Construction sector faces urgent decarbonisation challenge whilst Ireland maintains only 11% women in engineering unchanged since 2011 despite ambitious housing and infrastructure targets requiring diverse workforce expansion.
Susan McGarry, Managing Director for Ireland at Ecocem pioneering low carbon concrete company, explains journey from Greenpeace member receiving Rainbow Warrior dolphin pictures to becoming youngest MD at 30 years old, how ACT advanced cement technology reduces clinker from 85% to under 30% achieving 600 kilos CO2 savings per tonne, why Irish regulatory system lacks assessment route for new low carbon materials despite ambitious National Development Plan targets, and how cancer diagnosis at 34 prompted reflection on policy passion over operational leadership.
With expertise spanning technical concrete troubleshooting through European policy advocacy and member of Engineers Ireland Women in Engineering Group, Susan shares practical advice on visibility without egotism, why nice girls who don't ask get nothing, and how senior management diversity influences maternity leave, IVF cover and bereavement policies attracting retaining women throughout career pipeline.
THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
● Low carbon cement ACT reduces clinker eighty five percent
● Irish regulatory system lacks assessment route new materials
● Women engineering eleven percent unchanged since two thousand eleven
● Visibility senior management influences hiring maternity IVF policies
● Cancer diagnosis thirty four prompted policy passion reflection
GUEST DETAILS
Susan McGarry is Managing Director for Ireland at Ecocem, pioneering company developing low carbon concrete, expertly handling concrete procurement rules and public affairs guiding construction industry toward ambitious climate targets whilst scaling sustainable building solutions across Ireland. Passionate advocate for diversity as prominent woman in structures and construction sector historically low on female engineers, she uses platform driving inclusion highlighting systemic barriers women face from cultural challenges to logistical issues like accessible female bathrooms on construction sites. Member of Engineers Ireland Women in Engineering Group, she joined Ecocem as environmental services intern in 2011 becoming youngest MD at 30 years old in 2020, now serving as Director of Public Affairs and Sustainability for Ecocem Global after cancer diagnosis prompted career reflection focusing on policy passion over operational leadership spanning European officials and global partnerships.
Connect with Susan McGarry:
● Website: https://www.ecocemglobal.com/en-ie/
● LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-mcgarry-73582542/?originalSubdomain=ie
QUOTES
"There's still not enough women to see it on mass as a career choice. I think visually, it still looks quite male dominated, and that is off putting. My personal kind of goal would have always been to like help increase the visibility at senior management level for women in engineering, women in construction." - Susan McGarry
"The state is the biggest consumer of concrete in this country. We do have procurement rules now where 30% clinker substitution is required. That's not super ambitious but we've gone from nothing to something." - Susan McGarry
"I had a decision to be a generalist or specialist at about 26. The Chairman of Ecocem said I did this course in UCD in industrial engineering in 1965, it turned engineers into CEOs. You should have a look at that." - Susan McGarry
"You get nothing if you don't ask, and if you don't have confidence, you kind of fake it. By being an open person to opportunities and being a helpful person that you'll take on workload." - Susan McGarry
"When I graduated as an engineer in 2011, 11% of the engineering population was made up of women. In 2025 it's still only 11%. It has not changed. That's a very small percentage. When you want a network, you do need a network. You need somebody that you can pick up a phone to that's kind of like minded. Women in Engineering Group created that network." - Susan McGarry
TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience here is an AI transcription
Dusty Rhodes 0:02
Right now on AMPLIFIED,
Susan McGarry 0:03
There's still not enough women to see it on mass as a career choice. I think visually, it still looks quite male dominated, and that is off putting. My personal kind of goal would have always been to like help increase the visibility at senior management level for women in engineering, women in construction.
Dusty Rhodes 0:22
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes, and you're welcome to AMPLIFIED the Engineers Journal Podcast. Today, we're chatting with a strategic leader in both green procurement, public policy and diversity in engineering, we'll be exploring ways for engineers to become more visible and influential in the work talking about technical shifts in low carbon cement and how to hone your executive and business skills to advance your career. It's a pleasure to welcome the Director of Public Affairs and Sustainability at Ecocem Global, Susan McGarry.
Susan McGarry 0:59
Thanks, Dusty, delighted to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Dusty Rhodes 1:03
So listen, Susan, I always like to start by asking people, how did you get into this world of engineering we all find ourselves in? Yeah.
Susan McGarry 1:11
So I always just wanted something that was related to the environment. I thought I was going to change the world from a very young age. That was always my thing. I was a member of Greenpeace. I was getting pictures of dolphins sent back from the team on the Rainbow Warrior. That was always my thing. And I was kind of torn between environmental science and engineering. What I like, I have to admit, I probably didn't know a lot about engineering when I put it down. I just knew it was generally, you know, it could be related to sustainability and in that general industry. So that was the course choice that I ended up getting. And I remember, for those first few months, I wasn't really sure if I was going to stay, and it wasn't until kind of the environmental module started that I was like, oh yeah, this is for me. It was like, you know, environmental regulation, planning, all of that. And I said, Oh yeah, I can really do something here, so engineering, but definitely more focused on the sustainability side, and I thought I could make a really practical career out of this.
Dusty Rhodes 2:10
So Susan, can I ask you just about your career to date and projects that you're kind of most most proud of working on, or that you found most interesting?
Susan McGarry 2:19
Yeah, so I have a unusual career. I think these days, people tend to change companies a bit more often. I've been with the same company since I graduated in 2011 I started with Ecocem as a intern, because Environmental Services intern, or marketing intern, or something like that. We were just getting into launching a retail product. So bagged cement, which the company had never been involved in before, we only ever sold in bulk directly to kind of concrete producers, whereas this was dealing with, you know, the retail market, totally different blogging. So I kind of helped on marketing, helping to develop the product, anything and everything, really, that I could be useful with. I tried a hand at and the company gave me a lot of opportunities, so I stayed so while I say I've been with the same company for that long, I think that's nearly 15 years now. Is it coming up on 15 years, I've had a million different roles within that company. And the company that I started with is a very different company to the one I'm with now, because we've grown, we've more than doubled in size. And so I have had various roles, from kind of technical manager in the Irish business to sustainability manager for the group. We didn't have that role, which is funny, we're a low carbon cement company, very focused on sustainability, but we didn't actually have a sustainability function in house. We had kind of relied on consultants. And I sort of said, like, look, this is for me. I could do this. We started implementing all the ISO systems. We had four plants across Europe that we implemented safety, quality and environmental management into at the same time. That was really how I kind of got to know everybody in the business and got around all of our different sites. You learn a lot by, you know, looking in the bins and making sure everyone's compliant for the for the ISO audit. And so that was kind of just prior to me starting a master's in engineering management, I had kind of come to a fork in the road where it was I could either be a specialist and stay technical, stay around, kind of the concrete technology side of things, or go more generalists and do sort of a business thing. I decided to kind of go the general route, and I did engineering management in UCD as a master's and that really kind of opened my eyes to what was possible. And in 2020 I became the first woman MD in the ecosm group, and the youngest MD they've had to date. So I was 30 years of age, and became the managing director of the ecosm Ireland business, which produced about 350,000 tonnes of low carbon cement a year providing that, supplying that to the Irish concrete industry. And so that was for the worst part, was during covid. So that was over four years I was the managing director in Ireland, and just last year I pivoted out of that. And I know the director for sustainability and Public Affairs very. Much in my wheelhouse. So during that time as MD, while I loved it, I love talking to people. So being an MD is great. You get to talk to everyone in the business and be chatting. It's great. But my focus was policy. And a real interesting project that I was on throughout that managing director role was trying to create some sort of legal driver in Ireland around the use of low carbon materials. There was no actual requirement in this state to use a lower carbon material in construction at all. And by 2024, the procurement guidelines for low carbon spent concrete were released by the Department of Enterprise, which dictated that 30% clinker substitution had to be used in all publicly procured concrete. So that was a huge win, like we've been lobbying for this, and, you know, engaging with the with government and kind of other people that were aligned with our views to kind of get something like this in place.
Dusty Rhodes 5:53
Susan, for people who don't know, can you just very briefly in a sentence, explain Ecocem and where it operates. And what I really want to ask is, what's the single most exciting project you're working on at the moment?
Susan McGarry 6:06
So Ecocem is an Irish business. It was set up by a man called Don Loreen in 2000 so we're a 25 year old business. The core business was focused on ground, granulated blast furnace slag. So that's real tongue twister, ggbs. It is a clinker replacement. So clinkers the polluting component of cement. That's where you burn limestone and shale shale in a kiln, so that the machinery within a cement plant you burn that to produce clinker, and during that process, a lot of carbon is emitted. So the goal around decarbonisation should be reduce the amount of clinker that we're using in cement, and that's really what ggbs does. You can replace clinker with ggbs on a one for one ratio. So the concrete industry really took this on in Ireland. We also opened a plant in the Netherlands around the same time, and then we expanded into France and the UK, and we're soon to open a plant in the US as well. We're working on a US production plant in the Port of LA as well. So we've really grown from an Irish business to a global business, and pivoted slightly from just ggbs to we have a full Research and Innovation Centre focused on new low carbon cement alternatives.
Dusty Rhodes 7:20
All right, Susan, let's talk cement. I mean, if there was ever foundation for an engineering podcast, you can't get concrete without cement. But listen the thing you're your sustainability is very much a passion of yours, and one thing that the company is known for is for low carbon cement. Tell me how is cement being decarbonized globally?
Susan McGarry 7:45
Yeah. So there's multiple solutions globally at different levels of technology readiness. So our product is, our new product is called act, and that's, it's at deployment stage. Pretty much now we're working on demonstrator projects across Europe. Why the name act? Act? It's advanced cement technology. Okay, good. Follow their background to where that name came from. Works for me. Yeah, nice and easy. So we that's the culmination of about 10 years of research, and I think about 70 million euros worth of an investment from like, directly from ecosm as a company. So we saw, kind of about a decade ago, the cement industry needs to decarbonize, because of all of the EU legislation that's coming down and because of obviously climate change is becoming more and more critical. We kind of knew that this was coming onto the cement sector, and there was very little new technologies coming through. We also saw that the steel industry, where we get the raw material for ggbs, our main business model, the steel industry, is starting to decarbonize. And over the next couple of decades, they're going to start shutting down the traditional way of producing steel with a bass furnace. They're going to start moving from that to electric arc furnaces. So the raw material that we currently use, GBS, is going to go into decline over the next couple of decades, and the cement industry news need new solutions. So we said, right, we need to focus. We have the expertise in this. We need to focus our attention on creating the next generation of cement technology. What other industrial byproducts can we utilise as cement replacements? How can we use the materials that we do have available now in a more efficient way. So we produce act, and we have our whole Research and Innovation Centre based in Paris, and we've got a team of about 30 researchers working on this. So act uses, like all traditional materials that we've already been using. So it uses the ggbs, it uses clinker, and it uses limestone and mineral additions, but it just uses them in a more efficient way, and using kind of particle size distribution and smart use of admixtures and water reducers to make a fully robust, general purpose cement that can rival the traditional cement that we have on the market now that has a very high clinker component. So that's the most exciting thing. Thing that I working on, and the whole company is working on, is at this point, because we're at deployment stage to get to here, has been years of once it got out of research, once it got out at the lab, it was like, Well, how do you use this in practical terms? How do you get the standards changed to allow it to be used like policy should be encouraging the uptake of low carbon materials this, you know, this is kind of where my main body of work is focused on.
Dusty Rhodes 10:26
So it's, I mean, it sounds you sell it very well, okay, sounds like a great idea. I'm wondering, why is not every construction site in the country crawling over to your front door to want to use this? Yeah, so
Susan McGarry 10:40
I would have said things were very different in the construction sector, kind of a decade ago, whereas, like you just kind of want to keep things traditional, there was very little change, or very little appetite for innovation. Now, things are very different. The contractors, who are the guys on site, getting the Concrete Deliveries, pouring the concrete, were the most difficult to persuade to use something new previously, whereas they are now the audience that are coming to us looking for solutions. It's the contractors that want to deliver new, low carbon materials. They want to be producing the best concrete. This isn't just concrete related. Obviously, this is just my wheelhouse. But the same goes for kind of timber construction or using modern mess of construction. The contractors are driving that change now, whereas traditionally, they would have been the hardest to push forward or to get them to take something new on, and whereas now we the reason why we're moving quite rapidly now is we have these demonstrator projects. I call them demonstrator projects. It's that there's a project already happening. There's concrete already being poured. And we're like, Hey, can we do, you know, a small area using this new cement within the concrete, you have to get multiple parties on board to allow something like that to happen. But people are enthusiastic about they want it. Then there's a lot of pride when it's done to kind of showcase it as well. And we'd really good success with CISC in the UK as well. We did a demonstrator project in Wembley Park. We built a two story frame that was, there was multiple partners in that Cray of concrete here in Ireland, produced a precast and sent it over for us. And really hugely successful. And we've all created a huge amount of momentum publicly about that project as well. To say, look, low carbon material is possible. Low Carbon concrete is possible
Dusty Rhodes 12:21
when you're doing the demonstrator projects, then you're comparing your ACT low carbon cement with regular cement, old fashioned cement, we'll call it just, just for yourself, all right, how do you make the comparison between the two? I mean, it's great to say it's a dentist. Like, hey, there you go. The building is standing so is the other one. Like, you know, what? How do you show people that your product is better?
Susan McGarry 12:44
Yeah, so there's, like, there's very serious compliance aspects to it, there's safety requirements, fire testing and strength testing, durability testing, all of that. But all of that has been done over the past kind of three years, where we have European technical assessment for this product now, so we've met the European requirements for it. And there you go, market by market, and kind of demonstrate local compliance, depending on what that local compliance is, each country kind of differs, but you're also the best way to kind of show equivalent performance with concrete is that there's no difference. That's like, no news is good news. And that was actually what was said at that large scale demonstrator in London. Was like, Oh, it's just the same. There's nothing exciting. It was just like pouring any other concrete, but it had less than 30% clinker in it, compared to what we use in Ireland, is 85% clinker. And clinker is like the glue that keeps it together. So it's such a big difference in materials. It's like, wow, this is huge, but the actual pouring of it and the visuals of the concrete, it's all the same.
Dusty Rhodes 13:49
So you can answer this question if you like, and you don't have to answer this question if you like, all right. But as you know, when you're pulling a project together and you're engineering something, eventually it comes to a spreadsheet, and there's a cost. So my what? I'm not an engineer, so my real world example is gluten free bread is three times the price of regular bread. All right, so tell me about low carbon cement. Yeah. How does it compare price wise with regular cement?
Susan McGarry 14:16
This is what always gets asked. And there's no cost premium, there's no difference. There shouldn't be a difference. It is what we're producing. What Act is the same materials that we use now. It can be produced in the cement production facilities that they have already available. You're just using in a different manner. Instead of producing as much clinker in the kiln, you're going to be grinding it using electricity and blending it using electricity. So there it's a different way of making the material. It's basically just using different kind of or proportions of the of the materials, and that produces less carbon. So you're talking about a tonne of of traditional cement is about 800 kilos of CO two per tonne to produce, whereas act is in around two. 100 kilos of CO two to produce at this point based on kind of what we what we know from our from our production in France. And so it's that much of a difference. There's 600 kilos of carbon in the difference in terms of producing it. But when it comes to cost, what the cement industry is looking at as a whole to decarbonize is carbon capture and storage. This is not really practical or feasible in Ireland as a way of capturing the carbon from the cement installations here on this island, but in Europe, it is. It is being pushed as the solution for to decarbonize and the cement industry, and that's the cost of that is colossal, and it's the industry is going to need subsidies. It's going to need funding, and it's going to result in the cost of cement close to doubly and that that gets knocked on to the cost of housing, the cost of construction, and it's it's not a feasible solution to the whole of the industry. You're not going to build a carbon capture and storage facility beside every cement plant in Europe like that's not practical as well. We need multiple solutions. You need to reduce the clinker now. You need to find new materials. You need to use materials more efficiently. Do all of this to decarbonize from that 800 kilos of CO two per tonne down to as low as possible. And then you might capture some of the carbon residual emissions at the end. And so in terms of cost, I always get, get asked that, and the comparison is, it's it should be the same. There's no big difference. And carbon capture and storage is a much more costly method.
Dusty Rhodes 16:30
The minute you said it, I could see loads of people looking in the show description of the podcast, going, where is the link for her website? Which is there, of course. But anyway, government plays a huge role in making any change in society. And, you know, there's got all kinds of rules about green buying, and you have to do this and that the other is this changing how contractors are winning big government jobs or big jobs in general.
Susan McGarry 16:54
Yeah, like the state is the biggest consumer of concrete in this country. Yeah, we do have procurement rules now where 30% clinker substitution is required. That's like, I mean, that's not super ambitious. It's great. We haven't had anything, so we've gone from nothing to something, which is great. And generally the industry is adhering to that, because it's that's not very difficult. We've already been using ggbs, the product that ecosem has been producing for 25 years. We have a business. Years, we have a business model because the industry is consuming ggbs to lower their clinker usage. So in that regard, it's not a huge ask of the industry. I think that the government could maybe do more to push for more to be taken on a more ambitious targets. But I think there's a few different kind of items that we need to fix in the regulatory system around that. So it's quite conservative around using new products. Here in Ireland, obviously there's safety concerns, compliance concerns. We've had mic and pyri from the aggregates being an issue and that people have had to deal with. So there is a general conservative conservatism here. But we have currently no real route of assessment for new low carbon materials, or low carbon binders in in heavy materials like concrete, there's nothing there. I have a new product. I have act in order to allow that for use legally in structural concrete. In Ireland, somebody has to take that risk on themselves through private insurance.
Dusty Rhodes 18:19
If you had the magic wand. What would you change?
Susan McGarry 18:22
I think I would, number one, I'd bring some urgency to the situation in that you have a national development plan now, a new housing strategy, very ambitious targets. You're going to need new materials. You're going to need to future proof the materials going into those projects. In order to do that, we need a method for assessment. So anyone creates a new product, they find a new material, they do their testing, they go to the Standards Authority, and they say, Hey, how do I get this approved for use in concrete? We need to start using this to build our houses. With this stuff is great. What do they have to do? There's no, currently no assessment method. So there's no route for that to be taken on other than through an engineering company that wants to do something really innovative and they're willing to put on their own kind of insurance. We need to expedite some sort of route for assessment like that, with resources Manning kind of technical committees, having stakeholder groups or expert groups reviewing these things to speed things up, to get new materials out there. We've seen it happen with modern mess of construction that there's a separate unit kind of set up with NSAI at this point. There's rules around modern methods of construction that we didn't have previously because it was seen as a real need. We needed to we need rapid house building. So modern mess of construction like light gauge, seal, precast concrete, prefabricated materials, all of that, like we've seen a bit of urgency around it, but still, it's all taken years. Everything seems to really just take a little bit too long on the regulatory side, when you have all this level of ambition in the private sector and from the state's own promises, so they kind of need to match. Up the regulatory urgency, or lack of urgency, with the with the industry's urgency, I think,
Dusty Rhodes 20:09
Susan, I'd like to move on to talk about kind of career progression and leadership and everything, because you've been with ecosm all of your career, and explain to me, because you were the managing director of eco SEM and now you're the Director of Public Affairs and sustainability at Eco sem global, it said they're two different sounding titles. What's the difference?
Susan McGarry 20:30
Yeah, so the managing director role very focused on Ireland and taking care of the Irish business, growing the Irish business. And my my heart is in policy. Always has been and but I think that was a really necessary step for progression, a necessary step for seniority. As I said, they I got that role at 30 years of age like I was, they took a chance on me without previous management experience, and I really grew into the role. It was challenging at times, but I enjoyed it. I just enjoy a challenge. And what my time had kind of come at that point, I took a I took a step back. I was diagnosed with cancer at 34 and I took some time away. And it was kind of during that I was, you know, thinking, what's, what's the future like for me, kind of going back to work.
Dusty Rhodes 21:17
That changes your thinking, doesn't it?
Susan McGarry 21:18
It really does, really change. So you kind of went, maybe you can make a bigger difference by moving from an Irish leader to be a global leader, or to be promoted as.
Yeah, like, what's, what's the driving force in my career, and it's always been sustainability and policy. So there was a bit I could see a policy role in Eco sem sort of evolving somehow, because we had started, we had applied for some European funding. We had started having conversations with a few European policy makers, because there was legislation coming that was going to affect our business, and different people in the business had had different conversations. And people were really responsive to eco sem story because we were such a small company that grown, we have this technology now that could, like, literally, rapidly decarbonize the entire European cement industry. And so people were listening, but like, no one's in Ireland, or no one in the company had the time to commit to this fully, so I could see that kind of down the line, and I had done the policy piece in Ireland. So while I was off, I really kind of was thinking, you know, I wonder what's what I'm going to go back to? And the call actually came while I was off, and through discussions with the exec team, like, that's what came out of it was, I think this role is basically made for me. So now I do this globally. As I said, we're going to build a plant, hopefully in the US in the next couple of years as well. And so there's a global element to it as well. And we're looking at partnerships globally in lots of different countries, outside of Europe, outside the US. So there's a global aspect to it as well, which is exciting to me, but yeah, dealing with European officials is very It's good. It's interesting.
Dusty Rhodes 23:00
Susan, can I ask you then, how you went in Eco SEM? Because you kind of started at the in the post room, for one, for better word, I mean, you were pretty much straight out of college, and you went to all the way to the top. What was your path from A to B?
Susan McGarry 23:17
I'd say a bit zig zaggy in terms of topics, like I did do. I mean, I did the technical assistance stuff where people were calling me saying their concrete hadn't set like I had like, and I'm calling out, I'm looking at plaster like, and seeing, you know what? What way did you throw this stuff up? Do you know like I've done? Yeah, yeah, did that. And then I really, I had to, I that decision point of generalist or specialist came at about, I think I was about 26 and I remember going, Oh, I could there was an opportunity for a research masters in concrete that the company were looking to fulfil. And I could have done that kind of part time. And I remember having discussions with people in ecosm have been my mentors my whole life. They've been great, like, really, everyone's been very responsive to me and very helpful to me. It's been all men up until recently, because, as a small company in first of all, in the construction sector, and then in concrete, even more so, it's very male dominated. But they've always been very helpful to me. And I remember the chairman of ecosm helped kind of hone in that, that that decision. He said, I did this course in UCD and industrial engineering, and I think it was 1965 or 67 he's like, it was great, and it turned engineers into CEOs. You should have a look at that. And the courses was still the course is still running this to this day. And I remember I went to the open day that, and I met the course coordinator, and I was like, coordinator, and I was like, Yeah, I think this is the right idea for me. It was half engineering modules, half MBA modules. And I was like, Yeah, let's do this. And that the two years doing that opened my eyes, and I started bringing stuff back to the company. And it's nearly that I kind of positioned myself as somebody. That is, I'm willing to learn. I'm absorbing everything. I'm trying new things. I can't I always brought new ideas forward. And one of the jokes with the managing director of the Global Business was I'd bring things to him, and he'd say, Do you really want to take this on? Do you really want to, do you understand how hard this is going to be, and there's so much time? And I'm like, yeah, no, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. Let's do it. So I just kind of kept doing that. So then when a role came up as a managing director, the fact that I was considered for that was was because I kind of put myself forward as that person that I'm willing to take on a challenge. I'm willing to really put myself forward for opportunities. And a big part of the engineering degree and background is communications. They always say about engineers and soft skills, the soft skills of engineering, like the comms, presentation, training, all of that, that's what has really propelled me in my career. I don't know if you can tell, but I love chatting. I will chat the hind leg off anyone. I love talking. So honed that in terms of presentation, presentation skills, I was delivering company, CPD presentations to all the engineering practices in the country. Do you know what I mean? I take any opportunity. If one came up, I do it. No problem to architecture practices. They need to know about ecos, and they need to know how to specify ecosystem ggbs. I said I'd do it. So working on that, real presentation skills, the communication skills, really help propel me forward.
Dusty Rhodes 26:29
So it's important to be visible and to like, you know, stick your head up and to kind of put yourself out there and but you don't want to be like, seen as egotistical. I think that might hold a lot of people back. They kind of went, Well, I don't want them to all think that I'm, you know, a bit of an ego head or whatever. So I mean, where is the line between that, you know? Because I mean that comment, that one comment that you got was, well, there was this course I did in 1965 and it changed people from engineers and CEOs. I'd like the minute you said that, I just went, ding. I'm sure you went ding in your head as well. Like, you know, how do you get to conversations like that? Do you have to go around and say, I'm ambitious? I want to get into management. I want to own this company one day. Or is it a bit more subtle?
Susan McGarry 27:16
It's definitely more subtle. And I will say one thing that I learned from reading I have absorbed so many of those business books. A lot of the women in business books, like those classics. I read them all in my 20s, and there's one called nice girls don't get the corner office. And I remember reading that you get nothing if you don't ask, and if you don't have confidence, you kind of fake it, and really by being an open person to opportunities and being a helpful person that you'll take on workload. Now there's there's obviously situations where people can take advantage of that, if you're in kind of that type of company where a senior person sees that you'll take on work and give you too much work. But generally people are nice. People are good. And I find in the engineering and construction sector in Ireland, generally, people are very good. And if you have those conversations with people like, you'll be surprised how much people will help you. Like, I've been contacted by so many people. I get asked by people in ecosm questions and stuff like that. Because I'm kind of approachable. I like to think I'm approachable, so if you kind of just think in that way, like nobody's going to think you're egotistical, or, you know, who does she think she is? If you're a 25 year old woman in the engineering sector, and you're having a conversation with someone that's more senior, generally, it's going to make you sound great if you're, if you're interested in career development, and you're, you're asking them, how did they get where they are in their career and what the advice they could give you. I think that's people actually quite enjoy sharing their story and helping in that way. But I did always think and always tell everyone else that I speak to, especially women, nobody else is going to sing your praises or toot your horn. You have to do that, so just doing the work and putting your head down does not get you anywhere. You have to tell people that you did this work and that this work was hard, and this is the time, the energy you put into it, and this is why it's important for the company. And so whatever way that works for you and your company, or in your industry, find way of doing that in a you know, it's in a nice way. You're not trying to push anyone out. You're not trying to push yourself ahead. You're just saying I did a piece of very hard work and it's relevant to you. Please pay attention.
Dusty Rhodes 29:29
So when you were moving from engineer to management, were the business qualifications that you picked up along the way more important than your technical knowledge?
Susan McGarry 29:41
Not necessarily. Well, maybe on the people side, people skills really help you, because obviously, as being a younger MD and coming from the more technical side, without that management experience, people could have kind of doubts about my ability, but being. Able to have conversations with people. I mean, like you tell me about your role, you tell me what I can do to help you do things better, or can improve things. What would you think of this type of an improvement, or how we could do things better? And people respond well to that. So the people skills, definitely, but I knew the business inside out because I had the technical background, and I think that's a really key thing with engineers, you can have a re like, get a really strong technical base, and you can be a good manager, if you just, you know, learn the basics of people skills, make sure you're taking care of people. I'm a people led person. Always have been my style would have been an empathetic leader and focused on the people first, but I knew the business inside out. I wasn't so strong in the financials or the commercial because that hadn't been my wheelhouse, so I had to put extra time into those areas. But generally, having some sort of a strong base behind you gives you that advantage, I think, more than anything. As an engineer,
Dusty Rhodes 30:58
Susan, you're a member of the Women in Engineering Group, which is now a fully fledged society within engineers Ireland. Why is that a big change?
Susan McGarry 31:08
Yeah, and I love it. I love that topic. So I was listening to back to the other episodes of this podcast, and Colette O'Shea from AECOM was on one of them. She's great. So she was the chair of the group, kind of when I started with them, and she's just stepped down now. So they are the first dedicated women's division, women's society within Engineers Ireland. You would think we don't need it.
Dusty Rhodes 31:35
That's what that's why I'm asking the question. I would have thought we don't need it. In this day and age,
Susan McGarry 31:39
it's hard to find a network, because we are in the in the minority. So when I graduated as an engineer in 2011 11% of the engineering population was made up of women. In 2025 it's still only 11% it has not changed. That's a very small percentage. So when you want a network, and you do need a network, that is something that I tell everybody, you need a network. You need somebody that you can pick up a phone to that's kind of like minded or will just listen to you. As I said, I have a lot of men as mentors and ecos, and that's great, but nobody can relate to you in that way. You know, it's just, it's different, and there's certain things that you might things, but I know it's sometimes a little bit easier to have these conversations with women. So you do need a network. And the women and engineering group created that network for anyone that's participated, anyone that's gone to the events. The big event this year, it was amazing. It's in the Mansion House like it was a huge event. I don't think people realised how big this was. It was a huge event. Eyes on one of the panels with Cora Sutton from CS consulting, like, that's a network. Do you know what I mean? That's someone that I know, that she's also in a leadership position in the sector that I can chat to, and she can relate to what I'm talking about. It's so important. And this, I feel like especially rang true when I was when I came back to work after being off for surgery and treatment with breast cancer. There's a lot of impacts on a pre menopausal woman from the treatment. There's a lot of impacts. You have to look at IVF to preserve your fertility, chemo can have a detrimental impact. You're putting to kind of induce menopause to protect yourself during the treatment. All of this is like you're you're seeing all levels of the hormonal changes that women go through in their in their career lifespan, and you need people to talk to during that, like, during those times I had had friends at an IVF. I have friends I've had that are in perimenopause, and when someone's telling you, like, oh yeah, no, that's awful, the reality of it is so much more serious than that that people need help. People need a little bit of grace time. They need. They might need to, you know, take some tasks off their desk for a couple of weeks until they, you know, get to see their GP and get sorted, and then they're fine. Again, that little bit of support keeps women in the industry. But if you don't have anyone that you can share that content with during those times, it's so much harder. It's those little invisible barriers that people don't really recognise that like, you might end up actually, she might actually just leave her a job, step back, you know, whatever it is, and just that's another person exiting, that's another woman exiting our profession, whereas, like, give her a little bit of grace, or give her a support system, she might stay
Dusty Rhodes 34:35
Having that support system. There is, is fantastic. I want to go back to what you mentioned, about 11% and then it's still 11% why? Why is it still only 11% this is, this is the big mystery that I am banging my head against the wall, going, but I mean, that's ridiculous. 11% why?
Susan McGarry 34:55
Yeah, and like, the women that you meet in the industry, like are so ambitious and so you. Interesting and all that. It's not like it's such a great career, but I just don't think it's appealing to people at kind of the choice stage, so at that, that second level. But what? What puts them off? There's not, there's still not enough women to see it as I'm on mass as a career choice. I think it's still visually, it still looks quite male dominated, and that is off putting, because it's it's not you don't see someone like yourself doing it. It's not as interesting. There's a lot more now moving there's a lot more women going into, say, biomedical, pharma, that side of things, which is great because it's more visible. There's getting a lot more kind of media coverage. There's loads of jobs in it. It's great money, all of that, whereas, particularly in my sector, heavy like civils, like it's in materials, it's very, seem, very kind of like real dirty, dominated by men, rough and ready, out on site. I'm not on site. I've turned this into a policy career. I still identify very strongly as an engineer, but I've made a policy career out of it. I think there's a lot of work being done to help change things and promote things within kind of school age. But my kind of, my own mission sounds very serious, but my personal kind of goal would have always been to, like, help increase the visibility at senior management level for women in engineering, women in construction, because the senior management levels who makes the hiring decisions can help shape policy around maternity leave, the bereavement leave for for baby loss, IVF, cover all of that. When you have more people in those decision making roles that represent women's interests, you can it can start to see a shift. And you can see that in a lot of the companies, the large employers that have put a lot of time and energy into this side of things, you can see that they've attracted more women in through their pipeline as well, and kept those women from graduate all the way through. So I it's it's not about quotas or anything like that. It's about more women need to get through the system and get to senior management level to help influence the change?
Dusty Rhodes 37:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's a numbers game. If you know, 100,000 people join the engineering system tomorrow, well, then everything would change overnight, and it will be better. I reckon it would be, anyways, so I'm thinking about people who are listening to the podcast now in engineering, what is it that those people need to do to get more women involved?
Susan McGarry 37:28
I would say, if you're at a kind of senior management level, decision making level, that to look at your policies number one,
Dusty Rhodes 37:38
well, no, I'm not. I'm not talking about senior management level. I'm just talking about, say, ordinary engineers, and they're sitting there and they're kind of thinking, yo, yeah, we should have been a better mix around this office. I mean, how do they?
Susan McGarry 37:49
I would say, speak about, speak about it out loud. That's one of the things, because that kind of, like, it's just it is the way it is. It's always been like that, like there are, there are companies in this country that don't hire women. That is a fact. It's not written anywhere, but that's a fact. It's not in a, in a in a hard and fast rule. It's just generally, look at the interview panels. How many of them are women, and then how many of those women that happen to be on the interview panel get through to actually having a role? Does every company in the country have a maternity leave policy outside of what the state dictates we have to have. What safeguards do you put in place where, when she step has to step back from her role and and takes it back? What's the handover process? What support does she have to come back on maybe a three day week for the first six months? Like it is very much up to everyone, at every level, to say, to question things, and it's just the way it is. It's just been the way it's been for 15 years to two decades. Nothing's changed. We have such ambitious targets in the national development programme, the housing programme, we need to attract people to this industry. We're putting up billboards in Australia to attract people back to Ireland, to build, to build in Ireland, like attract start working on that 50% of the population in this country that does not think this is a career choice, that would be a great way of, kind of boosting our overall workforce.
Dusty Rhodes 39:16
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you look back to I wasn't, none of us were around, but thinking about World War Two, and, you know, kind of all the men were all foraging, and all the women were getting more into into the workforce, which was fantastic, and it made a huge societal change, you know. And like, if something like that was to happen to engineering, I think we would see the same kind of change, and it would just be, you know, I don't know, it's a huge societal thing, and it'll be time, and it's people like yourselves and the group and everything that are pushing it out there, and they are affecting change. So I just want to say thank you.
Susan McGarry 39:53
This is why I say yes to doing the podcast. This is why I said yes to tell my story at the. CIF women's day in March, which was, like, massive for me. It was 600 people. I'd only come back to work the summer beforehand, and I stood up on stage and told everyone I got cancer at 34 and this is my career. And, like, very exposing. Like, that's why I'm okay saying it now, very exposing. But the reason I did it is because you have to be visible. I just feel this kind of need to put myself out there in terms of my career, what I've done to then people will see me. People will see me. They'll see the likes of Colette. They'll see, you know, Mags Dalton from PM Group, whoever it is. Then they go, Oh, that's an interesting career. Look at her, and that's that you just trigger a decision in someone's head.
Dusty Rhodes 40:45
Well, aside from the product, just what you say about being visible and about how to be visible without being egotistical, I think is a huge learning that I have taken away from our chat today. If you'd like to learn more about Susan's work, please check out the links in the description or area of this podcast. But for now, Director of Public Affairs and Sustainability at Ecocem Global, Susan McGarry, thank you for joining us.
Susan McGarry 41:08
Thank you so much.
Dusty Rhodes 41:10
We hope you enjoyed our conversation today. If you know another engineer who would appreciate these insights, please do share the podcast with them. They can find us simply by searching for Engineers Ireland, wherever they listen to podcasts. Our podcast was produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. For advanced episodes, more information on latest trends in infrastructure or career development advice, a tonne of advice on the website at engineers ireland.ie. Until next time for myself. Dusty Rhodes, thank you for listening.