that I drive continuously, and that I think for any engineer, needs to be part of your progression, because the world changes and the problems change, and you need to, kind of like my learning is like chatting to people, seeing what other people are doing, certainly in a company like a calm looking worldwide, and going, what are we doing in like Paraguay that might be of use, or what are we doing in LA that might be of use in Dublin, or something like that.

Dusty Rhodes 09:12
And do you back that just being curious about what's going on elsewhere in the world, in general, and in engineering, do you kind of combine that with like, actual formal learning or getting extra qualifications.

Colette O'Shea 09:25
Yeah, and the queen of getting extra qualifications.

Dusty Rhodes 09:32
Well it seems to be working for you. So go on to tell me more.

Colette O'Shea 09:35
So as well as my engineering degree, I have a master's in business based project management. I have qualifications and law, commercial contracts, procurement law, and I'm an executive coach. So I have a coaching business as well as my engineering career. So like, as soon as when I find something I'm interested in, I want to learn as much as I can, and if I'm going to do. It. I'll do the best I can at it, but I need to slow down.

Dusty Rhodes 10:03
Has all of that extra effort in getting all of those extra qualifications on a score out of 10? How has it helped your career?

Colette O'Shea 10:12
Probably nine out of 10, if not 10. Wow. Yeah. So there was a strategy behind it, and I've moved into contracts now. So I specialize in contracts.

Dusty Rhodes 10:25
So that's all the law qualifications you were talking about when you're chatting to people. I found this is somebody told me about this one question, and I said, You can't ask that. You can't ask people that. And they said, try it. So I did. And actually, do you know it's an amazing question for learning about people. I'm going to ask you that question now. Okay, complete stranger, you're at a drinks party, whatever. Blah, blah. How are you do? What do you do? I do? Blah, blah. So listen, what's, uh, what's the big problem you're working on this week?

Colette O'Shea 10:51
I suppose the big problem I'm working on I'm trying to help some of my clients with at the moment is that you mentioned at the start. It's, how do we service the national development plan without with the resources that we have in the country. And I think that's the hot topic at the moment. We're like, what are the most ambitious national development plans in the world, and the funding and the drive to deliver it, but it's trying to find the resources, whether that's people, whether that's materials, whether it's time, that's what I'm working on at the moment, cool.

Dusty Rhodes 11:21
Well, let's, let's, let's get into that and chat about it, because I mentioned it in the in the introduction. Do you think Ireland, Inc really does have a problem where our infrastructure ambitions are? We don't have the engineering capacity for it.

Colette O'Shea 11:35
I don't know if it's a problem. I think I prefer to think of it as a talent, because there's lots of solutions to it, and lots of organizations are working. So lots of our government organizations and infrastructure organizations are working to resolve it, and are coming together and kind of delivering in a more programmatic way, which is instead of like historically, we looked at individual projects, or we were more inclined to look at individual projects, and how are we going to deliver those? Now we're looking at right this client has X amount of spend. We have all these projects to do. How are we going to do it? So clients themselves are starting to pull together to kind of look at that, and that allows you to plan between projects look and say, Well, look Project A is the most critical. If we do that first, and then project p, b can come in, and the resources can roll over, whether that's people. And now what's starting to happen, and it's the critical piece for me, is that it needs to roll up above the client organizations into like, country. So Ireland, Inc, as you say, has like, we have an amazing if we were a business, we have an amazing business plan for the world to invest in. We're just not the best in the world for coming together and selling that business plan. And that's what's happening at the moment. So the kind of introduction of the infrastructure, section or department and deeper and things like that, it's approaching the country like a business and selling us because, like, if we can get people interested and get them like, there's a huge portfolio work to get invested in, and we need to get them to support our indigenous kind of industry to keep going and deliver so

Dusty Rhodes 13:18
Coletta Shea, You're in charge of everything.

Colette O'Shea 13:23
Yes. What another thing off my bucket list?

Dusty Rhodes 13:29
What? What do you change?

Colette O'Shea 13:33
Um, it's not so much. What I would change? I would write, I would approach it as a business. I would write a business plan. So, and that's what's going on at the moment, but it's bringing all the organizations together who are doing really good work, and approaching it as like we do, kind of in maybe a private business where you have all your different sectors and your departments doing different work, but we all come together as a unit, as the company to sell and to kind of go out to the industry. So that's what I would do, kind of set and get the people who are the leaders and kind of the decision makers in those companies or the those public bodies, and just write that business plan and then go out to the world, like, go out and market it, because, like for any business, you're looking at the longevity of investment. So if you can go right, well, here is 10 years, and we guarantee there's funding, and here's all the different projects across all the different sectors, because very few companies will move and invest if there's only one sector. But like, we have housing, we have commercial we have schools, we have, you know, everything, infrastructure, roads, busses, you know, we have a full portfolio that would create a solid business plan for someone to invest in Ireland.

Dusty Rhodes 14:47
And the trick is getting all of those large bodies of people to all come together and agree on on something. So it's not an easy thing. Yeah,

Colette O'Shea 14:55
I don't know. I think, because I suppose I worked with a number of those kind of senior. Of people, and they're all very progressive. It's time. All of us in the industry are so pushed for time, and it's trying to get time and people's diaries to sit and agree. I think that's the one of the main struggles across the industry, for everybody at the moment, I would

Dusty Rhodes 15:16
I would have to agree in my own industry as well. Let me get back on to procurement strategies, because you do advise people on that. What do you see as the most common pitfalls to avoid when it comes to procurement strategies?

Colette O'Shea 15:29
Um, well, one of the common ones, and it goes across everything, is that we tend to keep doing what we've done before, because it's safe. And we're talking about, certainly, the procurement strategies that I'm lucky enough to work in. You're talking about billions of euros. So nobody, our people are very hesitant to kind of be the one that steps outside the box, because we're all aware of maybe the one project in the country who's in the news at the moment and not going so well. So we're working slowly to kind of get confidence. And some organizations are have got their confidence, are taking a slightly different route. One of the other things is our, I suppose, our adversarial nature around contracts and we need to work together in terms of trying to share risk under contracts, rather than just transferring it and hoping, hoping for the best, I suppose, is the best way to put it. So we need to, like to make the industry sustainable, and certainly in the infrastructure space, to make it attractive for companies. Because we're up against, like the data center clients. We're up against huge big business and big pharma, who treat, maybe there it's more of a relationship, because they can, because they're not governed by, you know, procurement law. So they can kind of do side deals, they can do handshakes and stuff like that. That's not how public procurement works. But if we don't share the risk properly, we end up in that adversarial battle, because the companies need to make money. If something wasn't clear, there's the argument over whose responsibility it is, and it's not always, you know, the client's fault, but it just ends up in that kind of adversarial space. And I think to move forward, we need to kind of look at that a little bit.

Dusty Rhodes 17:17
So let's talk about the engineering market, then in general, because you're in quite a unique position to observe the Irish infrastructure landscape. Where do you see the engineering market heading over the next five to 10 years?

Colette O'Shea 17:31
I think it's going to, I suppose, Bloom, if that's the right word. There's a lot of work has been going on in the last couple of years to kind of get projects aligned, get, like our major infrastructure projects, off the ground. We're bringing in kind of expertise from the globe to help with those major projects. So the likes of Sean Sweeney, who's joined Metrolink in recent times, you know, we're looking outside or looking outside the box. We're applying that creativity to write. Instead of just doing what we're doing within the box of Ireland, we're bringing it in. So I think we'll see the fruits of that, and also that push with the infrastructure department and stuff like that, to kind of grow and sell ourselves. So I think a lot of the blocks that are there at the moment we'll see them slowly move now the infrastructure space is a slow moving animal. It's never going to be like overnight. It's never going to be quick, but I think we'll see the roadblocks moving and progress happening in the next couple of years. It's a very exciting time to work on infrastructure, because there's so much going on.

Dusty Rhodes 18:40
It can be a little bit frustrating when it's moving that slowly. But it also means that it's not necessarily affected as much as other areas of life by what might be going on elsewhere in the world, shall we say. But also it's very reliant on, I like looking at slow moving things all right, because in radio and with podcasting, every, you know, week or every month, or certainly in radio, every three months you get your radio ratings in we all hear about in the news, and everybody's number one, and it's great, all right. But for a presenter, it's like getting your leaving cert results every three months. You did great. Oh, hang on a minute. No, you're down. Do you know what I mean? It's, it's a nightmare. But what I always kind of looked at numbers and stuff like that, was to look at the trend. Do you know what I mean? So, like, you might be down a little bit this time, up a little bit the next time, but are you overall, moving upward is always the thing. So when I'm talking about slow moving things like infrastructure and stuff like that, you're also able to see trends. Because you're looking at things over the last two, three years, you're looking ahead the next 510, years, what trends or technologies do you think are going to shall I say, shake up, be radical about it, the engineering practice in Ireland.

Colette O'Shea 19:51
I think the most radical one is going to be AI, so we're saying that coming into a lot of things at the moment, and kind of that. This kind of space, it's really, I suppose, worrying in some respects, because a lot of people are worried it's going to take their jobs. Am I going to be replaced? Am I going to but like, what we're saying is that's not like it's augmenting, it's helping grow those resources and that get rid of that resource constraint that we've been talking about, but it also is a computer, so you need to check comes out of it. And for me, it's like, in 20 years, I've seen a number of things, like email was just about being introduced when I started work. So like, things have progressed. There's been a number of technology progressions even in my career. And I just see this as the next one, like the last big one was, like BIM building, information modeling and stuff like that. This is just kind of the next step in that, and it's helping us do our jobs more efficiently and also safer. So the introduction of AI into the likes of tunneling, where people don't necessarily have to go into the tunnel as much, where we can do things like in a safer method, so that people can go home safely. You know, I think, like for me, while it's I'm nervous of it, because I don't know if I'm not, I think it's a great tool for progression.

Dusty Rhodes 21:15
Can I ask you about that tunnel? Are you able to tell me more about that example?

Colette O'Shea 21:20
A little bit, I don't know, huge it was, again, it was one of my evening lectures that I attended.

Dusty Rhodes 21:27
Oh, cool. Tell us what you remember. Then tell us what you remember.

Colette O'Shea 21:29
So what I and I may, hopefully I don't remember this wrong. But what they were saying is that on a tunneling machine like technology has progressed a huge amount, where a lot of it is done remotely. But there are still certain areas where people have to go check or go do a certain amount of information. But what they're using is they can take the information that's now been read back, so the hardness of the rock, the soft spots, the kind of geotechnical information, using AI, they can determine, Okay, well, if we move like slightly this way, or if we reduce the speed on this head slightly, it won't get stuck, or it'll move, the productivity will keep going. So it's that analysis that can be done very quickly and to stop kind of issues with the head getting stuck or getting hitting something that's going to slow down productivity. So I may have gotten hope

Dusty Rhodes 22:23
No, but I get the gist of the example that you mean. But that is an actual, that's a real world implementation of AI, and it actually helped. And that these things, the one thing I constantly hear about AI is that's the you look at something that AI is doing, and he kind of that's not great, but we have to remember is that's the worst AI will ever be. It's just constantly improving.

Colette O'Shea 22:44
It's just like and like. It's huge for us in the industry when you're trying to analyze huge volumes of data. So traffic data would be the other thing. So like our roads and people always think there's speed traps, but if you're driving along the road and you see two little cables going across the carriageway. That's traffic counts, so just counting traffic, but taking information like that, or off cameras that are doing the same, so that you can model and say, well, that junction, you know, we need to change the traffic light signal, because that particular road keeps getting stuck for no particular reason, and the other one is quiet. It's things like that that you don't, don't see going on, that AI is helping us with.

Dusty Rhodes 23:25
Imagine applying your brain to try and figure that out across the city like Dublin, which is not the biggest city in the world. It's not small, but it melts your brain getting away from Ai. But another thing that is affecting our working life is we had COVID, and everybody's working from home, and now there's this whole return to the office mandate that seems to be kind of not going down too well. Do you think it's hampering the industry's ability to deliver the national development plan?

Colette O'Shea 23:53
I think so. I don't think it's I suppose in a calm what we've done is we have quite a flexibility around it. So our focus is very much on creating the community and the team culture and stuff like that, rather than you must be in the office three days a week for no particular reason. And I see a lot of my friends working in organizations, either in engineering or otherwise, where they're getting quite annoyed at having to go in for no reason. And I know myself, some days I go in, I'm like, I'm sitting here in a meeting room on team calls all day. I might as well be at home, because all I'm doing is getting to wave at my team as I run to the loo or something. So I think there needs to be again. We need to think outside the box during COVID and certainly the years afterwards, our productivity did increase, and our ways of working got better. And you know, there are certain things that we need to work on, the connectivity, but in terms of the actual output, I would imagine if you did a kind of a study now on the productivity versus what it was a. In, maybe just just after COVID, as kind of we got out of the worst of it, I would say our productivity has dropped probably by 20%

Dusty Rhodes 25:09
And is that because people are returning to the office, or is that because people are kind of more used to the idea of working from home?

Colette O'Shea 25:16
I think it's you're more used to working from home, but also, if I'm in the office, I'm concentrating maybe in the evenings, because I have a class, or I have to get home for my kids, or something like that. So I'm going, right? I have to leave at a certain time because I have travel in between that I need to might be a commute of an hour. Then I need to get home. Well, if I'm at home, I can go all right, well, I don't need to be wherever until six o'clock so I can, like, work at 10 minutes up the road. I can work until like, quarter six.

Dusty Rhodes 25:47
Okay, now that that brings up another thing, because then you're overworking. All right, the commute is actually a space for your brain to go, oh, okay, all right. Do you think then, when you're looking at that much quality working bunched into a day that people will experience burnout?

Colette O'Shea 26:04
I do think so, and you need to be very careful in terms of boundary setting and things like that. Like I've experienced burnout myself, and it's a very kind of I try to be. I wouldn't say I'm very good at it, because it's still a skill that you have to learn. But it's about recognizing and watching yourself and like that, making sure you're taking lunch just because I work an extra half hour, like a lot of the times, you'll find people working on the train on the way home anyway, so the commute isn't actually a break. It's just more of a hassle to figure out how to get from the office to the train, to turn back on the laptop or the phone to check emails or reply. Like a lot of the times, you'll find people doing teams calls, oh, I'll call you the train on the way home, and

Dusty Rhodes 26:49
I hate people who do that.

Colette O'Shea 26:53
We need to work like it's a personal thing, and I haven't gone through it. For me, it's a very much a personal skill of managing my time and putting in boundaries, but it also needs to be supported by the organization. Because if you're working with an organization who doesn't understand that you need to look after yourself, then that becomes very, very stressful.

Dusty Rhodes 27:14
I want to ask you about that in a second, but first tell me you've been through burnout. How did you know you were burning out?

Colette O'Shea 27:22
I'll be honest and say I didn't. It took my family and friends probably two years to get me to realize it, and I was in a very, very bad way when I kind of finally listened to them, because I'm, I suppose, a very driven person, very ambitious. I And, I suppose, capable. I was like, I just keep going, like, I know what I'm doing. I can do this. I was doing it. It wasn't that I was failing at anything, but I just, I went from like, having, I suppose, being able to see my friends in the evening. I used to run and, you know, do five ks and stuff for the time to working maybe 6070, hours a week to make something successful that I was very passionate about. But I lost, I lost myself in the process. And I just, I talk about it in terms of having two colettes. Now, there's like, professional Colette and there's Colette, and I lost Colette, and professional Colette took over completely, which for two and a half years is not something that's sustainable.

Dusty Rhodes 28:28
What was the straw that broke the camel's back and made you realize that you were burnt out?

Colette O'Shea 28:34
Um, it was actually COVID. So having the headspace in COVID to realize that I was just so exhausted, and all of a sudden, you know, I was, you know, I remember, at the beginning of COVID, everyone was making an effort of like friends were doing, we were doing zoom parties and everything. And I had moved house just before, like, six months before COVID, I had moved from, I lived outside for 20 plus years with all my friends, and I moved to the north side and left them going, it's only a half an hour drive of a grant. And then I went for six months not seeing somebody that I knew in person because of all the restrictions. So it was that headspace and that realization that I don't I'm not just my work. I'm good at my work, but it's that connection and that kind of person to person, stuff that I want.

Dusty Rhodes 29:23
So you've mentioned that to combat the burnout, realizing it was one thing, and then having your professional hat and your personal hat, and then doing simple things like, you know, making sure that you have time for lunch or getting some exercise, whatever happens to be, all of these things combat it. But how does it work with an employer where all of a sudden you're doing 70 hours a week, and now you're going in and go, I know it's all new Colette. Now I only do 38 from an employer's point of view. Do you know what I mean? How does that work?

Colette O'Shea 29:56
Well, I suppose it is. It's depending on the organization. And I can only maybe speak about it from where I am today. So with the company I'm with, with a calm at the moment, so we have a freedom to grow policy, which was one of the things that attracted me, and it's very much it was in place. And I knew it was in place before COVID. And I knew about it because certain friends worked in a calm so I knew they were using it, but that allows you to kind of, it's focused on getting your work done whenever it suits you and suits your clients. So like on a Friday morning, I do a creative writing class or group, and I work. I don't take time off. It's a half a day, but I don't I work it within the rest of my week, and there's no pressure or kind of going, Oh, why isn't it just accepted? I don't work Friday mornings and lots kind of having structures like that that you can kind of go, You know what? It's acceptable. It's actually set out in policy, so I don't have to stress about it. And seeing people do it. So I try and act as a, I suppose, an example within the organization, and talk about what I do, and other people talk about it. One of our directors, energy leads in the UK does like BASE jumping and stuff like that, and he'll put up and pictures that it was a gorgeous afternoon and I needed a break. I'm, you know, after going off for a couple of hours and doing my thing, and that's celebrated. So we very much celebrate bringing your whole self and taking a break. And you'll get called out like, I have a great team who'll tell me, collect, you're exhausted, you've been working. You know, we saw emails from you. You need to turn off.

Dusty Rhodes 31:41
It does, yeah, for somebody who's listening and they're feeling stressed at work and feeling like, you know, oh god, there's nothing I can do about it, this is quite common, especially with human resources, where there are rules and regulations about things that are available. You said that you had looked into the regulations in your own place, and you availed of it. For somebody who's kind of sitting there and stressing I can't read them, or I don't feel comfortable, or if I go in, they're going to say, no. What advice would you give to them about raising that issue or just asking for help?

Colette O'Shea 32:13
I think the hardest thing is asking for help, and it's something that I even all the stuff I've gone through, I still sometimes struggle. The hardest part is going and sitting with somebody and going, I don't This doesn't feel right. I'm stressed. I can't do it. I feel I need, need support. I suppose the best advice is finding somebody that you can trust and somebody you feel comfortable and acknowledging that it's a very vulnerable situation that you're putting yourself into. So it will feel scary. It will feel certainly from a professional side, I always felt like I'm making a mistake. This is going to impact me. This they're going to think I'm not capable of my job. But one of the main things that I learned from like studying burnout and getting over it was having it and experiencing it was the complete opposite of failing at my job. It was because you're kind of outperforming. You're doing a huge amount. So it's not failure. It feels like it, and your brain tells you because you're not getting to everything that you want to do, but it's far from it. It's the complete opposite of my experience. So it's trying to have that vulnerability and speaking to somebody, even speaking to somebody like in my coaching and stuff like that, and to the work I do with women in engineering and engineers Ireland, like, I have people just like contacting me, looking for that advice. So I can advocate on their behalf. If they want some people, I, you know, I coach them through the conversation and just help them. Have, you know, what's words? How can I say it? And just a lot of the time, it's a sounding board, and it's, it's the same for myself kind of going, I'm going to do this. Does this sound or what do I do? Or how do I say this, so there's lots of resources out there that can help, and it you can have that conversation before you have the conversation with your employer.

Dusty Rhodes 34:11
If that helps, let me just ask you very briefly on women in engineering, despite all the progress that we have in 2025 as we're speaking, what barriers do you still see facing women who are entering or even staying in the profession?

Colette O'Shea 34:27
A lot of it is there's still, surprisingly, a lot of old mindset out there that. And again, it comes down to kind of breaking barriers and doing things kind of differently. So in the industry in general, there's a lot of progress, but when it comes to kind of addressing like, we organize conferences and things like that, and you get barriers for, oh, why would you put all the women in the same room? Like, because we actually want to talk, and you're very welcome as a man to come. We would love if you did. And we try very much to have balance, but it's that kind of perception that we're it's some kind of secret society, and while it would be nice if that was the case, but like, the reason why, I suppose we we started that, and kind of set up, and it's still going, is to create that network, because a lot of us either work in industries or in companies where there might be only three or four women in the company, or, as some of them certainly like we there's a number of members who work in the likes of manufacturing and the very heavy male dominated ones, and they can be the only Woman there. So like it's creating that network, and it's trying to break down the barriers, like we can't do this, that we can't change things without every without the guys. So it's not a them versus us. It's like we're trying to gather our thoughts, to communicate it, and we're not trying to do anything. And like, if you talk to any woman, nobody wants a job just because she's a woman. It's like, you know, those quotas and stuff like that, that's not what we're fighting for, but we're just trying to raise awareness and just kind of, you know, bring that to the fore.

Dusty Rhodes 36:12
And it's like you have said all through our chat today, it's getting all the parties who are involved in whatever happens to be, to come together and work together. You know, we're not all individual little camps that doesn't serve anybody. It's, it's when we come together, we can do amazing things. A lot of engineers who listen to the podcast are people who are thinking about their future and they want to progress with a career, or maybe break out and start their own firm or stuff like that. For engineers who are starting out or looking to progress. Where do you see opportunity?

Colette O'Shea 36:45
Um, well, just in the industry in general. So the main growth in the industry, like a lot of it, is in the energy space at the moment, and that's there's some really interesting kind of initiatives around your alternative fuel sources, like hydrogen and things like that. You see the growth of the solar farms. So it's looking at spaces, and it's finding what you're interested in. So I suppose in my coaching, what I always try and get people to understand is you'll burn out very quickly if you're working on something that's not aligned with your values and not aligned with kind of who you are. So if I'm chasing like, if I'm chasing money, and I'm going right, I'm going to be ca CEO, just because I want to guess salary, that's fine if that's your ultimate driver, and that aligns with who you are. But a lot of people are aren't. Again, me personally, that's not my ultimate driver. We want to be financially secure, of course, but not, yeah, I don't. I don't need to be mega rich, but it's finding what aligns with you. So whether that's energy, whether it's some people go back and do lecturing and teaching, because they find that that's what gives them joy, and that's what gives them purpose in the morning. So for me, it's finding that, and that's, I suppose, in my career, what, what I've worked through in the different steps, and that's how I've ended up in, kind of the legal, law side of it. And it's finding that bit that you're doing kind of on a day, you might do it in five minutes in a day, going, oh my god, that was just so much fun. And then you're trying to expand that, and it's trying to work to expand that. And there's nothing wrong with saying what you want. So employers and as a you know, Team Lead. If someone comes to me and go, I really want to do X, I'd really love to try it, my first thing is like, absolutely but it might take me time to find something. So just hang on and give me a bit of time. I don't have, you know, don't have a mega project in hydrogen to show you onto immediately. But people forget and are afraid to tell their managers what they're actually interested in. And my view is, and I tell my team the whole time, it's like, I'm not a mind reader, unless you tell me I can't align it. And there's so many opportunities that end up on my desk that if I know that, you know, Joe wants to work on this, or Gabby wants to work on that, when they do arrive, I can make them align. But if I don't know, I will just go, oh no. Well, you know, I'll just pick yo Mary instead of because I don't know what anybody wants to do for people who are listening, kind of going, that's interesting.

Dusty Rhodes 39:22
I can tell you, with my own career, that is amazing advice, and I have done it, and it has worked, and it was years ago, and somebody said, Well, if you want to do such and such, tell the people above you. That's where I want to go. Amazing advice. Colette, now to wrap up, a hard question, and it's not going to be, where do you see yourself in five years time? But it's similar on a beach in the Bahamas. Here it is, if you had a magic wand to fix one two. Challenge in engineering tomorrow? What would it be?

Colette O'Shea 40:07
Oh, one of the things that I would love to fix, because something that happened me really early in my career, and it's something I've tried to evaluate, try to live up to, is when I was like very young engineer, about three to three years experience, I majorly messed up and to the point where my company got a letter from the government, so major wrestle, but my director and company at the time didn't like, I remember like it happening at me, terrified I was like, going to get fired and everything. But I remember being sat down by the managing director at the time, des Barry, and he's like, you can make any mistake once, and we will help you, and we will learn from it, but if you make the same mistake twice and don't learn, we'll have an issue. So that gave me such freedom. Now, I took a lot of responsibility, you know, and kind of made sure I was doing things right, but it also gave me a lot of freedom to kind of learn, and once I had a solid, logical reason for why I did something, and it also helped me think things out, because you were, you know, you'd sit down with your line manager and explain why I'm doing this, because x, y and z, so that as a young engineer, helped me kind of grow in my confidence and grow in my space and take ownership for my decisions, while also being supported. And I would love for people to have that experience. I would love for that to be kind of the norm in the industry. Because, as we're working with you, described engineering as a creative space, like we need to try and fail. Because if we keep getting told, like children, you don't do that, you don't do that, you don't do that, we never learn why. And the why is an engineer is a fundamental of who we are. So we need to kind of create that space for people to thrive, and that's how we'll get more people into the industry. That's how we'll get more people to stay and being engaged and progress.

Dusty Rhodes 42:11
That is not just a great thing to think about, but that is a brilliant summary of almost everything we've been talking about in the podcast and and it's just genius. If you would like to find out more about Colette and some of the topics we spoke about today, you'll find notes and link details in the description area of this podcast. But for now, Colette O'Shea, head of Strategic Procurement for Ireland, for AECOM. Thank you so much for your time today.

Speaker 1 42:37
Thanks, Dusty. I enjoyed it.

Dusty Rhodes 42:39
If you enjoyed our podcast today, 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 and more information on career development opportunities there are libraries of information on our website at engineersireland.ie. Until next time from myself, Dusty Rhodes, thank you for listening.