Irish engineers are incredibly creative thinkers and innovators, but it's a big leap going from innovator to entrepreneur, and taking an idea you might have to market.

Today we hear from a prominent engineer with a fascinating career history, which took her from aeronautical engineering into the biomedical space. We'll be finding out how she looks at problems, overcomes obstacles, where she sees innovation and opportunity, and getting some great advice for any engineers who are thinking of launching their own business.

Our guest is CEO of Altratech and the Assistant Director of the Stokes Research Institute at University of Limerick, Dr. Tara Dalton.

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

• Transitioning through different disciplines of engineering
• The benefits of working within interdisciplinary teams
• Learning to ‘skate where the puck is’
• Being aware of trends and spotting gaps in the market
• Striving for progress over perfection and asking for help

 

GUEST DETAILS
Dr Tara Dalton, CEO of Altratech and Assistant Director of the Stokes Research Institute in the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Limerick.

Dr Dalton is a fellow of the Irish Academy of Engineers. She is one of the founders of Stokes Bio – a spin-out company that was sold to Life Technologies that developed high throughput microfluidic instruments for PCR. Her research interest is in the development of microfluidic devices for biological assays. She has graduated 20 PhD Students, published over 100 refereed papers and has over 50 granted patent and patent applications.

https://altratech.com/

https://ul.ie/research/dr-tara-dalton

 

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

In my mind, in engineering, you don't want to be at the cutting edge of absolute new science. You want to be just behind it, so you can help people with that science. - Tara Dalton

 

When you work with interdisciplinary team, and I work with medics, physicists, chemists or even with other entrepreneurs, it's just amazing, because I find that everybody wants to help you be better. Nobody, at least in my experience, gatekeeps their knowledge. - Tara Dalton

 

Skate where the puck is, right. It didn't matter that I had this great product, but to get venture capital funding, that was never going to happen, because it wasn't in that ecosystem at the time. So that was one really big learning lesson. - Tara Dalton

 

Ask for help. Everybody, ask for help. Go talk to people, go talk to Enterprise Ireland, go talk to lawyers, go talk to VCs. Don't go saying I want, want, want, just say, What should I do? How could you help me? You'd be surprised how many people will give you their time. - Tara Dalton

 

TRANSCRIPTION

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

Dusty Rhodes  00:00

Right now on AMPLIFIED, we're about to find out how seemingly impossible things are eminently possible.

 

Tara Dalton  00:07

He never let perfection hinder progress. And so I just say, Okay, let's just make progress. I have to be consciously aware of thinking, Oh, God, we signed a contract to do something like what have we done? Knowing full well, that's going to be a really a hard ask.

 

Dusty Rhodes  00:26

Hello, my name is Dusty Rhodes and you're welcome to AMPLIFIED, the Engineers Journal podcast. I think we can agree that Irish engineers are incredibly creative thinkers and innovators. But it's a big leap going from innovator to entrepreneur, and taking an idea you might have to market. In this episode, we'll be hearing from a prominent engineer with a fascinating career history, which took her from aeronautical engineering into the biomedical space, we'll be finding out how she looks at problems, overcomes obstacles, where she sees innovation and opportunity, and getting some great advice for any engineers who are thinking of launching their own business. It's a pleasure to welcome the CEO of Altratech and the Assistant Director of the Stokes Research Institute at UL. Dr. Tara Dalton. Tara, how are you?

 

Tara Dalton  01:14

Hi, how are you? Hi, I'm good. Thank you so much.

 

Dusty Rhodes  01:18

Listen, welcome onto the podcast. I always start off by asking people what what made you want to be an engineer? How did you get into this game at all?

 

Tara Dalton  01:28

Um, actually, I think to be to be quite truthful, I think it was, it was my father. I had all sorts of different plans. And I, you know, I, I remember not really wanting to do honors maths at school. And my father sort of saying, you know, it opens up such a lot for you. So, you know, he like he worked at the University of Limerick. And he felt that that engineering was a really good combination of creativity and of maths, you know, because I always did like the sciences. I was interested in physics and chemistry, and biology. So I think, in some senses, there was serendipitous things, I suppose it was my dad really kind of pushed me to taking that on.

 

Dusty Rhodes  02:05

So when you went through school and university, you got into engineering then proper, and you started with aeronautical engineering. Tell me a bit more about that. So actually,

 

Tara Dalton  02:13

actually, I started with mechanical and then they launched aeronautical engineering when I was in third year. So at that time, it wasn't a discipline in itself, it was something you could specialize in, in third year, I think I was just so completely fascinated, because I think it goes against every instinct in our body that we can put that thing up in the sky. Every instinct and every single time I think about something that can't be done, I look at and say they they have an engine there that is going at, you know, 15,000 RPM, that's that's huge, up at 36,000 feet. Come on, like, Of course we can do it. So I think it for me, it's just, I think it's just fascinating and in almost a romantic way. And I still love it, you know, I changed because in some senses, there's a lot more I think innovation in biomedical engineering. You know, the aeronautical engineering is quite a regulated piece. So, you know, for me, it didn't allow that creativity and that innovation, so I changed biomedical engineering, but aeronautical engineering still has a huge, you know, soft spot, I said, I didn't know they're applying them, I'm gonna watch

 

Dusty Rhodes  03:23

this, there's a real passion there for you for aeronautical and flying, but you went from that then into biomedical why, why did you make the switch? Well,

 

Tara Dalton  03:33

he so I did, I did a postdoc in the University of Limerick. And at the time, again, you know, the government had this really amazing program, it was called the programs and advanced technology programs. And basically, what they encouraged you to do was as a postdoc, they encouraged you to work hugely with industry. And then they they supported that intervention. So they wanted to link university researchers with industry and we were fortunate, we had a great kind of Pac group. And we worked with Intel, we worked with you to Packard, we worked with, you know, Nokia at the time. And I just got this feed, I just, I loved it, you know, I love that idea that what you did had an impact, you know, even if it is in a in a large multinational or a small company, commensurate with that around the same time, the size foundation Arlindo setup, and at that time, they remit to fund two big things. So ICT at the time and bio, the and, you know, that was their decision. So I thought, okay, let's be real here. You know, if you want to go research, you want to, you know, you've you've to, you have to be like, you know, like Wayne Gretzky, you know, the great ice skater, he said, skate where the puck is going to be, you know, where the puck has been. He knows I mean, so, you know, you've got to look at the landscape and say, well, that's where the research money is going to be. If you think about at the time bio, the genome had just been sequenced. This was the biggest thing ever. There was a breakthrough for peace. See our reactions and everything. So when you looked at these like, okay, there's going to be so much scope for an engineer following breaking science, in my mind and engineering, you don't want to be at the cutting edge of absolute new science. But essentially, you just want to be just behind it. So you can help to, you know, help people with that science. So for me a deal, as I said, the genome has just been sequenced, I can see for the next 15 years, you know, there's going to be massive innovation in this space, which there was. So that's why I changed from Rob arrow mechanical to much more bio COVID. But it is really applying the same principles of any engineer just to a different class of problems. If you're

 

Dusty Rhodes  05:42

listening to you're talking about kind of biomedical, I mean, you're very passionate about it, but I kind of get the impression that you're more are you more passionate about the fact that you're doing something challenging, and something new, and something that's gonna help people rather than it being actually to do with aeronautical or biomedical?

 

Tara Dalton  06:00

Yeah, I think so as I said, the same principles are applied, you know, they think engineering principles are applied to everything. But I think in Biomedical Engineering, well, first of all, it's very interdisciplinary. So you get to learn from, you know, loads of people, and it's full of problems to be solved, which is great, you know, there's loads of things that we don't know, that we want to sell. And so for me, it's like, you know, it's like, it's like, a child in a sweet shop. It Oh, there's just so many interesting things to learn. And I love learning it, there's just so much. And the other thing is, when you work with interdisciplinary team, and I work with, you know, worked with medics, with physicists, or chemists with, you know, with entrepreneurs, with with finance people, it's just, it's just amazing, because I find that everybody wants to help you be better. Nobody, I, at least in my experience, kind of gatekeepers their knowledge. And I think in in, you know, when you're in that race, where you really want to try and solve a problem, I find that people don't take the knowledge because they want to find solutions. And so it's an extraordinary place to be. And also, I think, I'm not a person that some people I think, are really good. And you see people who kind of take a problem, and they dive into it. And deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, I'm not that kind of person, I like to kind of spread out, you know what I mean? So look at, you know, applying this skill over here, over here from here, rather than doing kind of this classical, deep dive and understanding upon more. Absolutely, that's important as well, if that's just not me. So I think I think this type of problem solving, engineering suits me more than we'll say, a classic scientist, you know, where you're, you're really building on knowledge, and really getting a deep, deep understanding about that uncut of more. Okay, how do we solve a problem? So I think that's the difference between engineering Well, in my opinion, is difference between engineering and sort of deep science, if you like? Well,

 

Dusty Rhodes  08:00

I think that's what we do is, uh, you know, we look at problems and we go, Well, how can we fix this? Or how can we make it better? Now, a lot of people who will be working as engineers are within a company, and then they have all these thoughts and ideas. But sometimes, you know, things don't happen, because there's a boss upstairs, or the company doesn't want to go that way. You're different in that you kind of went, Well, I really want to do this. So I'm going to be an entrepreneur, and I'm going to start my own business, do you think that your engineering brain and the way that it works kind of helped you to stand on your own two feet and run your own business,

 

Tara Dalton  08:32

I think, on my experience, when I did the programs apart, so we ended up interacting with companies an awful lot. And I think that stood out to me. And also I just the idea that something that you created that somebody actually bought me, they paid money, I remember my my father in law saying to me that that money is a stored work, you know what I mean? And so, you know, this idea that somebody is going to pay for that. I thought, That's a brilliant idea. And I always wanted to do it, I always wanted to do it since I was like, since I was sort of 2627. And in a year, you know, whatever about a company in a university environment, you know, there's things are changing and have changed, but at that time, there is a lot of pressure put on publications, and this is what we do and the you know, it's to go and, and say, Okay, I'm going to I'm going to create a company. It's not necessary. Now, University of Limerick, I have to say we're brilliant. But you know, there are people who say, Okay, look at me, that isn't the job of an academic. But I think as an as an academic engineer, it is exactly my job, even if it's not to create enterprise to help enterprise and to work on on sort of, you know, engineering problems. So I always wanted to do that. And I think, you know, naivety is your friend in doing this, it really is because, you know, in some senses Ultratech is my second or was actually was actually technically it's my fourth company. You don't need one but That duck failed for very funny reasons. Oh, yeah, this is hilarious or silly like the first the first week, we had this amazing product, what went? Well, in my view, it was right, it was a fiber optic based system that actually was used to to turn on heaters to take ice off helicopter blades, you need to a wouldn't win helicopters and you know, obviously do ice forming on helicopter blades is really, really bad, depending on the type of ice anyway, it was a it was a piece of hardware. And for some reason I got picked to go to Boston. This is a this like 28 or something to pitch my idea in front of 100 requests, which would there would have been a lawyer firm, but with a lot of VC backing a lot of companies, there was a there was a lot of potential companies going to do that. So I remember sitting there and I had my little piece of hardware, it had my sheet with all this details on it. And I was listening to everybody present. And every single one of them was software companies, this was the.com thing. And they were to some of them were the most stupidest ideas you could ever imagine that but that wasn't the point. The point was, is they weren't getting funding these people were looking for 1.5 million 20. I learned straightaway, okay. Again, that was skate where the puck is, right. So it didn't matter, I had this great product, but to get venture capital funding, that was never going to happen, because it wasn't in that ecosystem at the time. So that was one really big learning lesson. And again, similarly, in the the second company that we did, you know, actually did work, but it wasn't again, it wasn't a high potential startup. So that was one of the reasons I changed to bio because you are basically in VCs, you know, they like to fund we're looking to fund you know, so you're thinking, Okay, I need to be in that in that area. Stokes bio was then the third company. And until we learn, okay, say okay, look, you know, this is what we're going to do, we're going to follow breaking science, we're going to use our own skills, I'm really careful about how we kind of positioned what what we did. And of course, you know, a lot of people said, we're engineers in, in in the biosciences, you haven't opened hell. And again, you just just ignore it, you know what I mean? And I think you ignore it, because you have so much fun doing it, it doesn't really matter. You know, what I mean, you're just really enjoying learning, and we'd love to PhD students, and, you know, we bring in collaborators, and, you know, to use that horrible word, but the journey, like was the you know, was, you know, that was as important as the exit and the final part of

 

Dusty Rhodes  12:33

it, but it is the journey, as you say, and what I love about what you're talking about, it's kind of like, you've given us two examples where you fell down, this isn't wrong with falling down, it's how you pick yourself up afterwards. Okay, so you fell down, once you fell down twice, you picked yourself up, once you picked yourself up twice, you went into the third one. Now, the third one was quite successful. And this is kind of you're very well known for Stokes was, you mentioned it, it's been a big part of your life, because they've kind of struggles commercial company and a university. And I don't understand how that works. So tell me about it.

 

Tara Dalton  13:06

Okay. So that, you know, yeah, so So, so myself and my co founder, Professor Mark Davies, so he was actually my PhD supervisor, and then, you know, we we kind of drifted apart, and then we came back together to, to do this. And again, the genome has been sequenced. And we're really fascinated with that. So we started a research group in the university. And you the advantage of starting your research in the university is, it's a very, it's a very gentle place to explore ideas, so that you're not giving away equity, if you make mistakes are, it's taking time that you know, for a long time, it wasn't, you know, the stuff we were doing wasn't working. And in an in a university environment, that's that can be tolerated a lot easier. And we had we had a number of PhD students, and interestingly, so actually, so we went to the SFI, even five times five times for funding and FBI wouldn't fund what we were doing, and that's okay, I get it, you know, we didn't have a history and what we were doing, and at the time, you know, reviewers would say, Look, you know, this isn't really that novel, etc. But engineering isn't supposed to be a hugely novel, it's supposed to take science and, and if you take, yeah, if you take a hero experiment that's done once you want to engineer it, so it's, you could do it 100 million times, you know, so that's kind of where we were coming at, and, and I can I get away as if i But anyway, I at that time, when I was like, Oh my God, you know, how are we going to get funding? What are we going to do now? Enterprise Ireland was, were really supportive of what we were doing, and they funded us. And I thought, okay, you know, what we'll do, we'll, we'll um, Bucha some publicity. So we did some publicity and and I contacted a publicist. And I said, Listen, you know, I think what we're doing is really kind of clever and interesting. Could you know, could we get some traction, just even on the Irish stage, not necessarily European or American. So It was caused and caught by the Irish Times, actually. And a VC saw it. And he approached us. And he said, When you spin this company out, can we be at the table, we'll give you 100,000 euros if we're at the table. And I said, look, let's forget that, let's just do it now. You know, I was so anxious. And you know, in some senses what I said we were a bit early. Probably. That's true. So the University of Limerick, and also, under the sea did a deal for our intellectual property, we did a deal for way to whole bunch of students. And we moved the company out of the university, I wanted it out to the university. So I wanted a real separation between what we did and do well, and what appealed to commercial aspect of what we were doing. And like the university, as I said, they were, they were amazing, they allowed me, myself and mark to remain as academics, okay, full time academics and to do the company. And that took a lot of creative thinking. And what we did is, they also, they assigned us our intellectual property, which means our intellectual property was owned by the company not licensed. And I know that that isn't done now. But it was such a really good thing for the company. It gave us huge freedoms later on and raising money and enjoying strategic relationships. So you know, I know that's not done nowadays. But it was it was great. So, so we ended up taking our PhD students into the company, thankfully, as they started to graduate. So we had this well, what's the word? I'm looking for conveyor belt of amazing, amazing people that we took into the company. And yeah, but you know, don't get me wrong. It was it was hard, because you know, we were new with this new what managing VCs knew what that relationships, they were raising money. And then finally, we got to strategic you know, for the the deal, the exit happened, and that was great. But it was it was tough, but fun. You know,

 

Dusty Rhodes  16:52

it's fascinating listening to you taking on this problem of having an idea and wanting to run a company to implement that idea, and the reasons why you did it. And it didn't work. The first time didn't work the second time, the third time it did work and to you, you had good partners and stuff like that. Eventually, you have to sell it, which is always you know, kind of heartbreaking. Did you make much?

 

Tara Dalton  17:11

Yeah, we did

 

17:14

it. Okay. So yeah, so we put a number on a Tyra Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah.

 

Tara Dalton  17:19

So, so we ended up selling, so we raised about sort of maybe six, 7 million, and that we sold it for almost $50 million, which, which is a really nice return for everybody. Because if the company hadn't got had a really nice, simple cap table, it wasn't hugely diluted. So you know, it was good. It was good in that regard. So I think everybody did, did well.

 

Dusty Rhodes  17:40

Well, all I could do, I'm literally standing up and applauding. Good on you fair play, okay. Because it's brilliant. Because you follow that through and you worked on all of the problems and you had some success. Okay, as somebody that was great. And it was 2010, he sold us somewhere around Yeah,

 

Tara Dalton  17:55

then myself and Mark White to work for the company. The acquirers were like technologies that term proficient out. So we went, we took then a two year leave of absence to work with the integration of the technology into into which was, again, I got to work with a multinational for two years, which was really exciting. And that was still that was really different. And, you know, I teach my students, we do live, we do med devices, and we do like a Dragon's Den. So I teach them, you know, and one of the things this exact same thing you do with selling an idea to a VC, you'd sell an idea to your bosses in a multinational this is same thing, it's the same ideas. And so we, you know, we had that experience as well of kind of integrating the, what we were doing into, into a US multinational, which was, you know, which was, which was different, that's for certain.

 

Dusty Rhodes  18:46

So, as well as teaching and inspiring people in University of Limerick, still, you're also the CEO of ultra tech, as I mentioned in the intro, now, you're leading a team of over 20 engineers and scientists there to a layman like myself, can you describe what it is that you're working on?

 

Tara Dalton  19:01

Okay, so so I'll check it. I'm not a founder Valtryek there are two founders, one of the founders, I knew because he was founded, he founded his previous company, the same time we, I found his Stokes bio, and he was in the university as well. So and we were funded by the same venture capitalist, so we kind of knew each other. And then, you know, we kind of both he sold his company successfully, I thought line that we kind of got together. And he said he had this idea of, he's a silicon designers, electronics engineer. And he said, Oh, you know, could I do something with silicone in the bio space? And I was like, you know, it's really interesting. You say that, because there's been this huge explosion. So I know that that live technologies brought a secrecy company for silicone. I think they bought it for north of 600 million. Okay, so it was a huge acquisition. And there were some other companies that was nanopore, there was a few and I said, Juno's on the champ. I said, Yeah, you know, there's, there's an idea there. So he went away, and he kind of thought about it. And then no other venture capitalist said, you know, Tara, you know, you know Hold this space because, you know, I'd been in that kind of bio space, etc. And he said, You know what, you'll be on the board. And I was like, hey, yeah, absolutely. Because I'd been back in the university for a while I was doing some work on cancer stuff on stuff on heterogeneity of tumors. And I was like, Oh, I'm kind of feeling the itch again, now to do something outside of that. And so I said, Yeah, I'll be on the board. And then a week later, he goes, target you CEO. And I was like, Are you kidding me? I was like, oh, gosh, no, you know, and I said to my husband, I was like, Jeff, I said, Oh, God, this is Tony, you have to, you know, you have to like, so I was like, okay, okay. Okay, I'll do it. And so basically, what what it is that it's really compelling science. And it's so interdisciplinary, it's basically it's a methodology, or a product that can take that can detect any virus in a non clinical setting. Very importantly, it doesn't use an enzymatic step. So you would be aware, Okay, everybody, listen, he says, Beware of PCR, every, you know, if I was to tell everybody, there's like, three, four years ago, pre COVID, they look at me blankly, but now kind of people get it, right. So you know, what PCR is, you know, how the importance of it, and how, cuz it's such an accurate technique for detecting any virus from COVID, to flu to, you know, to HIV doesn't matter. But the trouble with PCR is, it's a technique that you can't really take outside the laboratory or the clinical setting. And so we've invented a way that can do that. And it uses a combination of, you know, really novel chemistry, biology, and micro fluidics, which is kind of white area, and silicon chip design. So it's really difficult. And it you know, it's been tough, you know, the technological development will just help. But if it wasn't taught me, it's not going to be worth it, right? Because you will say, well, then it is tough because it is so groundbreaking. And so it's going to change the world, in my view for for viral detection, in my view, but but it is, it is technically challenging.

 

Dusty Rhodes  22:06

You've mentioned several times, as you're always thinking about where the puck is going to be rather than where it is now. And when you talk about Ultra Tech, I mean, that was 20s, mid, mid 20, teens, whatever you were involved in that was it.

 

Tara Dalton  22:18

Yeah. Just prior to COVID. Exactly.

 

Dusty Rhodes  22:22

My point, right is because you got involved in this, and then COVID came along, and boom, your company is perfectly. Yeah,

 

Tara Dalton  22:28

it's so funny, because we wait a video we to do in 2000 2019, or just before COVID In November, we to do a presentation in Boston, and party me to make a video of what your technology does. And initially, we had on the video, this will this would be you know, suitable for pandemic management and etc. At that and Marty came up. The difficulty was we were our technology was too early for it. You know what I mean? Like, and when you get a crisis situation like that, what happens is, is you reposition old technology, because that's what you have to do, you don't really have the time to to invent something new. But what a crisis does is you reposition old technology. But then what it does is it makes people aware that oh my gosh, there's there's a need there, you know, there is a need for us to be able to, to manage pandemics in a much better way than obviously what we then what's happened. And there's going to be technologies that are going to enable that whether we get there whether we were in the race, I don't know. But we're definitely in with a chance.

 

Dusty Rhodes  23:33

I absolutely love how your brain works. Because seriously, because you think research development, innovation is very much key to you. You're kind of always thinking about the future. But you always seem to spot a gap in the market. And what I wanted to ask you is Do you even know in your own brain, how you are able to spot a gap in the market? What how do you weigh things up when you when you're looking at?

 

Tara Dalton  23:57

I think I think, first of all, I don't know whether I am or not, you know what I mean? I think that that remains to be seen. But anyway, I think it's because I generally, that's the broadness, this was not the deep dive person, like, you know, it's looking around you. So I've just gotten funding now for our next company, which after Ultratech and you know, and we were just doing the the early research now in the university, and it's on, it's on the immune system. It's on immunotherapies. And, you know, if I'm just asking you say, oh, yeah, okay, you get that because, you know, if you were to pick up the newspaper 10 years ago, you wouldn't read about immunotherapies you wouldn't think about it. Now we know we think about like the immune system, autoimmune diseases, allergies are our understanding about how we react to vaccines. immunotherapies for cancer, you know, that's exploded in the last 10 years. So again, we're going to need engineering behind that technology, you know, behind that science to support the growth in that area. So that's, you know, it's just it's just kind of watching and thinking that's new. Debrett's breaking signs really is where she wants to keep an eye on for me, that's what I keep an eye on. And then

 

Dusty Rhodes  25:04

when you see something that you think has potential, you look into it a little bit further. And then

 

Tara Dalton  25:10

you know, the the virus say, I mean, that's, that's kind of obvious if you though I mean, if you think about it, all the outbreaks that we've had no stars, you know, that you just know, and you know, it was going to happen. We knew it was going to happen. It was not a question of, of if it was, it was a question of weighty. Okay. I mean, you know, that's, that's 100% I mean, everything from the Spanish Flu guys, you know, it's just, it's just a matter of when, and we were lucky this time,

 

Dusty Rhodes  25:38

why are you so confident when you say that COVID Was it was a matter of when not if

 

Tara Dalton  25:43

it because there's been because others always outbreaks, there's always outbreaks, and all you need is the right conditions. So if you take something like, if you take a virus that is that, like kills people quickly, that is probably not going to spread much. It is something that spreads a lot, it's probably not going to. So all you need to do is just get that balance, right? Where a you know, spreads quickly, and it has a potentially devastating effect, that's going to happen again, of course it is, you know, and if you think about it, you know, how the world has changed global travel or interaction where something may have been contained. You know, I remember saying to somebody, you know, five years ago, I said, we will listen, somebody would use the word quarantine and in our lifetimes, and would hear the word quarantine again, you know, we were probably going up, did you ever hear the word quarantine in the 50s? You would have heard it hear when people had scarlet fever when people had people quarantined? Now, it's, it's, you know, obviously, we tried it, it's, you know, it's not really feasible. It's you know, so we need other ways of managing when these when these things happen. And it's got to be a combination of understanding and technology in my view. So

 

Dusty Rhodes  26:50

I think anybody in listening, I mean, I've my own ideas, my own radio broadcasting podcasting business about where it's going to be in 10 years time, there's engineers listening to it, and the guy, oh, my God, and she's right, because I know that in 10 years, time bump is going to be a problem, or this is going to happen again, or whatever it happens to be. If somebody is listening to you, they have a big, innovative idea in their head, but they just don't know how to move forward. What What would your advice to them be?

 

Tara Dalton  27:17

I think I think it depends where they are, you know, where they are in their we're in a physically working as well. And well, opportunities they have, you know, obviously, it's somebody's in a university there, you know, that's the that's the ecosystem, I understand. So I can, you know, very easily direct them. If somebody is in a multinational company, or somebody is not, I would have less understanding about how they would go about you know, about doing that. I think, regardless, ask for help. Everybody asked for help, go talk to people go talk to enterprise Ireland, go talk to lawyers, go talk to VCs, ask, and don't go say, I want one just say, What should I do? How could you help me? What can I do? And you'd be surprised? How many people will give you their time. And you'll be surprised at it? In my view? You know, we had we have top lawyers in Boston who did stuff for us pro bono, because they just think oh, yeah, this is really cool. We'll do that. And we'll be we'll make our money later on when they're successful. You know, there's a lot of people who will do that for you. So talk, go out there and share your idea.

 

Dusty Rhodes  28:31

I love the fact that I'm speaking to a lady who has sold a company for $50 million, and says that ask for help because it's what you did. And people were willing to step up. Isn't it amazing how Yeah, humankind

 

Tara Dalton  28:43

can even now no matter what you do, people come to me or I still go to meet with it. Okay, you know, I need help here are, I'm not sure. People who worked for me before and still do not work for me and outreach. I could work with me and Outotec and anybody, you start to build that community, and it's true, I will, I will call like, next PhD student or somebody I knows, crikey, I need help on that. Or they can call me and say, Tara, you know, to remember that you wouldn't give me an hour of your time. As like, yeah, of course you don't I mean, and I you know, I love it. So and people do love being asked for help.

 

Dusty Rhodes  29:16

That's brilliant advice, and I can't be overstated so much, how good that advice is and my own experience, I know that to be true. The other thing that I want to ask you about Tara is your approach to problem solving and again, thinking of an NGO saying I've got a brilliant idea and I want to go but it's too much oh my god, how do you know I have to get over this humongously big wall which I don't know how to get over how am I going to do it you're good problem solver what way do you break down that problem?

 

Tara Dalton  29:45

Well actually interesting. So I'm actually I'm a bit more the way you just like oh my god. Oh my god. Like John like that isn't They do jam via the site like dig, watch, scrape. Have you gotten into today? I was like, Yeah, I know. I know. I know. And it's like, and he would say, okay, you know, what can you do tomorrow? You know, stop borrowing Tobel it's got too much interest, you know what I mean? Just what can you do? And the person I worked Davies, who I worked with as well, he was really good. He never flapped he never let perfection get in hinder progress. And so I just say, Okay, let's just make progress. And and really, I had, but I, I have to be consciously aware of thinking, Oh, God, you know what I mean? What have we committed to? We signed the contract to do something like what have we done? Knowing full? Well, it that's going to be a really a hard ask, and then you think, Okay, nope, let's just, let's just put the head down. And don't think about it. You know what I mean? Literally just say, Okay, let's not have that hinder the small progresses, you don't have any so so yeah, but I would be more the way you described it, then I would be, you know, like auction, this is fine.

 

Dusty Rhodes  31:05

I've written down a sheet of paper here, never let perfection hinder progress. I'm gonna type that up. I'm gonna stick it on the wall. It's gonna stay there for six months.

 

Tara Dalton  31:13

Yeah, don't I mean, you know, to meet our, to our children, you know, children get on with it, you know what I mean? Rather than it will, because you can get this, if you see this huge problem, it's like, you just wrap it in the headlights, you just look at it and go and feel paralyzed. And then you just gotta go. Okay? No. And also, I think having people around you that you can see that too. There's a there's a guy I love listen to this. It's Simon Sinek. But he has his eight minute rule. And he says, like, you should have a team around you that, you know, for eight minutes, you could rant and that they're not instantly you know, sometimes you don't want somebody in solution space. You just want somebody to listen to you go like, Oh my god, oh my god, this is terrible. This is not going to work. What's going to happen that anatra and you give yourself eight minutes. That's it? And then it's over and over again. So So you know, I think I think you have to allow yourself that feeling and then say, Okay, push it away. Now, let's get let's let's get let's get on with it. You know, so, Tara,

 

Dusty Rhodes  32:13

I have to say like listening to you, and just chatting because I have a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit in me. And I have, I like to call myself a sound engineer. That's, that's that's how I get away with just presenting this particular thing. But like many engineers, I see problems and I want to fix them. And I want to make the world better. And I think you know, your success is amazing. And after listening to you for the last little while, you're now guarding my world. Okay? Well, this is it. Okay. That's what I wanted to ask you was, you know who people who are listening now who are inspired by you? What would you say to someone who's listening to us right now? Who does think you're an inspiration? Are you God? Are you a normal person?

 

Tara Dalton  32:56

I'm an engineer. I'm an engineer. Engineer. Those of us out there who do you know, who to all day see solve all these problems all the time? You know, and, and there's ones that artists zillion many, and I like, like Chad, when he was with this much better engineer than me, like, I'm always going to him with solving problems, you know, you know, Mark is much better. So yeah, you know, there's, I think I would say cheese your problem wisely. Often, in my mind of, for an engineer, they're often too focused on solutions, right, you solving problems. But if you want to, if you want to sort of have a impact, do that, choose your spend time choosing your problem, like, like when we were doing Stokes whale, like Mark and I spent two years in America watching what people were doing, and seeking out that landscape. So don't be afraid of taking time to figure that problem out. It'll be the solution. Anybody can do that, to be honest with you, like a lot of people if you give them a good problem, and you set the boundary conditions on that problem. And you say, okay, look, this is the kind of area that most most people weren't there salt can do that. I think that cleverness in my view, and is choosing the correct problem at the right time. That so that's what I would say, spend time doing that. And talking and socializing it and thinking of it and testing it, and arguing it. And that's why it's great to work with people because you get all that feedback. You know, it's like, if I say to you, look, I'm thinking of doing something there and you're like, why are silicones doing that? What's your angle are you know, I mean, don't be afraid to just let that argument be battered around a bit. And and it'll form much better outfits are sorry, I talk way too much apologies. Listen,

 

Dusty Rhodes  34:48

I can listen to you all day. Tara, I think what I was trying to get across was that what's inside of you and what's driven your success is inside all of us. It's an engineering in trait, and I just think listening to you and as I say, being inspired by what you're saying we can go off and we can just make our own lives a little bit better. So I just wanted to thank you very much for sharing with us today Dr. Tara Dalton, CEO of Altratech and Assistant Director of the Stokes Research Institute at UL Thank you.

 

Tara Dalton  35:17

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

 

Dusty Rhodes  35:19

If you would like to find out more about Tara and some of the topics which we spoke about today you'll find notes and link details in the description area of this podcast right now. Also, 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. Our podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. For advanced episodes, more information on engineering across Ireland or career development opportunities, there are libraries of information on our website at engineersireland.ie, until next time from myself Dusty Rhodes, as always, thank you for listening

2023 was a ‘record breaker’ for wind power in Ireland, but have we got the resources to reach the government's goals for a renewable future?

Today we learn about some of the engineering problems behind Ireland’s long-term strategy for increasing wind power, the challenges caused by policy, regulation and mother nature, along with a huge career drive to get more people, including engineers, working in the wind sector.

Our guest is extremely passionate about Ireland’s renewable energy potential. Also a chartered engineer, he uses his many years of experience fighting tirelessly to help us make the most of our natural resources and meet our sustainability targets for 2030. He is CEO of Wind Energy Ireland, Noel Cunniffe.

Listen below or on your podcast player:

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

• How Ireland is leading the way and breaking records in wind energy generation
• Innovative engineering work happening in Ireland’s renewable energy sector
• Policy, planning permission, community engagement and other challenges facing the wind sector
• Offshore wind and why it’s Ireland’s energy future
• The Work In Wind recruitment drive and why engineers are needed

GUEST DETAILS
Noel Cunniffe is the CEO of Wind Energy Ireland which is Ireland’s largest renewable energy association and works with a wide range of stakeholders to build understanding and awareness of the benefits of wind and renewable energy. Prior to becoming CEO, Noel led Wind Energy Ireland’s Policy department in driving policy development across all aspects of the onshore and offshore renewable industry in Ireland.

Previously, Noel was the Renewable Integration Lead in EirGrid, the Transmission System Operator of Ireland, and worked across several departments including electricity grid planning and operation, and the design of the electricity market of Ireland. He is a Chartered Engineer with Engineer’s Ireland.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/noel-cunniffe-b34a1429

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

TRANSCRIPTION

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

Dusty Rhodes  00:00

Right now on AMPLIFIED, we're about to find out how Ireland is setting new records for wind power.

Noel Cunniffe  00:05

I know this is probably very bonkers to think about. But if we didn't have wind energy over the past two years, our electricity bills would have been much, much, much higher than they already were.

Dusty Rhodes  00:19

Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes and you're welcome to AMPLIFIED, the Engineers Journal podcast. 2023 was a record breaking year for wind power in Ireland and very shortly, you will be amazed to hear how much electricity we actually generate here from wind. Over the next half hour or so we're hoping to learn more about the engineering problems behind Ireland's long term strategy for increasing wind power. The challenges caused by policy, regulation and Mother Nature, along with a huge career drive to get more people including engineers working in the wind sector. Our guest is extremely passionate about Ireland's renewable energy potential. As a chartered engineer, he's been working in the area for a long time and fights tirelessly to help us make the most of our natural resources and meet our sustainability targets for 2030. I'm delighted to welcome to our AMPLIFIED podcast the CEO of Wind Energy Ireland. Noel Cunniffe, how are you Noel?

Noel Cunniffe  01:16

Very good Dusty, thank you very much for having me.

Dusty Rhodes  01:20

So listen, tell me about the wind power, because when I heard this fact, I was flabbergasted how much of our electricity is generated from wind? Yeah,

Noel Cunniffe  01:29

it's something that a lot of people in the country don't know is that we're actually a world leader when it comes to the amount of our electricity that comes from wind. So Ireland's story wind energy began back in the 90s, our very first onshore wind firm was built in 1992. So it's been operational for over 30 years now. And over that amount of time from the early 90s. Right up until 2023, we've built up more and more onshore wind, we've started with offshore wind with a bit more to go there would today. Or I should say maybe even last year in total over the course of the year, over 1/3 of Ireland's electricity came from winter. And as you can imagine, it's very weather dependent. So in some times of the year, like in December, which has just gone by over 50% of Ireland's electricity during the course of December came from wind. So during the Christmas period while everybody was cooking their turkeys, binging Netflix, you know, making ample amounts of tea and hot whiskies. One in two times when you are boiling a kettle turning on your TV using your internet, it was thanks to wind energy. How

Dusty Rhodes  02:33

are we generating so much? Because I would imagine if we're generating half of it that there should be massive propellers all over the country. I don't see that all over the country. How are we generating so much?

Noel Cunniffe  02:44

Yeah, well, last year was also a kind of quite a unique year, because for the very first time for a couple of times over the course of the year, all of Ireland's electricity at certain periods came from wind energy, mostly sunny evening and nighttime. So as I mentioned, like the very first wind farm was built in mail in 1992. And it was really in the kind of mid 2000s, to the teens that we started to accelerate wind energy. So particularly kind of 2015 to 2020. And we're continuing to do that. So today to kind of get into some of the figures, we have just under five gigawatts of wind energy installed on our grid. So to put that into context, the peak electricity demand that we have in Ireland, over the course of a year is about six, maybe about six and a half gigawatts. So we nearly have all of our electricity demand that could be met at peak by wind energy today. And our goal then for 2030 is to try and move that onshore wind target from nearly five gigawatts up to about nine gigawatts. And then for offshore wind energy, we're really at a standing start with one very small offshore wind farm off the coast of virtual. And we have to go from that standing start up to about five gigawatts by 2030. So we have a lot of work to do. But thankfully, we've one of the best industries here in the world to be able to deliver upon that we've got some brilliant engineers, brilliant planners, brilliant, brilliant economists, they're working tirelessly on this. And then investment is really there to try and drive it on and deliver that wind energy goal for Ireland.

Dusty Rhodes  04:17

With all of this going on, it has been such a success, then, tell me how does wind energy work from an engineering point of view out as a word? I mean, where do you set up the farms? How many do you need? How big are they give me some give me some of the practicalities? Yeah,

Noel Cunniffe  04:32

sure. So I think when the sector was initially starting off, you needed quite a few turbines to generate, you know, relatively speaking, not that much electricity. So the original wind farms in Ireland were predominantly based on the west coast. So we're talking Donegall Mayo Carey, where there would have been that very strong Atlantic wind coming in. Typically they would have been located on the site of mountains or Hilda to try and again be exposed capture as much of that wind energy as possible. So the turbines are obviously spinning, then when the wind is blowing, that's then converted into electricity on site. So each of the turbines would have a generator within them. And then that turbine is then connected into the electricity grid. So the grid is, is pretty much the transportation system for how electricity gets from where it's generated, be it in a wind farm, or a solar farm or a gas generator, to then our homes and our businesses and our towns and our cities. So every single electrical device that you have in your house, be at your leisure, or your cattle, your your laptop, that's actually connected to the electricity grid in a direct path, right away through to every single wind farm in our country. So that's how the electricity grid is the heartbeat of how we we power Ireland and how we generate it. And then it's really the wind energy that helps to provide as much of that power as possible from indigenous domestic sources, which is zero carbon emitting, and ideally, kind of keeping as much of that revenue and money that's being put into the wind energy and I and the guests coming out of it, then within Ireland, that's the advantage compared to perhaps where we would have historically produced our electricity by importing oil and gas, you know, not only is that emitting carbon emissions driving up our energy costs, because we're so reliant on it. But it is also then that money is leaving Ireland and exiting and then going off to those countries that are producing prostitutes.

Dusty Rhodes  06:33

Tell me more about the physical side of it. Because you said wind farms on the side of mountains now I can understand because you're attaching these these huge constructions to the land. But then you mentioned several in the Atlantic Ocean. How do you put these into the Atlantic Ocean? Yeah,

Noel Cunniffe  06:52

so for onshore wind, they kind of Yeah, it started on the hills. I think the technology is probably moved on so much now that the turbines are so efficient that you can kind of put them in places where you probably weren't thinking about previously, and that includes in the sea. Ireland was actually again, one of the world's first developers of offshore wind energy. It was the the late Grace Eddie O'Connor, who's recently pastor, his company, SSE Airtricity, in the early 2000s, decided to go out on a limb and really try and see could we do something with offshore wind energy, and they built the first offshore wind farm in Arklow. Bay in Wicklow. At the time, it was the largest offshore wind firm in the world. So there's two different types of offshore wind firms. There's fixed bottom offshore wind farms recalled and then there's floating offshore wind farms. So, the technology predominantly today, including that one in Arklow is fixed bottoms, where the turbines themselves are fixed to the floor of the seabed, be it through piles or through other types of almost lattice tower constructions. And they can be deployed in depths that are out to about maybe 6070 meters deep. So around Ireland or East Coast and are so cost when you get off the get into the sea Leto. Our depths tend to go out for about maybe 12 Miles 20 Miles at that depth of you know 50 To 60 meters, so you can deploy the fixed bottom technology there. Once you get out further into the say the outline of the Atlantic or off the south coast tends to get deeper faster. But we do have the continental shelf which is a real advantage for us when it comes to floating offshore wind energy. So floating offshore wind energy is a technology which anchors to the seafloor using an anchor that you might see in a ship, for example, to put it simplistically, and then the turbines are on the water and kind of floating along with the waves and you can deploy them to a greater depth.

Dusty Rhodes  08:46

So would it work something like an oil rig in the North Sea? Not

Noel Cunniffe  08:51

too dissimilar, exactly, very similar type of technology minority tend to be again, depending on where you are. Europe has the advantage of shallower waters for a much greater extent so they can play fixed bottom in areas that we couldn't floating offshore wind energy is a technology that there's a huge amount of research going into it at the moment. Some of the best researchers in Ireland actually in colleges right around our coastlines are working on floating offshore wind energy, I present, I think it's going to be a really big technology for Ireland's future, particularly when we get into that kind of second half of the 2030s 2040s 2050s. It will be our predominant offshore wind technology in that type of time prep. Now,

Dusty Rhodes  09:30

we're talking huge numbers about what it's able to generate as an overall percentage of our electricity usage. Do you think that Ireland could ever be 100% reliant on renewable energy and just not use oil? Who

Noel Cunniffe  09:43

100% Definitely no doubt about that it will happen. I think a lot of the decisions that are being made today from a policy perspective are going to decide when that happens. I get asked a lot. What happens when the wind doesn't blow. You know, where does our backup come from? And then the short term, the answer is going to be gas generation. That's that's the least polluting fossil fuel that we have. That's what we should be using, we should not be using oil, we should not be using coal, unless it's an absolute emergency. But in the longer term you with different portfolios of renewable technology, so the wind blows differently onshore than it is offshore, for example. So if it's not blowing onshore, it might be blown offshore, and vice versa. So you those can kind of balance each other. And then similarly, for solar generation, you know, it's most windy in Ireland in the winter, when it's we have storms in the evenings are long and nighter obviously longer as well. So we don't have that much solar generation. But then the times when maybe it isn't as windy in Ireland is the come summer periods for We've lots of sun. And that's where solar generation can really help balance wind. So if you can combine those two types of technologies, and then the key thing is how you can store that energy over time. So Ireland is brilliant when it comes to rolling out battery energy storage as well. Again, it's probably an unknown success story that we have here, where we can store wind and solar energy for periods of about maybe it's up to about maybe 30 minutes to two hours at the moment, that's where the technology is. But more and more of that technology is moving towards multi hour, overtime, multi day storage. So you can and we will get to a point in time where wind and solar energy when it's windy and Sunny will be powering our country. And when it's not, we'll be relying on stored energy from renewables to try and generate that electricity, be it through battery energy, storage hydrogen or some other format.

Dusty Rhodes  11:39

Why is it only 30 minutes to two hours, because I'm thinking in my head, a much bigger version of a rechargeable battery that I would have in my home, okay, so I can recharge that battery, and it goes to whatever 100% And then I can leave it sitting around on a shelf for a couple of weeks, and then put it into a radio or whatever it is that I'm going to be using on it and it works. Why can you not do that with super big batteries for wind energy? Yeah,

Noel Cunniffe  12:07

it's a really good question. I guess the simple answer is that the engineers that ruin our power system in air grid and an ESB networks, we've got, again, some of the best engineers in the world, we're operating an island electricity grid, with pockets of renewable energy, I can't tell you how unusual that is, for all the electricity grid nerds out there like myself, it's brilliant. But one of the big challenges with that tends to be trying to respond to short term problems. So for example, if you're running your electricity grid, you constantly need to have the the supply of electricity balanced with the demand for electricity, that so our safe power system works. There's constant supply balance. And if you have a power plant that we trip off, for example, all of us are aware that, you know, in certain circumstances, our electricity might trip and we'd go to the fuse board and we'd see switched out. Power plants operate in a very similar manner where you might have a gas generator trip off the grid, for example. And that power needs to be replaced very quickly. And that's where the batteries come in. So our engineers and our grid have incentivized the building of short duration batteries to try and solve that problem. Now, the longer term batteries that you're talking about the kind of multi hour multi day batteries, that problem is now starting to be realized as something that we need to tackle. And the technology is starting to come there. I would say, you know, if you were tried trying to do this 10 years ago, it would have been quite expensive. Whereas now the technology is coming there, there's multitudes of different types, be it through traditional battery be a true hydrogen be a true kind of using what's called flow batteries, which are using liquid to try and store energy. So that technology has come in and again, by the end of the decade, we're going to have a lot of it deployed right around Ireland to try and help balance that supply demand issue to make sure that we maximize renewable energy. Can

Dusty Rhodes  13:56

I ask you about the cost of it sounds amazing. All right, but I'm just thinking of my ESP bill. Okay. So, you know, traditionally is quite high with tradition, we've been quite reliant on oil and gas. I know that in countries where they have nuclear power, the electricity bills tend to be cheaper with these wind turbines. Are we going to see an improvement with our bills?

Noel Cunniffe  14:14

We already are? It's a quick answer. So like, I know, this is probably very bonkers to think about. But if we didn't have wind energy, over the past two years, our electricity bills would have been much, much, much higher than they they already were. So everyone around the country homes and businesses have experienced the pain of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and what that then meant for energy security in Europe and energy supply in Europe and Ireland's price was really dictated because of our reliance on imported fossil fuels. If you can just look at the energy ecosystem as a whole not just electricity, but heat and transport as well. We still import about 85% of all of our fuel And then from oil and from gas. And those price spikes were extraordinary wind energy helped to push the most expensive oil and gas off the electricity grid, we produce a report every single month, which looks at the amount of wind which was generated in the month previous, but also looks at them the price of electricity on the wholesale market, on the days when we had the most wind and the days when we had the least amount of wind. And what you typically see is that on the days, when we we have wind energy available, the price tends to be you know, half of that of the day when we don't have wind energy available. So Wind energy has been protecting us to try and minimize the impact of our of our bills, clearly, more needs to be done. And the more that we can roll out renewable energy, not just wind solar as well, to try and push off that fossil fuels make us less reliant on imports, more reliant on our own domestic supply where we control the price, then we're in for a win. And that's what I think we should be striving for. As a country.

Dusty Rhodes  15:57

If someone is interested in getting these reports that you produce monthly, are they available online? Anywhere? Is it just an internal industry thing, no

Noel Cunniffe  16:05

wind energy ireland.com we produce the reports every month, typically, there's there's usually reports in media on them, as well. So I think it's something that more people have become aware of. It's something that we're constantly trying to do to try to, I guess, promote the industry, like one of our biggest challenges over the next 10 years or so is going to be trying to bring people into our sector to try and deliver the objectives that we have. When it comes to onshore wind and offshore winds and the electricity grid and rolling that out further, we simply don't have enough engineers, we don't have enough planners, we don't have enough energy economists in the sector at the moment to deliver the targets that we have in 2030 and beyond. So promoting what wind energy does on a monthly basis is part of almost our long term recruitment campaign to train in, bring people in, be it people looking for new careers, or students in primary secondary students and thinking about what a successful career might look like for them in the future. listening

Dusty Rhodes  17:03

to you talk about wind energy, it all sounds amazing. However, a lot of people object if they find out that a wind farm is going to be set up in their area, what are their concerns? Why do they not like this? Yeah,

Noel Cunniffe  17:18

so I think we as a sector have learned an enormous amount when it comes to community engagement over the past 1015 years, I think we could have done better with engaging with communities in probably, you know, the 2010s, of what we've taken on board, a lot of that feedback, and that opposition. And what we're seeing on doorsteps today is a much more understanding. And I think we've gotten better at engaging with communities identifying what their concerns are, and then adapting projects.

Dusty Rhodes  17:50

What are the concerns? What What are they saying to you on the doorstep.

Noel Cunniffe  17:53

So a lot of the times, it could be things like, you know, related to scenery, or the impact of perhaps tourism in an area or just a general uncertainty around perhaps the noise of wind energy. But there's lots of evidence to show that, you know, from a health point of view, there is no impact when it comes to having a wind farm near your house. When it comes to noise I the current kind of noise guidelines that are there for the industry, a winter by needs to be quieter than a refrigerator outside your home. And then when it comes to tourism, there is multiple reports showing that zero impact on tourism and in fact, many wind farms now they're becoming tourist amenities. Because I know myself, I'm based in the Midlands, I have multiple wind farms that are near me, which now have community walking tracks, which have, you know, activities for kids playgrounds in their locations. And we really encourage people to go and please go and visit a wind farm and go and experience it and see it for yourself. Many of them are open right around the country. And when you take that kind of general sentiment towards wind energy, I think as we look at particularly what we've been through in the last two years, with the energy price crisis that we've seen, more and more people recognize that the solution to high energy prices, the solution to energy security and the solution to decarbonisation is domestically produced renewable energy and for Ireland, our best answer for that is wind energy. So we carry out a an independent polling of people around Ireland every single year to try and understand what their concerns are and what they perceive as the benefits of wind energy. This year, about four and five people are in favor of wind energy, and about one in 20 are opposed to it. So if you try to find anything in Ireland, where one in 20 people will not oppose something I would really like to see that. So I think those figures Yeah, it is rare, but those figures have kind of increased over time and gotten stronger and stronger as people I've seen the benefits of wind energy, and more people are probably experienced when firms in their area and the benefits that they can bring.

Dusty Rhodes  19:56

Is there anything in it for people who are living near wind farms and mean, is there a financial incentive? Or do they get free electricity or anything like that?

Noel Cunniffe  20:03

Yeah, like many, many companies are offering different things, there's a couple of things that are kind of mandatory called near neighbor payments. So there will be things that if you're located near a wind farm, there will be a payment associated with that. There's also a really good scheme that has been brought in by the government in the past few years called community benefit funds, where if you are a community near a wind farm, then there will be a fund created for you every single year. And then it's up to that community to decide how that money is spent. So, for example, in I think it was 2020, to about 4 million euro went into community benefit funds around Ireland, and that helped to pay for things like investment in GA investment in nursing homes, on top of all of that as well, again, something that a lot of people wouldn't be aware of is that all of these wind farms that we have in Ireland are paying annual rates to county councils. So there's many counties around Ireland that have 10 to 20% of their entire income for the year coming from wind farms and their location. So that's helping to pay for, for schools, for libraries for roads in all of these counties around Ireland. So again, there's a lot of hidden benefits there that people are not seeing. But it shows the overall economic benefit to Ireland, of producing our own energy if we can.

Dusty Rhodes  21:22

Let's talk more about the engineering side of things. What factors do you have to consider when you are looking for somewhere to build a wind farm? What are the kinds of things that goes through the head? Really,

Noel Cunniffe  21:35

really good question. So I would say originally, when wind farms were being looked at, it was all about where's the windiest areas and where's the, you know, the best wind speed and that's what led a lot of wind farms originally to be generated or created on the West Coast and on mountainous regions. More and more, though, because of the advancements in the turbine technology. Ireland is just so windy everywhere compared to other countries, you can kind of you could legitimately put a turbine anywhere, if you were only looking at wind speed. So I don't think that that's as big a criteria now as it used to be. So things that are important are things like the most important one currently is actually access to the electricity grid. So where is our electricity grid strong enough that you can connect a wind farm into it, and then your power can be sent out anywhere in the country. So more and more projects are looking at the future of our electricity grid, where projects are going to be to try and expand capacity there. And then they're trying to locate wind farms in those regions. So that's run onto it. For offshore wind, a lot of those decisions are now being made by the government. So we have what's we're moving towards what's called a plan lead system for offshore wind energy, where the government will engage in multiple consultation processes to do a lot of environmental screening assessments, and then identify areas of the costs these costs. So cost the west coast of Ireland for offshore wind energy to be developed. And then developers will participate in in competitive processes, be it through an auction system or something equivalent to then be selected as the company to build the wind firm in that government selected reach.

Dusty Rhodes  23:20

No, let me ask you in particular about offshore wind, you kind of believe that this is the big growth area or this is the answer why

Noel Cunniffe  23:30

100% This is Ireland's energy future. As I mentioned, we've only one small offshore wind farm in Ireland. At present, we're trying to develop about seven to 10 offshore wind farms in the next 10 years. So we have a lot of work to do there. A lot of people again, wouldn't realize this. But if you look at the total economic area that Ireland has available to it, we have a C area that seven times our land mass in our control. So Ireland is one of the largest countries in Europe when you take that into account, but seven, eight of us are underwater. And that creates a lot of challenges, but a lot of opportunities. And if you combine that large sea area with one of the windiest countries on the planet, are a capability for offshore wind energy is just incredible. Be that through supplying our own domestic energy supply, which is the the I guess the the first goal of that in the next 1015 years or so. But then by 2050, we are going to be a battery for Europe. We're going to be supplying electricity, not just for Ireland, we're going to be exporting that into Europe. We're going to be utilizing that clean energy to create new products, new manufacturing bases, right around the coastlines of Ireland. Now you can really see this being something that a lot of people are getting very excited about in the areas like Rosslare and cork in Wexford in Limerick Galway. There's a lot of investment going into our ports. There's a lot of investment going into our education ecosystems in those areas to try and make sure that we have the people ready to capitalize on the is and what it will mean for Ireland in the next 2030 years. It's a massive economic opportunity.

Dusty Rhodes  25:05

Another thing that we have to worry about when you're looking at our location is of course planning permissions, the bane of everybody's life. There's delays, I'm sure in the in the sector, how's that? How's it affecting your goals?

Noel Cunniffe  25:20

So the planning system is definitely the biggest challenge, I would say that our industry is facing at the moment, it tends to be with projects that apply for planning permission, it's the uncertainty of when those projects are going to come out on the other side, which is the biggest challenge, if you apply for planning permission today to be on board Panola. For example, there is a statutory guideline timeline in there of about 18 weeks that a project should be decided upon. But on average, it's more like 90 weeks when a project gets decided upon. So it's a significant time increase. What I think Ireland needs when it comes to unlocking energy independence and delivering more renewable energy is investment in our planning system, not in people and in resources and in skill sets. And it's not just in the likes of and more Panola, or local authorities than their planning departments. It's in the National Parks and Wildlife Service. It's in the environmental NGOs to help to decide how projects determine how plan permissions are determined for projects. I think when a lot of people hear me speaking about the planning system, they automatically think, Oh, they're just asking for a simpler, right through the planning system. That is absolutely not the case, the planning system gets decisions through it just gets them through at a really slow pace compared to what we need to be doing to be able to deliver upon our targets. So the more people that are in there that can help make decisions faster, be it positive or negative for one firm, the better. And I think it extends out just to the to the wind energy sector, like I think, like one big important thing for Ireland, they'd probably be like number two on the list of the challenges that need to be overcome is our electricity grid down investment there. So air grid and ESB networks have brilliant plans really good plans to try and upgrade Ireland's electricity system for 2014 for 2030 for 2014. But they're going to be running into this roadblock now very soon. So yeah, unlocking that planning system through more people, and through more effective policies to enable renewable energy I think is going to be important.

Dusty Rhodes  27:24

I was actually just about to ask you about the infrastructure. Because of so much energy has been generated by wind and has been put into our grid as it is it sounds like we could lead to overload. So what is it that they need to do to improve our grid?

Noel Cunniffe  27:36

So grid is is I think, traditionally been something that Ireland hasn't done great at in terms of accepting as a con as a country. Ireland's electricity grid began again, probably in the 1920s going up to the 1950s, huge investment in the 1980s in our grid and an early 1990s. And we had almost an overbilled of grid in the 1980s and 1990s. And that gave us headroom. And we've used all of that headroom over the last 20 years through our country growing our economic economy expanding through the rollout of renewable energy. We're really at the point now where we as a country need to get in, jump in and invest in grid again. And that means building overhead lines, underground cables, new substations, it is the the heartbeat of a thriving economy, and decarbonisation and ensuring that our lights stay on. So we need a grid. It's not just the planning system, that's going to be an issue there. I think it's political support. When you look back at plans that, you know, tried to build our electricity grid in the late 2000s. In in the teens, they really failed because of a lack of political support for projects progressing into the planning system and through a planning system. So we actually helped to establish a campaign last year which engineers Ireland are also involved in, and it's called build our grid. And it's trying to build awareness for the benefits of having a strong electricity grid and what that means for economy for decarbonisation for our security of supply. And the more people that recognize that we do need to invest in our grid, the better.

Dusty Rhodes  29:12

Can you give me some examples of specific physical infrastructure that we're going to need.

Noel Cunniffe  29:17

So apart from the turbines and the panels, I think you're talking about it is really getting into that overhead power lights, it is really getting inside all underground cables and a new electricity. This electricity substations, battery energy projects, also going to be really important. They tend to be shipping containers is almost what they look like. So they're, they're in an enormous footprint. One of the most interesting infrastructure projects that we're going to need as well, when you start to look outside of Ireland is our ability to connect to other electricity grids. So Ireland is currently what's called interconnected to Britain. We have one line joining just north Dublin into England. And then we have another one connecting Northern Ireland, Scotland, we're going to be recurrently, building two more represent another one connecting into Britain, our Connecting another one into France in 2027. These are huge infrastructure projects, multi billion euro projects. And they need to be delivered again by about 2030. So I think it's a bit of everything, there is huge amount of private and public investment that is going into this to huge transformation for what we need to see in our electricity system. But I guess the benefit of all of this is that we're going to have a clean source power, because the best way to decarbonize the heat and transport sectors is to put a plug on things, the more you can put a plug on all aspects of your life for your business, then the lower carbon is going to be so that means to plug in our transport, which electric vehicle electric bus, put a plug on your heating with a heat pump. And that way Ireland can decarbonize not just electricity sector, but also the heat transport sectors too, which is a big challenge.

Dusty Rhodes  31:01

And let me ask once again, about here in Ireland, when there is no wind in the summer, or solar when there is no sun ever. There's a word for that. When we don't have wind or sun, what is the word?

Noel Cunniffe  31:13

It's a German word. It's called dunkel floater. Where does that come from? Great question. I don't know the answer to that one. But, but it is it is often raised. So the idea behind it is it's a calm, cooled period where there isn't wind, and it's very cloudy, so there isn't much sun. And these types of periods can sometimes last for multiple days. And that's the real goal for people working in the you know, particularly the research side of the renewable energy sector, how can we power our grids or homes or businesses shoring those times using renewable energy, when we might not when we we won't have wind or we won't have solar available. So I think in the short term, it's going to be doing as much as we can with things like batteries, but then needing to rely on gas generation. And that's probably going to be the case for the next 10 years or so, in the longer term. The kind of the Great White hope, let's say for the power sector is is in hydrogen, and in what's called E fuels, so electric fuels. So hydrogen is quite interesting. You can use renewable energy to separate water h2o into its components h2, hydrogen and oxygen. And then you can use that hydrogen gas in the same way that you would current gas that we have in positive gas on our on our grid, so you can burn it in power plants, you can burn it in various devices, and the only output of that is not carbon emissions, it's its water. So that's what the kind of the goal is in the long term to move to that. Now that technology is a bit off. It's certainly not something that we're going to be deploying at a wide scale in the 2030 tight timeframe. But it is something that we should be looking into as a country and we are looking into we do have a hydrogen strategy. And you can then use that hydrogen to create other types of fields, be it ammonia, or different types of fertilizers that could be used again in other industries or tell power, for example, like sustainable aviation fuels to help decarbonize our aircraft sector, or even ammonia is being used and chipping at the moment too. So again, lots of progress to be seen there in the next few years. I'm sure.

Dusty Rhodes  33:26

Renewable energy is a huge growth area in Ireland from everything that you were saying. A lot of jobs, which, you know, is no surprise, where are the engineering jobs.

Noel Cunniffe  33:39

The engineering jobs are really interesting. So my background is civil engineer, but I transitioned into electrical engineering. And I would say you can find an engineering job anywhere in the renewable energy industry, be that civil engineering, where if you're looking to construct, say, a wind turbine, or a wind farm, and electricity grid corridor, and electricity substation, we are excellent in Ireland, when it comes to electrical design, we've got some of the best companies in the world that we're exporting abroad here. When it comes to electrical design. If you are a mechanical engineer, there's lots of really interesting problems and challenges that we're trying to solve with maximizing wind energy, solar energy, looking at things like how we deploy offshore wind energy off the coast of Ireland, and in floating wind in particular is a technology that we really need to get to grips with what a lot of the research centers are looking at at the moment. And then electrical engineers, again, we have some of the best electrical engineers in the world work on our power system in our grid, Denise networks in companies right around Ireland. So I couldn't recommend a career in this sector more to anyone that would like to get into it to help kind of promote the sector. We actually launched an initiative in October last year. It's called work in wins daata eak. And it's really geared towards people that want to perhaps try a career in the renewable energy sector or to second level students who might be filling out their SEO application forms in the coming weeks and thinking, how am I? What's my career going to be? So on that website, you can actually take a short quiz. And you can say, are you more analytical? Are you more into history? Are you more into English? Do you like working outside? Do you like working inside you like working with people? Do you like working by yourself. And then depending on what the quiz results come up with, it'll give you a selection of jobs that are available in the industry, and a number of college courses that are available right around Ireland to help you get into those careers. So it's something that we're going to be given a quite a big push on over the coming weeks. And hopefully, it'll attract people into our sector, because we need people. It's definitely the top of the risk register for a lot of companies in our sector. How do we get the right people in?

Dusty Rhodes  35:48

Give me the URL for that website again?

Noel Cunniffe  35:52

Yeah, so it's working wind.ie? Please do check it out, and promote it to anyone that you know that's in school or thinking about applying for jobs in the near future. There's loads of information on that website.

Dusty Rhodes  36:05

workinwind.ie, a very easy one to remember. I like it. Noel, I have to say, it's been a fascinating conversation with you today, because I've seen wind farms around and had a passing kind of wonder, you've just filled in so much. And it sounds amazing. And I'm just astounded at what we are producing at the moment through wind, and I suppose also solar and then also what the plans are for the next. I was about to say 10 years, but I'm mean 2030 is not that long away. It's only six years away. So I mean, it's very much happening and growing fast. And I'll tell you, that website is definitely going to be one that I'll be checking out workinwind.ie. Of course, if you'd like to find out more about Noel and some of the topics that we spoke about today, you'll find notes about what we were chatting about and other link details including contacts for note in the description area of this podcast. But for now, Noel Cunniffe, CEO of Wind Energy Ireland. Thank you for joining us.

36:59

Thank you very much.

Dusty Rhodes  37:02

If you enjoyed our podcast today, do share it with a friend in the business just tell them to search for Engineers Ireland in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland, for advanced episodes, more information on engineering across Ireland or career development opportunities, there are libraries of information on the website at engineersireland.ie Until next time from myself, Dusty Rhodes, thank you for listening

Engineers are primed to think on their feet and solve problems in record times, but dealing with the weight of a whole country’s emergency call service requires lightning approaches and a ‘nothing is impossible’ attitude.

Today we dive into the world of the most important telecommunications operation in the country, the Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS). We learn how the service operates in ways people may never consider and the contingency plans that help it weather any storm, or pandemic.

Our expert guest has been at the cutting edge of data and communications in Ireland since the introduction of the internet and is now Head of Operations with ECAS, Michael Kelly.

Listen below or on your podcast player:

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

• How Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS) operates
• Problem solving in an industry with 99.999% uptime
• Adapting to weather and pandemic phenomena
• Lessons learned from introducing the internet to Ireland
• Why we shouldn’t fear AI and start seeing it as an asset

GUEST DETAILS
Michael Kelly - Head of Operations - Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS)

Michael has extensive experience in the telecommunications industry including his role with PostGEM where he helped introduce the public internet during the late 80s/early 90s. He has also served as Director of the Internet Services Provider Association of Ireland until he joined BT as their Head of Engineering Planning & Design. Since 2012, he has been Head of Operations for the 112/999  Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-kelly-a5312810/

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

TRANSCRIPTION

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

Dusty Rhodes  00:00

Right now on AMPLIFIED the Engineers Ireland podcast, we get behind the scenes at 999 and hear how their engineers handled the biggest emergency of our time.

Michael Kelly  00:09

We brainstormed on Thursday afternoon. We had a prototype on the Friday morning. We proved the prototype Friday night. We built our production officers on Saturday and Sunday. And the first calls were taken from home Monday afternoon.

Dusty Rhodes  00:26

Hi there, my name is Dusty Rhodes and you welcome to AMPLIFIED the Engineers Journal podcast. In this episode, we're about to dive into the world of telecommunications and hear how an engineering mindset is vital to keeping up with operations in a fast paced industry. Our guest today has worked extensively in the area where his career has taken him from the birth of the Internet in Ireland to the last few years, where he's acted as the head of operations of the emergency call answering service with BT. I'm delighted to welcome Michael Kelly. Hi, how are you doing?

Michael Kelly  01:02

I'm great. Dusty great to see you. Thanks for having me.

Dusty Rhodes  01:08

Listen, can I start with the emergency call answering service, it's kind of something that we take for granted, you just dial 112 or 999. But a few of us very few of us understand how it actually works. How do you explain the service to people simply? Well,

Michael Kelly  01:24

I think everybody's familiar with the concept of dial 909, or 112. And you're put through to the emergency services, I think the majority people probably assume that it's a guard, call taker or a guard who actually takes the call. That's not how it works. And in most countries, that's not how it works. Generally, there's what we call a stage one service. And that takes the emergency call and determines with you the caller, what is the emergency service that you really need. And in our case in Ireland, that can be Garda, ambulance, fire or Coast Guard. So that determination is made, we gather some information, we also are gathering some technical information in the background that you wouldn't be aware of. And then that is passed as a package, the video, the data, the metadata, to the emergency service, and that you get the help that that you need.

Dusty Rhodes  02:19

I have in my imagination that people are making a phone call, you talk about gathering information that people aren't aware of are you able to take things like you know, could the location of a person's mobile phone or their number or where the area they might even be? While

Michael Kelly  02:34

like most things in life, it's about location, location location. If we can find you, we can help you. If we can't find you, we can't help you. It's as simple as that. So the technology has been improved, I suppose from 99 goes back to about the 1930s, where location would have been communicated verbally. But the problem with that is that the caller may not be particularly variable, or they may be completely unaware of where they actually are, or they have unfortunately met with such an incident that they no longer remember where they are. So to get over that technology has become even more important than actually getting an address or location from the caller. So over the last probably seven or eight years, we've improved our mobile communications, particularly such that how it works now for the majority of calls and the majority of calls these days, probably 75 80% of emergency calls are made on a mobile phone as opposed to a fixed limit. In the background, the handset is using various location technology is giving a GPS coordinates of exactly where you are. And in parallel to the call, we use SMS, where there is no record on the phone at all of us. But it's used to transmit and transmit continuously updated locations. Typically, the first location that we get is relatively inaccurate, it might be maybe 200 meters accuracy, but by the time we get the second or third one, it may be down to two meters accuracy. And that happens within 15 to 20 seconds.

Dusty Rhodes  04:18

First problem I can see coming up with this is GDPR and data protection, they're held to how do you get over that problem? Very,

Michael Kelly  04:25

very simple. There is an actual carve out in the data protection legislation, which basically says in layman's language, well, if this is an emergency, then all bets are off, and it's in your best interest that we're able to find you. Now having said that, we go to enormous lengths to protect that information. People probably assumed that you know, we just pass on the location willy nilly. No we don't. It's only passed to the emergency services. Occasionally we will get requests for call recordings and other info about calls. And it is only when people have satisfied the very, very stringent, most stringent requirements that our call recording might be released. And of course, it has to be strictly relevant to the person themselves.

Dusty Rhodes  05:12

Giving people help and getting them help fast and knowing where they are. I mean, they're all very important of what kind of levels are you dealing with? I mean, how many calls you get a day or across a year? How quickly do you answer calls, that kind of stuff uptime is another?

Michael Kelly  05:25

Yeah, uptime is another thing. I'll come back to that. to your first question. We do 2.4 million calls. So 200,000 a month 50,000. A week 6000 A day. Having said that, that isn't a complete answer. Because it's, I suppose I would say that emergency calls are extremely predictable. We're dealing with human beings worldwide. And they work in very predictable patterns. And that's an area that I'm very interested myself to share predictability of it is is quite fascinating. But 6000 calls a day, it probably folds to maybe five and a half 1000. During the week. As the weekends come in, it gets a little bit busier. And in particular than Friday nights, and Saturday nights would be the busiest of all. And clearly, Friday nights and Saturday nights can also fall into the small hours of the following morning as well. It also has a there's a little bit of a different pattern between emergency calls to police, our guard and to ambulance ambulance, the volumes grow through the day on a very, very gradual basis, peaking probably around 11 or 12 o'clock at night, whereas Garda calls would probably start to peak earlier in the day will be much more erratic, up and down. The other thing that's fascinating as well about it is that a guard a call from start to finish, and one of them one of our jobs is that we record everything and all data for evidence purposes for the courts and for for investigations. The guard call typically takes about two minutes, 120 seconds, the average ambulance call takes about six minutes. But with a very, very long statistical tail, we would have some cards that would go up to 2425 minutes. This could be for a number of reasons. Either there's a difficulty with finding the person, or actually there is a paramedic providing information or instructions to the call or or the the victim Unfortunately, while the ambulance arrives. If I'd say one thing about e commerce, it's all about data. It's really, really very statistically driven. I'm

Dusty Rhodes  07:38

fascinated to hear how you say that the calls to emergency lines are very predictable. It's not anything I would have expected you to said, Can you give me an example of that kind of predictability on on a call? Well,

Michael Kelly  07:51

I can tell you that the this if you like what I would call the safest time of the week, is about 1030 on a Tuesday morning. And basically how I would rationalize it is that everybody has either gone to work, or they've gotten they're already in school, or haven't gotten out of bed yet. But they're not going anywhere. Because actually the chief determinant of nine on calls, believe it or not, is weather. If the weather is bad, we'll get more calls. Now, that doesn't mean that more people are necessarily out and about, it just means that they're more likely to get themselves into a spot of bother more likely to have a car accident, they're more likely to trip, they're more likely to slip. And obviously, the more severe the weather becomes, the more accidents that are likely to have. Ironically, even though there are probably fewer fewer people out in the boat. The other way of looking at it is that and I suppose unfortunately, and this is not unique to our but in most countries in the world, Friday nights and Saturday nights are where people get themselves into the most trouble, probably the most severe trouble. And it's it's when response times by the emergency services tend to backup a bit. Now, I would say that emergency services are built around the peace. But during busy periods, there's always going to be some sort of a of a wait. But the job of Ecosse is to somehow ease the path through to the emergency services. And even if they are busy, and they're not in a position to answer that particular emergency call that we will do a decision to reassure the caller make sure that they don't title because, again, in a panic I think a lot of people's instinct is I'll hang up and dial again. Well, if you do that, you'd go back to the beginning of the of the queue. So our advice is always just stick with us. Listen to the instructions. We'll get you there.

Dusty Rhodes  09:51

Can I ask you that as well about uptime? It's a phenomenal statistic. What is it? What is your uptime guarantee? Our uptime

Michael Kelly  09:58

guarantee as well, first and foremost, some people say, Oh, well, it must be 100%. Well, as an engineer, I know that nothing is ever 100%. So what we commit to contractually, and I don't think this is a state secret in our contract with government, but it is what we call five nines, 99.999%. Now, that's a very glib figure. But the truth is to make that work, we have to duplicate replicate quadruplicate systems, so that we've got a huge amount of redundancy in the various systems. Basically, no one issue can take out the entire platform. But the bigger challenge for us is that the system itself, we we, we need to maintain it, we need to patch software, we need to replace hardware, but it's it's like the It's like that old adage about the 747 in the air, we're changing the engines without landing the plane, we cannot say to the public, oh, we need to do a big job on E casts. So I'll tell you what, we're going to take it down nine o'clock on Friday, but we'll be back on Monday morning. That doesn't work. So there's never a good time for us to do maintenance. So therefore we do, we're constantly working on the system round the clock, and making sure that our change control is absolutely state of the art engineering was so that, even if we do make a mistake, or if we have a problem, we can roll back without anybody realizing that there was ever a problem in the first place.

Dusty Rhodes  11:31

It sounds like you have your system and then the backup for the system and then a backup for the backup system. And then a backup backup for the backup system, which you know, I'm delighted to hear that but from an engineering perspective, can you give me an example of the kind of infrastructure that you have in place? Okay,

Michael Kelly  11:47

yes, we have two operator centers. So this is where call takers can take calls. We also have connections to them, they can also work from home, which is also part of our contingency in case, we have big storms or something like that. We have two data centers, we have to backup operator centers. And we have to backup data centers, all interlinked using multiple carriers by multiple telecoms companies. Some people think one, once they hear that BT operate this, that it's all BT telecommunications links in between all of the sites. And with that number of sites, it gets incredibly complex to make sure that we've got redundant paths, and resilient links and so on. No, we actually use every telecoms provider in the state. So we use ESB telecoms, we use IE Nash, we use air, we use BT in all honesty, and a couple of other players as well. And we use a variety of even within those telecommunications networks, a variety of different telecommunications protocols and techniques, so that we're not reliant on just one protocol, like IP or something like that. We have we have backups, little backups.

Dusty Rhodes  13:06

And tell me about the engineers that are in the organization because engineers play a very important role within the cancer organization, what kind of problems that they have to solve on on a regular basis, I

Michael Kelly  13:17

suppose the basis would be that they would be all IT specialists with a very heavy emphasis on telecommunications as well. But on top of that layered in, they would have skills in in software, but also a very, very good working knowledge of handsets, particularly mobile phone headsets. And you must remember as well that we've got to be able to support calls the highest level with the highest bandwidth that we could get from the humblest, oldest Nokia phone that somebody only uses once or twice a year, all the way up to the latest Apple and Samsung handsets. The other thing that we need to watch out for is software changes on the handsets, sometimes inadvertently, depending on the manufacturer. And I won't mention any names. But sometimes issues creep in with regard to emergency calls, that were actually designed to help the more ordinary run of the mill, cause a good example of a of this year was it was in the, let's say, the Android sphere. But it had an impact on all manufacturers of Android handset. So it wasn't a particular manufacturer, a change was introduced. So that if you picked up your Android handset irrespective of make if you pressed a number of times on the side and I don't want to specify the number for obvious reasons. If she pressed a button on the side of the phone a number of times it would automatically make an emergency call. Now that generated over about a year. I don't want to put a finger on it either but a shoe huge number of silent calls, calls that should never have been made. Because people didn't know when they might notice that that evening when they pick up their phone, and they see all these 112 calls, and that that was just basically down to a software change that was designed to help other issues within within the phone. As emergency services, we don't want it to be too easy to make emergency calls, we want it to be delivered. Okay? Because otherwise, you can have a situation where, you know, people literally walking down the road with the phone in the back of their jeans in their back pocket. It can it can ring emergency services. So it was well intentioned, but it went wrong. I suspect that problem generated probably a billion calls worldwide. Wow, it would have affected every country. Well, what I can say is because because of our engineers, I'm one in particular, I think we were probably the first country to identify what the problem was. And then in conjunction with, say, our colleagues and other in other European countries, and we do work very, very closely together. And because, as I say, dealing with human beings who do tend to behave in the same way, they use the same sorts of equipment to interact with emergency services. If we see a problem in one country, 10 to one, you're gonna see it in every other country. So we do cooperate very, very closely. So that's probably the best recent example that I can give you. I

Dusty Rhodes  16:28

don't want to dwell on this because it's over, fingers crossed. But when COVID hit, that was an emergency that was developing so fast, and everybody just had to run with it. I'm sure E. CASS was no exception. And everybody was told to work from home. How did you handle that problem?

Michael Kelly  16:44

Well, right up to that point, that was the middle of March and in that year, and I can't remember which year it is now, because it's all a blur. But up to that point we didn't have working from though there was never any requirement for us. And in fact, if I'm honest, Our preference would be to have people working in centers, because all the technology is there. And they have access to engineers. They have it. They're working in centers, which are designed to work 24/7 have generators, if there's a power outage, and so on, which is completely unlike our own homes. So I think it was a Thursday. And we said right, we need to build a remote working as solution. So we brainstormed on Thursday afternoon, we had a prototype on the Friday morning. We proved the prototype Friday night. And we built it or productionize it on Saturday and Sunday. And the first calls were taken from home live calls, not test calls, Monday afternoon. Now, I will be the first one to say that, you know, we work in in BT, which is, you know, really as an engineering lead company, I think if I had put out a request, let's develop that capability in normal time, it probably would have taken six months, because we would have gone through all of the things that you have to do in terms of testing. And, and so I'm not to say that we didn't do all that we just did a hell of a lot quicker, which much, much more focus. But we then moved over to a situation where very, very quickly, I think probably 70% of calls were taken from home. The other thing that we had to do, of course, is that staff were used to working with a workstation rather than a laptop, so would have had a purpose built PC, essentially in old money on the desk in front of them. So we had to we've we've about 6570 people taking calls around 24/7. So we had to procure 70 laptops plus spares at a time when everybody else was looking for laptops. Now luckily, I was able to pull in a few favors and BJs a big company. So we were able to get you know, access to certain stocks and so on. But that was the other worry, you know, it's one thing to get the technology right. But then are you actually will you have the tools to use. And I think that's probably where a lot of companies organizations probably slipped up well meaning in a well meaning manner, they were able to get the technology to do what they want, but it just kind of fell off the last part.

Dusty Rhodes  19:18

That was an amazing feat. And all I can think of is as you tell that story is this is why we need engineers in the world. Boom, boom, boom, problem solved. Tell me aside from COVID, because that is an exceptional circumstance. What would you say was the was the second biggest emergency that you've had to deal with in your time?

Michael Kelly  19:35

Well, I did say before that the biggest determinant of emergency calls, particularly when it gets out of that predictability phase is weather. And I will think back to the various storms that we've had on this one back in 2016. We've had some years where we've had maybe one or two kind of hurricane type storms and then over years we We've had maybe nine or 10 success weekends, where we've had really, really bad storms, that has an effect on the public because that, you know, there's going to be more accidents, even if they don't leave the house, they might fall down the stairs, and that that still creates challenges. But what it meant was the weather was so bad on these occasions. And don't forget that we had not got home working, or remote working available at that stage, we still needed to get people in sites. So what we did was we increased the number of sites. And that's when we, in addition to our two permanent sites, we brought in we built contingency centers, so that the centers were actually closer to staff. And then the other thing was, with great cooperation from our staff, I have to say, we, we said, Well, look, we might, we may have to work longer shifts, but we will put you up, we may even put you up in in centers, right with sleeping bags. Now actually, as it turned out, we didn't we didn't really have to go that far. But what we did do was we would put staff up in hotels next door, so that they didn't have to go home. And our only ask of them was look, bring a bag, we'll bring it back for, you know, five days or a week, we really don't know how long this is gonna go on. But we will, you know, a bit of, I suppose bit of thought goes into us while it's stressful at the time, and you think, Oh, how are we going to solve this problem? Nothing is impossible, if you set your mind to it. And that, you know, genuinely is our mantra is has to be that way. We can't just give up. So I think I think that would probably be the the other the other issue. Obviously, we've had technical challenges over the years. But generally, through a combination of backups, and so on, we've been able to overcome that. And the great Irish public wouldn't have even been aware, Michael,

Dusty Rhodes  21:51

you're very much at the cutting edge. If you want of technology. I hate that phrase. But you're dealing with Watson now, which is fantastic. And you're probably looking at what's coming in the near future, which is fantastic. Let me take you back, though. To many, many moons ago, when you worked with post gem, which was a section of on post. And I love I only learned this recently post gem stands for Global electronic messaging. That's how far back we go and pre email all those are pre texts or pre SMS or whatever, maybe. Can you describe to me what post jam was but also of key interest, the set up between them and Ireland's first internet service provider at the time? Ireland online?

Michael Kelly  22:31

Okay, yeah, well, it's a whole subject in itself. But to start with, with post, Jim, it was a subsidiary of, of unparsed, actually decentral as a as a separate company, abroad in people with I suppose a certain amount of it or telecommunications, background plus a lot of marketing, because it was essentially what it was set up to do was to try and develop a new market. And if you if you could cast your mind back to the very late 80s 1989. This is pre mail, or builds went in the post. And that's where on POS came in. But thanks to the foresight of of a couple of very, very clever people, even then they realize that hard copy as it used to be referred to probably wasn't going to be there forever. And the on POS needed to start thinking about the future. And it was it was certainly the first, I think, a pulse office in the whole world that started to think that way. It was very, very pioneering. But when we got the was all very well saying it was electronic mail was very much in its infancy. I think I had you know, I had used it in my previous IT career to probably, you know, communicate with a few other people and maybe with some some vendors, but it wasn't in general use. And it was also quite slow. You know, you didn't get an email instantly wait like we did today. But once post jam got up and running. Initially, I think our first service was people could send in communications like bills or RS circulars electronically. And then we would actually print them and put them into a letter. So it was electronic to hard copy. But it's amazing. That sounds ridiculous now, but it actually got people into the idea. The other thing that we introduced was Electronic Data Interchange, which was electronic to electronic. And basically that was sending purchase orders and invoices from one company to another, completely electronically. And using a set of standards that worked very well. But as become the precursor of what we know now, I would say even pretty much like if you were to go on the various well known websites and order books or whatever, whatever it is definitely the precursor of that. And then also the third service that we we introduced and was pretty much the precursor of electronic mail today. At the only difference was that it was it was a connection rather than to the intranet. It was connected to an A network of other nodes around the country around the world. And only people who were subscribed to those those services or don't note could send and receive emails, it wasn't completely open system like we have today, where you can send an email to someone you don't know or you've never you've never met. So with those three services in mind, they began to pick up traction, and people began saying, okay, and actually, we had a lot of visits from other post offices interested in what we were doing, and then to underlie that. And I suppose maybe this is something that I brought to it, I realized that in order to really make this work, we needed to have our own network at that time, due to legislation and licensing. And so really, the underlying telecommunications had to be telecom era, which as we know, was the monopoly back then. So we got the first value added services license, a value added services license allowed you to offer value ads over a telecom service. But then we went, we said, right, we will build our own data network, our own packet switched network. And that actually became the precursor to our our cooperation with Arvind online. So to answer your second question, Arland online, or IOL, was becoming very, very successful in the in the marketplace, there was a real appetite there for communications. And I think also as well, because we have a certain amount of time, we had a certain amount of insight into the demographics, Ireland was becoming more open. People were emigration, there was a lot of immigration, people needed to communicate. And, you know, instant communication was was what it was all about. And bear in mind, mobile phones were still expensive to you know, to ring somebody for five minutes, or even landlines for five minutes. Whereas electronic mail was free. And you could send as much as you wanted, you could set it say as much as you wanted to mommy or daddy, there were there were no limitations.

Dusty Rhodes  27:10

It was a huge time of change around then, and very exciting. And it was kind of like Ireland was dragging itself out of the darkness of the 70s and the 80s. And all of a sudden, I mean, we we were winning Eurovision, every year, that's what I remember the 90s. All right, and it meant we could do anything. And then we have the football. And we were actually at a World Cup, we could do anything. And then you start talking about this electronic mail, email and mobile phones were becoming more common, as you say. They were very expensive. It was an amazing time. And then Ireland online. I was working with to FM at the time. And I remember, you know, kind of because we were in the younger end of RT, it was myself and Barry Lange. were kind of interested in this internet thing and what it was all about. And then we started incorporating it as part of our programs. And then everybody then wanted an email address. And of course, we were using@aol.ie every day on on the air. And the story goes is that Bertie Ahern, who was T shock at the time was listening. And he went, What's that? I want one. And so that's that's it from my point of view in that I thought those kinds of Eddie, very early days of the Internet were quite heavy. What how was it from your point of view introduced the internet to the great Irish public.

Michael Kelly  28:23

It was really, really exciting times. I mean, very exhausting, very, very long days. But we were we really were making it up as we went along. You know, the pioneers and IOL Colin Greeley. And Barry Flanagan like we're real flagbearers for the whole thing. But what I suppose what we wanted to do was try and let them get on with what they were good at doing. And I think what post Shem brought to it was we were pretty good. We mastered the art of infrastructure, and also how we could we could post modems and so on out these days, you'd probably say, well, modem, why would you use a modem. But, you know, back then, the Internet was about getting a CD on that stuck to a magazine, and you'd stuck that CD into your PC. And it gave you a certain amount of software, which allows you to control a modem, which you have to use the home telephone line. And we it was it was quite slow, but it worked. In order to make IOL work and make it successful. We needed to have modems all over the country, because what we discovered very, very quickly was that someone in in Cork or Limerick, probably some of our listeners would say for obvious reasons, they wouldn't be prepared to die of Dublin. They wanted a local number. They wanted a local cork number or Limerick number and so on and so forth. And I think at the end, we ended up with 26 points of protests around the country in order to take in those calls. And we also had to build a fairly substantial backbone, network to form through all of that internet traffic, I think what made it even more exciting was that we just could not have anticipated the demand. As fast as we could put in infrastructure, it was gobbled up. So much so that I was dealing with. And at that time, most of them would have been Silicon Valley based companies that provided the equipment, they wanted to send us the very latest equipment, we'd be the first in Europe to use it, they might only have one or two been used maybe buy AT and T or America Online in the States, they could see that something was really, really happening here. And it was it was growing really, really quickly. And the other thing that we were able to do was because nobody had any real experience in this, we were recruiting from the universe, universities, just graduate engineers, guys that we guys and girls that we taught, you know, which would really enjoy this. And it just threw them in at the coalface and learn what needed to be done. And I can't say there was a plan, the plan probably changed every week. But it worked. And it it's it's one of the things that I'm proud of Southern way all career, I have to say. Because the internet now we moved from a situation where I think when when we went on post Bosch, Ireland online with post Sham, I think we was about 14,000 subscribers. Now there were a couple of other voted, but there was probably probably 25,000 Internet subscribers in the whole country. And that was in 9697. Now everybody use that ubiquitous, you couldn't do without it?

Dusty Rhodes  31:37

Do you have a particular story you'd like to share from that time?

Michael Kelly  31:42

Well, I do, I don't know whether it's a good story or not. But one of our struggles in Ireland online particularly was the connections to the internet. These days, people don't need to really understand how it all works. But back then we needed a connection to the outside world. And bandwidth are the pipes from Dublin to the rest of the world. Were extremely expensive. One stage I we had a 1.5 megabit connection to the outside world. Nowadays, people have, you know, I think over a gigabit into my home, just my house. So we were doing everything that we possibly called we were trading bandwidth with various providers, talking like in lots of money, like it was getting into the millions of pounds at the time. So one of the things that we did do was we we did a deal with a satellite company. Now everybody talks about satellite and you know, watch what Elon Musk is doing. And there's lots of satellite companies. But we had a headquarters on them Earth's for terrorists. At that time, we got special permission. And we did lots of licenses, because nobody was doing it to put this great big, huge satellite dish up on the roof. So Barry Flanagan and I got it working. And we said that we will look let's let's try it, you know before and we'll have it to ourselves, right? See what we can do. So Barry and I were up on the roof. This is a six story roof, where we probably really shouldn't debate to be perfectly honest. But we we plugged in a laptop into the back of it, just to see how it will perform. And it was it was going great and we tried different things. And then I pitched my arm and the laptop fell off the wall or word straight down onto the ground. It's fair to say it didn't work after that. Luckily, it didn't land on everybody. I

Dusty Rhodes  33:37

could just i All the picture in my head is just a pair of you looking. And then there's pure silence. jaws dropped pure silence. It

Michael Kelly  33:45

was it was the longest, probably 15 seconds of my life. Because a bit like Icarus, when things are going badly, time just seems to slow down. A

Dusty Rhodes  33:56

lot of what you're talking about Michael is you're talking about introducing the Internet to Ireland and satellite connections and a one five point 1.5 meg for the entire country. It's ridiculous when you think about it. Now. Another thing that we talk about all the time here, and we're very blase about it because we're one of the huge biggest centers in the world for it with Facebook and Google, Microsoft and data centers. They're everywhere. It takes 20% of the power of the country in Ireland goes just on data centers. You are the man who installed Ireland's first ever data center Tell Me More

Michael Kelly  34:32

probably some politicians would prefer that I had not done this but it yes it is true. I joined I became part of East that telecom as supposed to finish the the post Jeremiah Well story was sold to Dennis O'Brien, you may have heard of. So I moved into to ESA telecom and you know, there was there was a bit of a change around responsibilities and so on. So Oh, Dennis, as, as he did said, Well, look, are you looking for a challenge? Foolishly? I said, Yes. And he said, Well, look, one of the things that we need to do this this thing, data data centers, that's that's going to, that's going to be the next big thing. And I'll be honest, which I was skeptical myself, or really did what he said, but think your demand for this because, you know, it's datacenters are what's going to drive the internet. And I think up to that point, I certainly thought I didn't have as foresight sure, is foresight was that the internet needs lots of power and lots of space disk space, and it needs performance, these availability. And that that basically is a one line summary description of a data center. So he said, right, got to do this. So he said, I think we could get a building out and citywest, which was only really been built at that stage. Now, of course, a very mature business. But back then, it was it was nothing and it had no fiber or any of the telecommunications into its, which was what we really needed. So I think he said this to me at the end of November. And he said, I needed up and running at seven months. Now, I hadn't even seen the building when he said this, and the building was only half built. What that was the challenge. And it was, it probably was the most stressful period of my career. When we did it, by the end of June, with a very, very small team. We built a data center, it was the first of its kind, I did go and have a look at a couple of data centers in the States. I think we brought back some good ideas about it, particularly around availability, we hadn't been thinking about that. So generators was something that we spent a lot of money on. And we also had to fight tooth and nail to get telecommunications in from the various providers so that we could connect these these data service servers. And we got it up and running. I think we had our first customers running probably the month before, and probably about 18 months later was false.

Dusty Rhodes  37:07

Michael, I could chat to you all day. So just let me wrap up one or two little questions about new technologies. Because like everything you're saying, you you literally have been at the development end of everything right throughout your career. So AI is continuous learning. This is what I want to ask you about. I mean, it's not vital for engineers working telecommunications that don't mean is that something nicer is CPD something you should do? Is it vital for working in telecommunications in areas like that.

Michael Kelly  37:37

It's absolutely vital. I think when I started out my career, there was probably a very much of an emphasis on third level education. And it had, it definitely had its at its place. But however you were trained, or whatever you were qualified, and it was seen as a means to promotion. I think organizations are definitely a lot flatter now. And if you want to be really valuable to an organization may be having that master's degree or even a primary degree is not going to help you it gives you some of the tools to learn and maybe to be curious. But I think you know, CPD, getting short courses and technology is really, really valuable, you become much more valuable to an organization.

Dusty Rhodes  38:20

So it's going to ask you was how do you do? I mean, how have you done that CPD just to keep up to because you do you're right, you get your degree and you get on the first rung of the ladder. And that's it, your degree is worthless. After that. You need to keep educating yourself keeping up to speed How did you do at work in such a high level?

Michael Kelly  38:36

Well, the 1990s that is certainly the late 80s 19 1990s, even though we had the internet, and it was still an emphasis on books, and you would you would buy books, and you would learn that way. And you would experiment. Then something changed in the in the vendors, the people who sold the routers or the routers and all this telecommunications equipment, they realized that it was changing very, very quickly. And some of those got into training themselves. Good examples would be Cisco, with their certification schemes, relatively short courses, but they weren't internationally recognized. And I saw people so well, not only would it make them better at their job, but it made them internationally market. So if you know one of our young engineers, and suddenly did decide to go off to Australia or America, they had a recognised qualification. But I think that that's probably brought us up to maybe the 2010s. Now, I think it's it's almost going back. I think you do need the hard qualifications, like the masters and the bachelor's degrees. And so with the speed of change is so much that by the time of course comes out and more importantly is recognized. It's nearly out of date. So you've got to become a sponge. So to answer your question, I think I went from a very much a kind of a rigid book learning type of individual because that's what I was. That's what I was taught to maybe true the experience and so on that you've got to have your antenna, working all the time, operate as a sponge, soak up as much information as you possibly can. Some of its useful, some of it might actually lead you in a different direction that maybe didn't even know was was there. But that curiosity is something that that makes you valuable to the organization. And the more valuable to an organization, the more successful you will become.

Dusty Rhodes  40:32

Let me ask you a humdinger of an awful question. Just to wrap it up. Right. Right, because we haven't mentioned AI. I'm just interested for you who has been so successful, seeing things with potential and then seeing how they could work in the future and then successfully getting them there. You're looking at AI for the last year, we do you think AI will have us in 10 years time,

Michael Kelly  41:00

I think in 10 years time, I think it'll be slower than we thought everybody likes thick. Obviously, there's a lot of hype, I see it first and foremost, in the next 10 years as maybe an eight in your ear, whatever it is that you're doing. Say it could be anything from working in a contact center, it could be a programmer trying to write a difficult bit of code, almost that kind of help or coach in the ear. I see it as specially in them hectic areas. I don't know much about us, if anything at all. But a good example to me would be something like air traffic control, right? If an air traffic controller were to miss something, there's enough technology out there that you know, by tracking people's eyes on the screen, that the AI or some system feeding AI could say, I think he's missed that vital piece of information. Or let I think I should whisper this piece of information in her ear. It sounds incredible Bush a lot of the things that AI can already do were incredible, even five years ago. So I on the one hand, I think it will be slower. But I really do see it as as eight, I do think it will be transformative as well in certain industries. I think the first area where it could really transform is in contact centers, because it AI should be able to deal with different accents, and should be able to deal with different languages, it will be building up databases and other types of bases that are going to apply. And with just the laws of physics, you're able to apply that at the speed of light, either to a screen or you know, to generate something that you call out in the air of somebody, it to me it it has to be transformative. I don't think it's something to be frightened of. That's something that really annoys me. It's like all technology. But I think back probably 200 years ago, when the steam engine was invented, there were probably people given out about that as well. And it wasn't the be all and end all the steam engine transformed into something else. And AI and time will transform into something again,

Dusty Rhodes  43:18

I often see AI as being like the early days of the Internet, which we both experienced in the in the 80s and 90s. And it was the wild west of the Internet back then. Whereas I think we're seeing the A it's the wild west of AI right now. Michael, unfortunately, we've run out of time if you're listening and you'd like to find out more about Michael or some of the topics that we talked about today. There's some notes and link details in the description area of the podcast but for now, Michael Kelly, head of operations of the Emergency Call Answering Service at BT Ireland. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Michael Kelly  43:49

Not at all Dusty, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Dusty Rhodes  43:53

Do remember for advanced episodes of our Engineers Ireland podcast, more information on engineering across Ireland or career development opportunities, there are libraries of information on our website at engineersireland.ie. Also do share a podcast with a friend in the business just tell them search for Engineers Ireland in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. Until next time from myself Dusty Rhodes. Thank you so much for listening. Take care

Today we find out how Irish engineers are attracting big foreign business, and how investing in personal development is just as beneficial for your own growth as it is for the sector.

Global investment is crucial to the economic wellbeing of Ireland, and there are still challenges the country needs to overcome to ensure continued success.

Our expert today is at the forefront of Ireland’s international business investments and believes our engineering sector has a lot of talent to offer. He is an engineer and CEO of IDA Ireland, Michael Lohan.

Listen below or on your podcast player!

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

01:09 Michael’s Career

06:36 Working with tech, people and global supply chains

08:13 What the IDA does

10:03 The main investment sectors in Ireland

12:58 Challenges impacting foreign investment

16:28 The availability of STEM talent in Ireland

18:06 How Irish engineers stand out

23:13 Encouraging upskilling and continuous learning

26:19 Getting young people involved in STEM subjects

34:00 Expanding opportunities outside of Dublin

37:35 Advice Michael would give to a young engineer

GUEST DETAILS

Michael Lohan is the Chief Executive Officer of IDA Ireland as of April 2023. A key priority for Michael in his role as Chief Executive Officer is leading on the execution and delivery of IDA Ireland’s organisational strategy: Driving Recovery and Sustainable Growth 2021- 2024, which will be delivered through a focus on five pillars: Growth, Transformation, Regions, Sustainability, and Impact.

Michael joined IDA Ireland in 2003 and has held various management positions across multiple functions and has represented IDA in several fora including as a Board member on Digital Manufacturing Ireland, a governance member on the SSPC research centre for pharmaceuticals and also The Irish Medical Association (which is the business association within IBEC representing the medical devices and diagnostics sector).

Prior to joining IDA Ireland, Michael held several different positions including Manager for New Business Solutions with Nortel’s European Operations in Galway and a management role with IEC Electronics European Operations. Michael is an Engineering graduate with an MSc in Technology Management from the National University of Ireland, Galway and additionally is a graduate of the Berkley Executive Programme.

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.

To learn more about iWish https://www.iwish.ie/

QUOTES

I can speak for myself, as an engineer, you're very much technically driven, but those softer skills, that acumen from a business perspective, are so so important. The more you can hone that, coupled that with your technical expertise, that's a formula for real success, for real growth and progression. - Michael Lohan

We have been very successful for the last decade plus in terms of FDI. In terms of economic prosperity in Ireland, our population is growing, our enterprise base, both foreign and indigenous have grown. That leads us to the challenges of success, our housing capacity, our infrastructure capacity. There are key elements that we have to continue to address and make sure that we have adequate plans in place for the next generation of investment. - Michael Lohan

We in Ireland seem to be leading at the front edge of that technology, of that innovation, of that deployment, and I think that comes down to the skill base that we have, and within that is the engineering resources that's available to us. - Michael Lohan

I would encourage anyone, no matter where you are in your career, to continue to learn. In fact, I am no different, I have to continue to be curious, I have to continue to look to where I can add additional strengths to my offering. - Michael Lohan

I think industry needs to help encourage young people into STEM, because the more we can show that there's a path here in terms of career, that there's a rewarding, fulfilling and diverse career that you can get  through STEM subjects.  - Michael Lohan

Learn as quickly as you can how to interact and engage with others because the your success is going to be based on how you engage with your peers, how you can influence and negotiate. The more you can hone that earlier in your career, the more you can benefit from it later on. - Michael Lohan

TRANSCRIPTION

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

Michael Lohan  00:00

I think there's a few things that actually make Irish engineers and Irish talent stand out. You know, I hear this directly from law, the CEOs and CTOs applying companies. And that's what we have in Ireland, we have that uniqueness in us that we actually see problems as a real opportunity. And we don't take the status quo is the way things should be always done, we actually can see different means of delivery. And more importantly, we actually can bring goals to fruition and implement them.

Dusty Rhodes  00:27

Hello there. My name is Dusty Rhodes, you're welcome to AMPLIFIED the Engineers Journal podcast. In this episode, we're about to dive into engineering and business development and see how both are shaping the economic landscape of the country. We'll be looking at the challenges and opportunities facing the engineering sector in Ireland, the importance of regional growth and how to future proof your own career. Our guest is a seasoned engineer, he has 30, hugely successful years under his belt, working with some leading companies and now finds himself as the CEO of the IDA. It's a delight to welcome Michael Lohan and Michael, how are you?

Michael Lohan  01:04

I'm good dusty, Thank you very much.

Dusty Rhodes  01:09

Michael, you're a qualified engineer just kind of set the scene for us. What strand of engineering Did you qualify?

Michael Lohan  01:16

I am indeed Yeah, so my primary degree is in electronic engineering and so straight electronics. And it's funny to the just last week, actually, I was part of the A to you launch of the Illumina network where I actually studied in cycle RTC as it was in the day and then transferred to finish my degree actually in Galway again RTC so given away some part of my of my age and in that element. But I think what's important is part of that is as I was fortunate that I was part of a group where a group of friends, but in the College Network, we're actually at this move transition from Galway, or sorry, from Slager to Galway. So we actually saw that progression through our education system, which I'm probably you're very tight third for that, you know, we saw it as a means of movement. Yes, we also saw as a means of a new scenery from a social perspective. But more importantly, we were able to advance our careers and, and so that's my background. And, and I continue to suppose along those technical areas, as I looked across different aspects of, of my career and my educational because as I've gone through, I suppose my career, I've added other areas, for example, I was one of the first cohort that went through the certification at the time for health and safety at work, actually true UCD, which was delivered remotely, if one would think what that what that was 20 years ago, which so as as challenges come forward in my career, I always, always talked about, okay, is there an area where I need to maybe upscale or rescale, or reposition myself, and that was one such add on the same project management. And then I went back to do a master's in technology management as well. And then you I call myself a continuous journey. I think around along that route.

Dusty Rhodes  02:54

You mentioned that you did it remotely. And it was 20 years ago, you know, this day and age when we're all just so used to video calls and accessing things. And and I'm not going to electronic get the recording and kind of all this the know, how was it done remotely. 20 years ago,

Michael Lohan  03:10

when I was actually doing this, it was done remotely and that he was delivered into the ER was the default trading center in Atlanta. And because they had the technology, and actually the lectures were broadcast, so we actually had to go to at loan. So you physically had to, but it meant you didn't have to travel to Dublin, for example. At the time, I was working in Longford. So it was a 3540 minute track across in the morning, it was ideal. And what you had was you were the cohort there, they're probably 25 or 30 people in that class all from the Midlands region who actually could attend this lecture which has been delivered live from from Dublin. So we that's where we spent our days in that. So it was a really good it, I suppose initiative at the time, because it opened up that opportunity that's effectively you could do your do your studies, why not haven't actually moved geographical location for the day or two? I was involved on a weekly basis.

Dusty Rhodes  03:59

So let's after you qualified to go into the business, did you do a lot of hands on engineering? Or did you kind of go straight for management fairly fast?

Michael Lohan  04:06

Yeah, it's it's, it's a great question. Because when I actually started, I started in very much in a technical role. So electronics, so attend this story to others, as well as that's actually I started in the printed circuit board manufacturing business. So actually, what we are we did use was pioneer hifi system. So things that actually people now are actually coming back to, again, a number of generations later so so we actually done all the printed circuit board and circuitry and an assembly for Pioneer hifi systems at the time. So that's actually where a star has a very much technically driven, you're looking at the technology board from from the product perspective and also from a process perspective. And I was fortunate because I started in the company that was relatively small in scale in Ireland, you know, a couple 100 people. So actually you're asked to multitask and do different roles. So all of a sudden you had to wear different hats. You had to be the technical product expert. You also have to be the process expert you had To help put efficiencies, you have to help with improvements. And with that, I actually started to move into more in engineering, but I had an engineering management. And it was fortunate, I suppose I had talked those up. And I was given those opportunities, number one, and secondly, that I was able to take them because what it did then is it actually gives you experience in terms of people management, you know, in terms of assessing projects is assessing technologies. So what brought you to a different sphere, I suppose in terms of just a technical element. And, and at that point, and actually, after four or five years of, of your of that experience, I actually moved to a very large multinational company called Nortel Networks, large telecommunications company will be known globally around the world at that time. And if I'm honest, the few years I spent at Nortel Networks from 1999, to 2002, probably where they were the years that's actually formed me in terms of my business acumen. Because at that stage, Jenna was put into a global environment, global supply chains, you know, the, if you want to call it the complexities and the politics that comes with your multinationals. And you had two choices, you had to learn very quickly, or as you had to adapt even faster. And that's what you have to do. And I think that's where maybe the strength of my background of, you know, engineering, practical, logical, you could take the technical elements, you could bring them together, you could understand how supply chain works. And then you could work with people and bring people with you on that journey. So, so I think they those formative years, were critically important in terms of making, if you want to call it that transition from the purely technical into a managerial leadership role over that period.

Dusty Rhodes  06:36

Do you think engineers are kind of I don't want to say born with but let you when you study at college, do you think it just kind of gives you a bit of a systems way of thinking, which means that you were then able to handle anything from technical to people to global supply chains?

Michael Lohan  06:52

Yeah, well, you know, I think I think there's a few times I think the mindset of engineers is, you know, your logical and your and your solutions orientated as well, which I think is important. And, you know, it's a bit like, there's always challenges. But the great thing about challenges is there's always a means for resolution. Now, it may not be optimal, but you can, we can always get there. And the question is how we get there. And I suppose what you learn, and what I've learned through my career is that solutions don't come in one form. And they certainly don't come just being a technical solution or a process solution, the more than likely have a hole of business requirements. And that, and that involves you all being human centric, people orientation. So the, the, you know, that's where, probably from an engineering discipline point of view, and I think, thankfully, we've probably seen more of that happening to our engineering, courseware and education over the last number of decades, making sure that there's that connected piece in terms of how you actually make this work for people, for the workforce for the business, over and including the technical aspects are so important. And it's something that I think that, you know, I can speak for myself, as an engineer, everything was about and you're very much technically driven, those softer skills. Those that acumen from a business perspective, are so so important. I think, the more you can hold that on top of that with your technical expertise. That's a formula for real success and for real growth and progression.

Dusty Rhodes  08:13

Well, listen, speaking of success, you are the buck stops at your desk in the IDA. That's a big organization to be a part of earlier in the series. I was talking to Leo Clancy, I'm sure you're aware of him. He's another engineer. He's the CEO of enterprise Ireland. You're kind of similar, but you're completely the opposite. If it can you just describe the differences between enterprise Ireland and the ID because we all hear about them every day. But yeah, it can be confusing.

Michael Lohan  08:38

Yeah, well, of course Leo is a good is a former colleague here of ideas lattice, I've worked with Leo and nor Leo very well, and really, really good guy. So I suppose from from ideas perspective, we focus on foreign direct investment. So the companies we engage with are all foreign owned. So it's our role to go and first of all, to attract them to Ireland and the benefits of coming to Ireland, and then to help them to sustain and grow here and diversify their business and so forth. Whereas Leo and his colleagues in enterprise Ireland, are exclusively focused on indigenous Irish companies, helping them to grow startups, and indeed, globally, so. So if you want to call it we're both part of the Department of Enterprise and trade. So we sit in the same parent department. There's a lot of crossover between us and collaboration between us. But we're very clear. And our focus in this enterprise, Ireland is indigenous. And we look after the FDI side, and then of course, how we can actually merge those two elements together in terms of spillover in terms of global sourcing. So for example, there's lots of excellent indigenous Irish companies that are now embedded in another core to multinationals in terms of their supply chain, and no more salt and, and engineering space. You know, and we look ahead, whether it's in terms of construction, design, deliver your product and process, you know, all our ingrained, which was really excellent Irish indigenous companies across not just the FDA copies here in Ireland. But across our global networks, which is which is incredible to see.

Dusty Rhodes  10:04

I think when you're thinking about foreign investment into this country, brands that come to mind are apple and Marianas Google and all of the big air tech companies from around the world built primarily the states. What kind of other sectors invest in

Michael Lohan  10:17

Ireland? Yeah, so you're correct we have three sectors extra four sectors which are job predominantly yes was very heavy investors from an STI perspective so So technology is one so you know, that ranges from you mentioned apple at one level your to Intel, and you know, whichever are significant investor and capital investor garland so, so ranges from everything from hardware and software to unplowed to big service providers across the telecom industry. So you have dashboard gamblers from a technology and consumer and content, you know, the large platform companies go there every day. And of course, that we have a very strong sector and as well as international financial services. So, so I think the establishment of the IFC in Ireland, you know, was was was groundbreaking and was formed with the Oh, that was great foresight at the time of the Irish of the Irish government to actually have an alternative to London or indeed to Frankfurt. And we've seen the benefit of that in terms of what the industry that we've grown here that that Ireland now is, is a real location of strain for international financial services. The third sector, obviously, then his life sciences and your that's biopharma pharma, and medical device deal, massive fuel and you know, in terms of investment, both in terms of capital, it regionally spread it's in virtually every county in Ireland has a life sciences, either company or sub supplier associated with it. And then they're highly innovative and and invest in in strong r&d and under really good collaborators. And then I suppose our our fourth segment, then is what we call our high value engineering segments. So that can vary from anything from automotive industry, to you know, Leeper, you're producing large cranes from Ireland. So you have a very broad diverse of engineering companies that sit in that, but the key to them is that they're all innovative based, looking to the future looking to the to the established or r&d centers, here's what

Dusty Rhodes  12:07

I'm delighted to hear that one of them is high value engineering sector, not that I'm hanging my hat anywhere in particular, but can you give me an example, from the last whatever, six months or a year of a project that came in?

Michael Lohan  12:18

Yeah, so we've had, we've had a few. And so if you look at Lufthansa in in challenge, actually bringing in a significant MRO activity there. And in terms of servicing, we've had quite a few actually supporting, as I mentioned, the semiconductor industry as well, which is growing, and, and obviously, growing our EO across Europe. And if you look at the sub supply base, that that exists for the life sciences industry, you know, world leading companies here supporting, as I mentioned earlier, not just to Irish sites, but internationally supply indoor sites with with our products and services. And that's been key. So we've been very fortunate in Ireland to be able to attract and support and maintain those, those entities here.

Dusty Rhodes  12:58

On the opposite end of success, you know, because it's not all easy. What kind of challenges does the IDA face them when it comes to securing investments, one of the problems you encounter?

Michael Lohan  13:09

Yeah, so the landscape for FDI is, is intensely competitive. And, you know, sometimes it can be hard maybe for for everyone to understand this, that you'll well we go to compete for an investment in the sector, as I mentioned, the reality of it is, is that in most cases, you have competing geographies, and you know, in the four corners of the world, looking to win that same investment or to learn to see those investments in their jurisdiction. So, so at an international level, the competition actually has has probably intensified over the last 18 months or 24 months. And in particular, that's the how is that manifesting itself, it's manifesting itself in in the context of the industrial policies now being adopted, both within the US or within Europe, as well, and indeed, in the fairies has altered. So we're seeing a higher percentage, I suppose, urban center being offered in certain circumstances. And we've seen that today in such dire react in the US to the chips act that's being proposed in Europe. So that landscape has certainly changed. I think, from an Ireland perspective, we need to be conscious of that, as well. Of course, if we look locally, then we have to look at it as you know, our own, you know, we have been very successful for the last decade plus in terms of FDI, in terms in terms of economic prosperity in Ireland, in general, our population is growing, you know, our enterprise base, both foreign and indeed, indigenous have grown. And that leads us to I suppose we have, if you want to call it the challenges of success, and those challenges, as you know, they're well documented, you know, our housing capacity or infrastructure capacity to meet future growth. There are key elements that we have to continue to address and make sure that we have adequate plans in place for the next generation of investment.

Dusty Rhodes  14:59

Well, I mean, the housing crisis, as you said, is one of the things how do investors when they're looking at Ireland's because you need to house workers, they need accommodation. And it's so hard to find these days. How do investors look at those things?

Michael Lohan  15:11

Yeah, so I think what we're seeing from from investors is they're very aware of, of, let's call it the carrying capacity that Ireland has. But they're also very aware of the commitments from the state and from government in terms of resolving some of these elements. So you mentioned housing, and really look at housing, for example. And even even today's numbers, I think, from from a number of kommentarer, showed that you know, what, we are going to break 30,000 completions this year, which is really purchase really positive. The housing for all strategy is certainly key to that. I'd haven't done all of government approach. And as I said previously, I think what we're seeing now is an acceleration of abduct delivery, because as we see with our investment base at the moment, they're making decisions based on the next three, four and five year cycles of growth. And the housing for all strategies is, is really starting to show its momentum now. And I think that's given credibility to our offering. And even if we look at the last number of weeks, the number of announcements and investments that we've had publicly announced, you know, verify the fact that, you know, there's trust in our system that we can deliver, when we commit to delivering in terms of infrastructure, such as true housing, that we will, that will follow through. And I think that's what investors are confidence on. There's a trust that are low, but actually meet those demands.

Dusty Rhodes  16:28

Do you think that engineering as a subject in itself is an issue? Well, not an issue, but it is something that investors specifically consider but what's available here.

Michael Lohan  16:37

So I think you're correct, or there is actually a number of things that investors consider but but talent, uh, you know, and the availability of STEM graduates and STEM talent in particular, is particularly, it's particularly important. And while we were fortunate in Ireland, when we look at the statistics, in terms of our STEM graduates in terms of, first of all, the quantum, the quality, the diversity of of those STEM graduates are all positives. And then we also, of course, have the added bonus of being open an attractive location for for foreign graduates and indeed, talented individuals to come and be part of the ecosystem here in Ireland. So that's a very strong proposition that Ireland has to offer. And in some cases, almost a unique proposition that nit that isn't replicated around the world. And as I said earlier, we're fortunate in Ireland that if we look at the engineering disciplines that we have in Ireland, those core engineering disciplines that we have here are world renowned in terms of the quality in terms of delivery, at some of the companies that we have here, you're delivering, not just here in Ireland, but delivering internationally, that is a unique element. And I think, in the last two decades, in particular, from my time in IDA, that's been a marked, I suppose, differentiator between our proposition that was a decade ago to what our proposition is, today, we in Ireland are seem to be leaning at the front edge of that technology of that innovation of that deployment. I think that comes down to the skills base that we have, or when in doubt, I think is to engineering resources that's available to us.

Dusty Rhodes  18:06

And what is it? Do you think that makes Irish engineers stand out?

Michael Lohan  18:11

I think there's a few things that actually make Irish engineers and Irish talent stand out. Number one is I think we have an inherent curiosity. And we always want to strive to deliver and to improve. And, and you know, I hear this directly from our client companies, or our go to CEOs and CTC CTOs, applying companies, and that's the work but the workforce in Ireland is unique in terms of their ability to take complex issues, and to deliver them, you know, in a very simple manner, actually. So it goes back to that everything we talked about being solutions oriented is and I think what we have in Ireland, we have that uniqueness in us that we actually see problems as a real opportunity. And we don't take the status quo as the way things should be always don't we actually can can see different means of delivery. And more importantly, we actually can bring those to fruition and implement them. And I think that's what really sets Ireland apart in terms of that if you want to call it that human capital and intellect that we have from from an engineering and the process perspective,

Dusty Rhodes  19:15

quality people then might sum it up, but quality people come with quality price tags, how do we make ourselves competitive on the on the financial side?

Michael Lohan  19:23

Yes. So so you're correct, though. Quality doesn't it's not about being expensive. I think there's a cost associated quality and that cost brings value. And when we look at your if we think about the the workforce and activities that's happened in Ireland, you know, we have some we have products everything from if you want to call it almost disposable consumer products that are manufactured in Ireland, but are manufactured, highly automated, digitize so therefore the unit cost is controlled and managed so so that's where technology can come to the fore where expertise can come to the fore and the tinkers while the other side. Just remember that, you know, talented people bring new innovations and new products to market, as well. So So you have that balance between, you know, its value versus cost. But you also rice, you know, we also have to be mindful of competitiveness, because I go back to my earlier conversation, we have to compete. And, you know, not just greenfields, investments are competed for every investment is competed for, whether it's an expansion, whether it's a new mandate, all of those have to be competed for. So therefore, competitiveness and material, our competitiveness, and productivity is key to us.

Dusty Rhodes  20:33

It's a really good point. And I'm going to ask you this about the perspective of somebody who's working in engineering, and they're looking at their salary, or they want to move up the ladder or something like that, instead of looking at the dollar cost, or the euro cost, or whatever it happens to be, should you be kind of thinking about, well, what is the value that I'm bringing, rather than the price? So what everything you were saying there? Does it apply just as much to the human being?

Michael Lohan  20:57

When, you know, I think, let's be honest, our good friend, our Excel spreadsheets will only measure one dimension, which is cost. We're all familiar with that. Right? Yeah. And we could be subject to data. In fact, we have, I may have done it myself on a few occasions. But that's one measure, right. And when we go back to it, that can also we as Ireland, let's be honest, we've moved, as I said earlier, you're our our proposition in Ireland is very different now than it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago, our proposition is based on innovative products, innovative people delivering high quality and therefore bringing high margin and value to your business. And let's be honest, that doesn't come for free, nor show this, I think there's a value in that. And I think that's what you we have to assess and, and be conscious of is that, that ultimately, where that actually, if you want to call it where the rubber hits the road, for industry is when you see the investments, and you see the scale of investment and the brands that are investing in Ireland, it doesn't matter whether you're in life sciences, or in technology or in financial services, you know, those brands are investing here because they see value creation, they see impact on moral more so as wide as remember is, they're also seeing real leadership skills that they are developing in Ireland and leading from Ireland being deployed across their organizations globally as well. So so value comes in many different forms is not just product or service. It's also people as leadership as delivery as

Dusty Rhodes  22:21

I've noticed that myself a that, you know, kind of there's certain customers who are kind of they're watching the pennies are particularly when you're looking at a business to consumer kind of stuff, like you know, but when you're dealing with large brands and large multinational companies, I don't want to say that they're not penny pinchers. But it doesn't mean that they are Flowdock with it with with a cash they do watch where they're spending it, but they do value value, strain sentence, but I get what you're saying,

Michael Lohan  22:47

I get what you're saying. I'm not saying that they're going to spend every dime, they have rice to do that. Right. But But there's a difference between cost and value. And I think once if you end up in under cost argument, okay? That's that's never a good position. No matter who you are, or where you are, you have to be in the value side. And so the question is, how we bring value, what that value looks like, how you monetize it, how you deliver us? Yeah, that's

Dusty Rhodes  23:13

exactly what I'm hoping people might think about after listening to the podcast, and kind of continuing then on that strand of thinking, trend, thinking about people's careers and stuff like that. Do you think we need more emphasis on upskilling? And continuous learning within engineering?

Michael Lohan  23:29

I would think so. Yeah. And the bonus, I could say this from a point of my own experience. You know, it's a bit like you, you come through an engineering discipline or engineer, or course, and no, I gotta say this, no, it might be controversial, but we tend to do a lot of hours or more in, in our academic cycle, maybe in comparison to other others. So there's, it's a heavy, it's a heavy workload, that heavy commitment. And most people when they come out of getting their primary degree or whatever, are actually said, I'm done. Thanks very much. I don't want to see another another piece of textbook. But the harsh reality of it is I think what's important is if we want to evolve ourselves, the important thing is that there's always areas of new knowledge, we can add that I'm not saying you have to go back and do for Masters in the role. And because I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But what I do think there's lots of things you can add to her, either your to bring you personal development. And the case is, for example, if I go back to my own example, know, I mentioned Nortel Networks. As part of Nortel Networks, I got an opportunity to have some personal development rooted on the business school. It exposed me to elements of business models of economics, you know, which, if I'm honest, I really wasn't exposed to before and in any real sense. And that just gives me a different perspective on the world as well in terms of what makes the world tick, how things are connected together. And I would encourage anyone, no matter where you are in your career, and in fact, I'm no different today than I was 10 or 15 years ago. I have to continue to be curious I have to continue to look to Where I can I can, I suppose, add additional strengths to my offering. And that's something we should continue to do. And I think, as a population, we may not be the strongest advocates of lifelong learning. But we certainly should be. And I certainly would, because I think, as I look back myself at the moment, you know, and they don't all have to be, if you want to call it certified creditors, there's lots of areas you can do from a personal development bank's perspective. And of course, there's lots of other areas you can bring in, in terms of, you know, wellness, you know, diversity, there's lots of other elements that can complement your, your base skills, your technical skills, r&d, job leadership skills.

Dusty Rhodes  25:39

So are you telling me that Michael, that as the CEO of one of the biggest state agencies, with the idea that you at the top there are also thinking of upskilling and continuous learning for yourself?

Michael Lohan  25:48

Oh, I certainly am. Yeah, so so so that personal development plan is important that the challenge, which it is, of course, for all of us is carving out the time, and let's be honest, to do that. And that can be a challenge. And that's where you have to be disciplined, you know, uncertainly, that's something that I've you know, I have to do myself is I have to set out, realistically, one or two elements that I can do over probably a 24 or 36 month period, I'm not going to do any more than that. So I just need to be realistic and be targeted.

Dusty Rhodes  26:19

Tell me about STEM subjects, because you mentioned that earlier, and kind of one of the things that I hear in engineering is trying to get talent into the industry is just a nightmare. But trying to get female talent into the industry is is just crazy. Where are we? Where do we stand from your point of view? Where do we stand with, you know, kind of females getting involved with STEM subjects? What's working? What isn't?

Michael Lohan  26:43

Where do we stand? I think we're making progress. But we have a long way to go. And to be truthful, as the father of two daughters, I failed miserably myself. So I'm in no position to, to to give advice, despite all of that. And why is that? And because, you know, again, I think we have to show this as a viable and open alternative. And I think, you know, again, I can give you from my own experience of this, I think, is that that's where the challenge is, it can't be seen to be a barrier it can't be seen to for young girls, we have to, we have to give your positive exposure to STEM subjects earlier, you know, the biggest problem is fear, or the total fear against some STEM subjects, you know, and then if you think about maths, you know, as to you know, others maths versus nosh and all those elements. But you know, we have to get away from that. And we have to sort of try and break down those perceptions or barriers that are there for all right, and I think it's particularly and the pronounced for females. And I think that's something we need to do more of now there is some great work happening as well, we have to recognize that, like the Irish group, in terms of foundation, in terms of what they're doing is fabulous, I attended the session, transit was a pre COVID or post COVID. I forget, but but in car, and it was it was brilliant to see all of those young, young students, female students, as part of a massive, you know, event in Cork, where you had multiple number of companies that are showing off the opportunities or the career progression, we need to do more of that. And I think when I say we, I think industry needs to help in that context as well, because I think the more we can get those messages out there. And the more we can show that there's a path here in terms of career, but more importantly, that there's our rewarding, fulfilling and diverse career that you can get through STEM subjects, you can design the next product that might be save a patient's life, no at one level, or you could create you could be you're constructing a major a major investment project, or infrastructure project, or indeed a component that goes into some part of a spacecraft. So there's everything in between in terms of that opportunity. The question is, are we telling the story strong enough, often enough? And are we showing enough leadership to make that happen?

Dusty Rhodes  28:59

And if I haven't, right, what I wish do is they're more or less kind of telling that story of STEM subjects in a positive light specifically to young women who are coming up through the secondary system and trying to get them into the third level of education. That's correct. Yeah. Good, good. Good. I wish that it is there is a website. Absolutely. Check it out. Because as Michael says, they've done some amazing stuff. And if you have an engineering firm, you might get involved. Only good things are gonna come out of it. However, Michael, I'm not gonna let you off the hook. Because you did say that in this area. You're a failure. Why?

Michael Lohan  29:29

Yeah, why? Yeah. Well, it's, it's interesting. Well, you haven't met my two daughters. Yeah, yeah. But but you know, why? And like everything else in life, right? I think I can't, like I or any other parent for that matter. And I can only speak for myself, right? My kids are can't be declared it wants to be they have to have their own career. And all I could do was try and provide them with with the options though, the both have actually gotten into education, that element so hopefully mic preamps that bring the next generation forward in that context. But you know, it's a bit like, I always got that when you might like that, or you might be good to have, but I'm not. And I'm like, Well, you can be, here's how you deal with but again, I think a hometown to the influence that you have early on in your career. And from my own perspective, I know that that, you know, we can all remember probably, that that teacher who actually helped us through and medicine, or helped us to understand ourselves physics, or chemistry, or maths or whatever it might be, right r&d, that lecture that actually, you know, it was that high moments, no, I got it, right, we have to create more of those moments, I think, for all of our young people, and especially for females and stem,

Dusty Rhodes  30:40

the thing I find about being a parent is that there is no book or there's no right or wrong, and you just you kind of you don't just learn your way through it, you struggle your way through it, and try and learn as best as I like, I completely get what you're talking about, like, you know, and you can just kind of guide them. And once once they're off doing whatever it is they're happy with. That's that's the main thing. But now that you've got a little bit of experience under your belt, how would you have done it differently with your daughters to try and maybe get them interested? Would you have done anything differently?

Michael Lohan  31:07

Yeah, if I'm honest, probably could have, you know, so. So it, maybe I could have done more, you know, outside of that call the formal educational system to expose them more to the opportunity, if possibly, I suppose though, the context is like, it's a bit like, in my experience, see, and it's probably better to and can if you want to call it teaching or preaching for the ones that are better Ward, so I think the more we can expose young young adults to the opportunity, and I'll give you an example, for that. I remember, my, my daughter has taken a trip as part of continued waving transition year. But actually, they ended up going to Microsoft's Office in Dublin and apostolic. Now, I tell you, I never heard more about Microsoft and the importance of it, because they were just blown away with everything in terms of the environment. But it probably was four years, two days, truth be told, that really probably needs to happen, in my view, probably earlier for those cohort because they probably had too many preconceptions and anti process. But stata had a major impact in terms of just the space, what to do with the technology that are deploying it, the more we can expose, at an earlier age, the possibilities and opportunities start to raise across our industry. spheres. I think the better I think there can't be a downside from that. Personally,

Dusty Rhodes  32:29

that is an absolutely brilliant point. Because I think transition year is an amazing year for anybody and as you say, just to open you up to new experiences, but the fact you are saying that it's too late, oh my God, you're right. They're teenagers of that stage, they already know everything. They have a grasp of the same things anyway. So if you had that, like, I mean, if you had a year, possibly between the end of primary before they go into secondary war, or maybe there was something in sixth class or something like that, where they were deliberately brought out on day trips to the likes of Microsoft, whatever it is, that that could be a thing.

Michael Lohan  33:05

It's like the young scientist space, you know, it's the area where you can I think the earlier we intervene, and know and it's not gonna be for everyone, right? Let's be honest, either, right? That's pointing to area we give exposure and give experience, the better chance we have of actually bringing that true, I would think so. So the more we can promote that, the more that, you know, I think if companies are listening this to my ask who says what, what can we do as an individual company that could, you know, tap into the six local schools around this as a starting point, and you know, have everyone done their six local schools, before long, every school would be covered. And you'd find that you'd have a network where things would start to move as to wanting to really happens in Ireland is, momentum can happen quite quickly. And connections happened very quickly in Ireland. So, you know, if, if that was the case, and we could get companies, as I say, taken on one or two or six spoons, whoever it might be, we could see a change in inside of it inside of a decade.

Dusty Rhodes  34:00

This is gonna have to stop you there because you give me way too many brilliant ideas. All right, let's get back to the IDA. One of the things that you're very passionate about is regional opportunities in Ireland and expanding outside of Dublin. Why?

Michael Lohan  34:19

Why What does the number of reasons why and I think first of all, from if we think about from a narrative perspective, getting balanced regional development is critically important for us as a state and as a nation and as as a culture and as a society and as I think we've seen the real benefits of that and it's amazing you look at the the growth of centers such as Galway Galway is a recognized center globally for medical device you know, it's incredible you know, that you know, we have we're competing with a Minnesota of the world is actually Galway is in that same in that same space in terms of scale and you look as you know, the western seaboard. glimmery transformation at aspect has happened in Limerick on the back of a number of key investments for trauma Life Sciences perspective and a financial services perspective has has really revolutionized the whole West Coast and the Midwest, in particular. So I think I can say the same for slide one says the same for Waterford in terms of doors investments, and indeed for the Midlands. So we've had really strong investment. And what does that do? It, it does a number of things, actually, first of all, if we think about what we just talked about the next generation of talent, it gives that next generation of talent opportunity actually to live and stay in their communities, it gives that opportunity for that talent actually, to be in their in their local, academic and, and universities. And that's why I think the current scale of our universities and regional universities are so important for us, as we look to technological universities to view the future, we now have clusters built across our regional areas, so that there's multiple benefits from a society perspective, from an economic perspective, and indeed, from an enterprise perspective, because it opens up all of that skill base that you can make available. And of course, then there's also the fact that, you know, it keeps communities vibrant. And it gives a counterbalance, as we know, to Dublin, and of course, the other elements we have to consider as well as in make sure that we can use all of our infrastructure across the country, you're in in an appropriate manner as well. So there are many, many benefits accruing from from having a balanced strategy, which we have from an FDI perspective

Dusty Rhodes  36:25

of all the FDI investment last year, what kind of percentage would you say went to Dublin and what percentage went outside?

Michael Lohan  36:31

Yeah, so we have says a public target actually, that we over this current strategy period of we will have 100 investments and total 400 of which will be in outside of Dublin, and we're currently tracking on are just slightly ahead of that figure. So, so 50% of our, what we're bringing into Ireland is actually outside of Dublin. And that said, I suppose we were probably the only agency to actually make that sort of commitment from a regional perspective, you know, so we put our color near their color to the mass and number of years ago, and that we've committed to DAX, and we've, we've put our money as well into that investment. So we've led off with, with our property program to make sure that we have your scholars are receiving an environment that actually attracts investment as well. So so making sure we have those business parks, making sure we have facilities ready for companies to go so. So like, it's not just enough to say if you actually have to deal with and we've led in the front from doing that as well, that continues to be successful for us. And that could continue to be our, our focus and over the over the next strategy term as well.

Dusty Rhodes  37:35

Finally, Michael, if you were to look back at yourself, and you were talking to your younger self, what what advice would you give yourself as a 20 or 25, or even a 30 year old?

Michael Lohan  37:47

I'd say the advice I give to myself is take every opportunity that comes and to actually trust yourself because you know, probably as you start your career, you have doubts as to you know, is that the right decision? Or should I speak here or you'll I think have trust in yourself. And I think the other thing is your advice to myself is learn as quickly as you can how to how to interact and engage with others because the success your success is going to be based on how you engage with your with your peers, how you can influence and negotiate. I think the more you can actually hone that area in your career, the more you can benefit from a clearer

Dusty Rhodes  38:26

Michael Lohan, CEO of the IDA and engineer thank you so much for talking to us today.

Michael Lohan  38:33

Thank you Dusty a pleasure.

Dusty Rhodes  38:35

If you'd like to find out more about Michael and some of the topics we talked about today, including iWish you'll find notes and links in the show notes area of your player right now. And of course for information on all engineering topics across Ireland and career development opportunities for yourself. There are libraries of information on our website at engineersireland.ie That's it for our episode today. The podcast was produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland to click the Follow button on your podcast player so you get access to all our past and future shows automatically. Until next time from myself Dusty Rhodes. Thank you for listening

Water Infrastructure is a hugely important sector here in Ireland, and it has many challenges on the horizon, including everything from climate change to infrastructure demand.

Today, we're finding out more about the future of that water infrastructure and where engineers will play a crucial role in ensuring its success.

Our expert today is at the centre of the industry and has experience working on massive projects in Ireland, the UK and Asia. He is CEO of Uisce Éireann and a fellow of Engineers Ireland, Niall Gleeson.

Listen below or on your podcast player!

Things we spoke about:

1:22 Working on infrastructure projects abroad

04:29 Moving from on the ground engineering to management

06:41 Water supply challenges in Ireland

09:49 Maintaining drinking water safety

11:30 Sourcing more water supplies for rural and urban areas

14:02 How wastewater is managed

15:18 Future-proofing in Uisce Éireann

18:05 Climate change considerations in water management

20:52 Engineering roles in the water sector

23:52 Driving innovation while managing the day to day

28:57 Uisce Éireann’s role in future infrastructure

30:56 What lessons helped Niall move up the ladder

Guest details

Niall Gleeson is Chief Executive Officer of Uisce Éireann, the national utility responsible for providing public water and wastewater services throughout Ireland. Niall leads the organisation in the delivery of safe, clean and environmentally compliant water services to households and businesses across Ireland. He has been instrumental in driving Uisce Éireann’s safety, sustainability and employee engagement strategies and in 2021 led the organisation in securing the provision of an historic €1.1 billion in capital investment funding, which is vital to developing Ireland’s critical water services infrastructure, protecting public health and supporting social and economic development.

Prior to joining Uisce Éireann, Niall was Managing Director for Veolia Ireland and Alstom Ireland and held a number of senior leadership roles with world-leading infrastructure companies including General Electric and Shanahan Engineering. He has significant experience in the finance, construction, commissioning and maintenance of transport and utility assets, and has led major infrastructure projects across Ireland, the UK and Asia. Raised in Dublin, he holds a degree in engineering from the Dublin Institute of Technology.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/niallgleeson/
https://www.water.ie/about/careers/

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

The problem-solving is one of the big things, engineers are  in demand not just for engineering trades, but banking or all that kind of stuff. It’s the ability to look at a problem and work out a logical process to get a resolution, starting at the start and working your way methodically through problems is a real key, and it’s a trait that most engineers have. - Niall Gleeson

A lot of us are very solution focused, especially engineers, so we're trying to solve people's problems for them. Quite often, you just have to listen. They talk themselves through the problem and they almost solve it for you while they're sitting in front of you. So it's not always reacting. I think that's probably what I would teach my younger self, listen more. - Niall Gleeson

We have an awful lot of stuff that goes into toilets that shouldn't go into toilets like wet wipes.. They say they're biodegradable, but they're not. We pull about 60 tons of what we call rags out of the inlets of Ringsend every month. - Niall Gleeson

Over the next 25 years our plan is to improve drinking water, get a very reliable source, provide more where there's growth and make sure that the likes of Dublin can continue to grow, and other urban areas. All of the projections are that the population is going to keep growing.  - Niall Gleeson

We have to do our day to day job and we have to deliver water every day, so innovation can be tricky. But our sustainability program is driving a lot of innovation, we're looking at solar panels on the roofs of buildings and things like biodiversity. - Niall Gleeson

We're crying out for engineers at the moment. We have a huge recruitment programme going on. As part of our transformation to, the Uisce Eireann transformation program. One of the challenges we have is with our own teams and with the local authorities, there's a lot of gray hair. I have it myself, but there's a lot of people who are approaching retirement. So we need a new batch of people coming through. - Niall Gleeson

Keywords

#water #engineers #wastewater #drinkingwater #rivers #climatechange

Transcription

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

Dusty Rhodes  00:00

Right now on AMPLIFIED, we're about to learn about supplying something as basic as water to a rapidly growing population.

Niall Gleeson  00:07

We're crying out for engineers at the moment. So we have a huge recruitment program going on. There's a lot of people who are approaching retirement. So we need a new batch of people coming through to learn from the existing people, but also take over, you know, the operations and the construction of those sites. So yeah, we need graduates we need young engineers who have what a few years experience and an even more senior engineer so across the board we're looking for, for engineers, there's a lot of hiring going on in our industry.

Dusty Rhodes  00:32

Hello there, my name is Dusty Rhodes and you're welcome to AMPLIFIED, the Engineers Journal podcast. Water Infrastructure is a hugely important sector here in Ireland, and it has many challenges on the horizon, including everything from climate change to infrastructure demand. Today, we're finding out more about the future of that water infrastructure and where engineers will play a crucial role in ensuring its success. To tell us more is a man at the center of the industry. His engineering degree from DIT brought him huge experience on massive projects in Ireland, the UK and Asia. He's also held many senior leadership roles with world leading infrastructure companies. And we're proud to say that he is a fellow of Engineers Ireland. I'm delighted to welcome the CEO of Uisce Eireann, Niall Gleeson, hello Niall.

01:18

Hey, Dusty, Thanks for Thanks for having me on.

Dusty Rhodes  01:22

Listen, I want to chat about the problems that we're facing in Ireland with water and where Uisce Eireann sits in that mix. And of course, the role that engineers have in solving the problems we face. But first, tell us a little bit about your your own career, you've worked on some fairly, very substantial infrastructure projects abroad, what would you say are the highlights?

Niall Gleeson  01:41

Yeah, I started my the real start of my career was when I joined General Electric who, every year back in the sort of 80s and 90s, they hired about 15 to 20 Irish engineers, when we were cheap and plentiful, you know. And we traveled all over the world installing power plants, and equipment for General Electric, so a fantastic job in coming out of 80s. Ireland, it was, you know, huge opportunity and got to see Alaska, I got to see Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, so and Poland, so worked in all those countries. And it was a fascinating job. So I don't know, is there one particular one, I suppose one that I brings to mind is actually back in the UK, we had a major projects and the equipment failed. I mean, these were large 100 ton rotors spinning at 3000 rpm, and they started to lose bolts. And that whole program of you know, it was an innovation that's led the innovation innovation on the that equipment meant that they were under severe pressure and severe stress and the design didn't work. But the whole program around, you know, retrofitting those and fixing it was fascinating. We were at one stage flying rotors across the Atlantic on Antonov aircraft to get them repaired quick enough. So yeah, a good sense of scale, I suppose. As well, back in those days, it was no email, no mobile phones. So you became pretty resilient and became pretty good at adapting and dealing with ambiguity and you know, having to make decisions yourself in the middle of China when you couldn't get an answer. And you couldn't just download the solution off the internet or get pick something off email. So it made a lot more resilient and a lot more thinking for yourself, you know, give me

Dusty Rhodes  03:19

an example of that being in the middle of nowhere and needing something massive and having to have it here tomorrow.

Niall Gleeson  03:24

I do remember in I was on the call off the coast of Venezuela on a project and it was one of the early new technology. But we were still dialing up at 1200 baud rate. I don't know if I remember doing that. And you heard the little Binkley noises No like a stuff. So I downloaded a patch for the software, which took about eight hours to download on a phone line. And the phone bill was around $800 I think you know what I mean? So but we it's eight as a couple of weeks waiting for a CD to arrive from from the States with it. So one of the first patches downloaded, I would I would like to claim, you know,

Dusty Rhodes  03:58

I'm not gonna try to do you think they're your engineer training, uh, you know, kind of helped you with all of this.

Niall Gleeson  04:03

I think certainly the, you know, the problem solving is, you know, you really, that's one of the big things that engineers I mean, they're in demand, not just for engineering trades, but banking or lack of staff has the ability to look at a problem and work out a logical process to get a resolution. I think that's really important starting at the start and, and working your way methodically to problems is a real key for a trait that most engineers have, you know,

Dusty Rhodes  04:29

let me ask you about going from, you know, working as an engineer and then going into management because I have huge experience of that what at what point did that a lot of the projects you've spoken about was that as management or were you working as an engineer?

Niall Gleeson  04:41

Yeah, I suppose that large project I talked about with the with the rotor sailing, I was a commissioning engineer at that one. So not many people working for me and it was the tail end of the job and they wanted someone to take over the lead just to finish off the sort of final few months of the job. Some of the machines had been working fine up to that point. So I took over the lead expecting this, would you just be a nice easy job and run down the project and then disappear. And then the crisis hit. And I was finding myself in the hot seat with, you know, companies VPS ringing me up saying what's going on? And what's happening? And what are you guys doing over there and so stressful. The other thing I found is my peers are always entirely cooperative, you know, because I think it's one of the things when you step into management, and you've been working alongside people for a while, there's sometimes a little bit of pushback, you know, people don't really naturally and that was something that I hadn't dealt with before. But you know, working with try and get your peers to, to work with you and to say, Okay, I've moved into the more senior position. And now I'm at now I'm telling you what to do. You don't like it, but we got to keep with this is what we got to do. And that was something that it was a steep learning curve in that sense.

Dusty Rhodes  05:50

If you were to go back in time and talk to yourself at that younger age, what what advice would you give yourself now.

Niall Gleeson  05:57

And I think it's, you know, along the lines of, a lot of it is about listening to people. And a lot of you know, listening to the problem, quite often people come in to you, they have a problem. And really, they just want to talk through it, a lot of us are very solution focused, especially engineers, so we're trying to solve people's problems for them. Quite often, you just have to listen. And they talk themselves selves through the problem. And they they almost solve it for you while they're sitting in front of you, you know, so it's, it's not always reacting. I think that's probably what I what I would teach, teach my younger self and listen more, and, you know, let people talk things through.

Dusty Rhodes  06:30

It's like men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, except it's engineers are from Mars. Yeah. Whereas, like, if you have a problem, I'll tell you how to fix it.

Niall Gleeson  06:38

Exactly. straightaway.

Dusty Rhodes  06:41

So you fear listen more, and that helps you progress up the line. Okay, cool. Listen, let's talk about water in Ireland, because one of the things we hear about with water in Ireland is that we need to protect our water supply. Is it in danger?

Niall Gleeson  06:57

You look at it even took me another last few days, we've seen flooding and cork and that so there's an abundance of water in the country, but But it comes at different times, we the way we use us and the way we source it, and the way we protect those sources, that's not in a great place. I mean, we do we use a lot of surface water, a lot of river water, lake water in Ireland, for our for our drinking water supplies, and between how we treat, you know, runoff, how pesticides, land spreading, and also our own treatment plants for on the west side, we are contributing to those resources not been in great condition. If you look at the EPA River Basin report, you know, water quality has been deteriorating. So I mean, inish air, we're working very hard to improve those wastewater treatment plants. We also want to work with landowners and farmers in that to try and look at what's happening upstream, how do we treat those? How do we prevent those pesticides and nutrients, too much nutrient going into the into the sources, and it's a big collaboration space, it's not something, as I say to people, it's not something that is Garin can fix with concrete and pumps, you know, it's, we can do a certain amount, but we need the entire communities to buy into protecting those water sources. And I think water because we have so much of it, it's not respected in our in the way, if you go to drier countries, you know, water is really treated differently.

Dusty Rhodes  08:18

So it's a case of we have the quantity, but it's the quality that you're worried about, and lots of other things that are affecting water that would you say that we use water from the land, as you say, from from rivers, so we don't necessarily get a lot of our water from wells, is that what you mean?

Niall Gleeson  08:34

It would be quite mixed. I mean, we've got 700 water treatment plants around the country, everything from ballymore uses, which supplies most of Dublin to, you know, a small well, that will supply 500 people, you know, out in rural areas. So they're quite different to so some are wells, but the vast majority of our our water is from surface water. So we do need to treat or you know, to work closely on treating all that kind of stuff. The other thing is with climate change, we are seeing you know, you're seeing deluge us, but you're also seeing much drier weather as well. So it's how do we protect those sources? How do we kind of store storing water is difficult, we have reservoirs in Dublin that, you know, people say, you know, why don't you make those bigger, but we have, you know, the vast reservoirs in stillorgan, that they will give us about 24 hour storage for the for the city, you know, so building, you know, weeks of storage is very expensive and not really practical. That's why we're looking at if you take var tree or you take Bula fuca those were enormous valleys that were flooded back in, back in, you know, when you could get when you could do that kind of stuff. But you know, it's not really practical nowadays to look at flooding valleys, it's just ecologically not the sensible thing to do. You know. So that's a challenge as well for us is protecting the sources all year round, leaving aside

Dusty Rhodes  09:49

rivers that flow through cities because you know, they just looked dirty, but I'm thinking of rivers that we see in the in the countryside. Is it safe to drink water directly from those rivers

Niall Gleeson  10:00

It's rarely safe to drink water directly from from any rivers. I mean, that's why, you know, it is expensive water treatment, we we take the water out, we filter it, it does vary, not complicated, but it's a laborious filtration process, then we would also chlorinate, and quite often we add UV at the end to really kill off all the microbes, you know. So that's why, you know, people would say, Why do you, you know, why do we have shortages, but it is processing that water and making sure it's safe to drink is quite complicated. And an expensive we, you know, a lot of chemicals involved a lot of dosing, and a lot of energy in those UV systems.

Dusty Rhodes  10:35

I'm asking a lot of silly questions, because I know very little about water. But what's the difference between water then that you've processed, and it's coming out of a tap and water that I buy in a bottle in the shop?

Niall Gleeson  10:45

Yeah, now not much difference. Actually, I would, I would recommend nobody drink bottled water. I mean, really, the tap water all around the country we the EPA test is it's all we regularly tested ourselves, and it's very safe to drink. And if it isn't safe to drink, we'll put on boil water notices, and you'll see some of those coming and going in areas that to me that gives you the confidence or it should give the public the confidence that we know what's happening with the system. So if we're saying the water is safe to drink, and there's no restrictions on it, then I would say you should never go out buy bottled water. Some people vied for taste. But to be honest, I think, you know, if you really don't like some people can taste the chlorine, just by a little filter. And you can get that taken out, you know, in a home filter. But it's always very safe and good to drink. So why waste your money on bottled water?

Dusty Rhodes  11:30

Yeah, and it's more environmentally friendly, because you're not using a plastic bottles all the time. Like, you know, it's fantastic. So we have the water system within Ireland, we've got lots of it with needs to be cleaned. One of the other problems, I think that we have in Ireland is that we have a huge urban rural divide. So you're getting water, I would imagine often in rural areas, and then you've got to transport it to to the city areas. How does that work?

Niall Gleeson  11:54

Yeah, well, I suppose if you again, if you take you know, the supplies for Dublin come from Wicklow and Caldera, you know, and so they and they are piped into the into the city. If you take the artery example, you know, before of archery was built, I think around 1860 of archery plant was built. And I'd recommend anyone to go out and have a look, I think you can visit uncertain times a year, but it's really interesting. The Victorian engineering was superb. And you know, prior to that people have been drinking, taking the water from the canals and it was filthy and caused a lot of disease and all that kind of stuff. So this, this basically is a is a filtration system that just runs through sand beds. We've just recently we've upgraded that plant and we've put in a brand new plant, but that ran from the 1860s up to sometime last year when it was when we decommissioned it and provided a substantial amount about 20% of the water for Dublin. So we do rely on rural areas providing our water and one of the one of the big asks we're going to be asking in the near future is to take water from the Shannon and Shannon is to me a giant, slow moving body of water, it's a giant reservoir for the country. And we will be asking, asking the you know the people have on the channel to allow us take water from the pool of food, if not from cooler folk or from partying and bring it up to Dublin we'll be treating it and partying and then piping it up to Dublin that is the plan and we're working our way through our various permissions on that. And there is definitely the city the urban dwellers are stealing the water from from the rural areas and will drain the champion and all that kind of stuff like we will take maximum about one or 2% of the flow in the channel. And then if you've seen the Shannon flowing recently, it's a tremendous river there's plenty of capacity. But the other thing to that project will take water all the way up to the Midlands. So we will be distributing into a rural areas and making big difference. And what we'll also do allow us to do is divert water that's currently being pumped into the city and Dublin will be able to divert some of those and pump those further sides of Archer might start to pump further south into Wicklow and then some of the sources up in north Dublin will pump north so it's a project for the Midlands and the east and it's definitely one that we hope the rural areas rural community around the Shannon where we're taking the offtake will will buy into you know

Dusty Rhodes  14:02

a lot of what we're talking about is getting clean water to people what about wastewater what qualifies as wastewater and how's it managed?

Niall Gleeson  14:10

Yeah, well, you know, anything when you flush your toilets, that's that's obviously wastewater and going into the into the a very complex system of drains. And also then you've got industrial wastes. So a lot of processing plants, a lot of pharmaceutical plants all would feed into our, into our networks, and then they would feed into our treatment plants. So you take the rings in plant, which is the biggest plant we have in the country, it deals with about 40% of the waste water in the country, that's dealing with enormous mix of you know, chemicals of whatever you put down the toilet in your house, and that's a real challenge too, because we have an awful lot of stuff that goes into toilets that shouldn't go into toilets like wet wipes, and and all that kind of stuff. They say they're biodegradable, they're not we pull about 60 tons of what we call rags out of the inlets of things end every month. It's a huge amount of MIT waste, solid waste material that's been put into the system unnecessarily, because really, you just throw it in the bin, and it would make life an awful lot easier and certainly reduce our costs and the taxpayers are paying our costs. So in the end, you're you'd be winning, you know, let's talk

Dusty Rhodes  15:18

about air. And specifically now, you know, we know there was a baptism of fire with Irish water, what changed when it became went from Irish water to escape Aaron?

Niall Gleeson  15:27

So if Garin was part of the or via group, so it was ourselves and gas networks, Ireland were joined together under this or via banner. So now, the issue air and Banner is the new entity is the new national authority. It's completely standalone, national authority utility for the country for provision of water. So that's the important thing. The other thing is, we've signed the framework agreements so that the water services staff and the local authorities will come across, under under the ich Garin banner. So, right now, we have about 30 of the 31 local authorities, the water services teams are under the management of each Garin staff. So it's like a merger of the old Irish water and the Local Authority staff coming together up together under a new banner, the SPR and banner, which is the national utility, but but we will have all these local operators and local people who have the local experience the local knowledge, and we'll be bringing the national sort of bringing in the European standards to the national drinking water tests, the wastewater tests and, you know, working together to, to make sure that the service that the communities get is second to none,

Dusty Rhodes  16:33

I was gonna ask you about that, again, these are things that you're planning, what are the goals for each get Aaron over the next 10 years.

Niall Gleeson  16:39

So we have, we still have, we still have, you know, certainly have some plans, some sorry, some towns and villages that are put are producing raw sewage into sea or the river. The aim is to get rid of those in the next couple of years, most of those have plans in place. And we will be getting, we'll have 95% of those reduced, but I think by the end of 2025. So that's the end of raw sewage going into either the sea or lakes, that's, that's a huge goal. The other one we have we do issue boil water notices on occasion. And there's some long term boil water notice that are very frustrating for people. And we are our aim is to get rid of all of those, we still may have some temporary boil water notices if there's an interruption in the plant or breakdown or extreme weather events. But ideally, we would take the vast majority of people off boil water notices, we have a project called the National Water Resources plan, which is basically has gone around and studied every single resource in the country. And that has been a huge exercise. And we've looked at sort of the resilience of those sources, what's going to what climate change is going to do to them. And the impacts, you know, what's the that area going to develop? Is it going to grow. And that's been a huge study, it's been open for consultation, people are fed into it. And that's our plan for what we're going to do with drinking water over the next 25 years. So that is to improve drinking water, get a very reliable source, provide more where there's growth and make sure that the you know the likes of Dublin can continue to grow, and other urban areas contingent on all of the projections or the population is going to keep growing. And

Dusty Rhodes  18:05

you mentioned climate change. And you know, we are seeing it very real as you know, kind of the weather that we've had this year, we've had glorious June, and then the opposite. And we've had floods kind of going into the winter and stuff like that is climate change, like something that you take very seriously.

Niall Gleeson  18:24

Yeah, we take it very seriously one from a sustainability point of view. So we're trying to make art, we are one of the biggest consumer of consumers of energy in the public sector. I mean, I think we're second the HSE only has because we we use huge amount of pumps and processes to actually process the drinking water and the wastewater. So we have a huge energy bill. And so we're trying to reduce that we're trying to take our energy from more renewable sources. But also we're seeing the impacts of climate change on our plants. So those very heavy rains on the drinking water plants, what you get is a lot of turbidity in the water, which is a lot of solids are mixed up in the water, a lot of if you imagine heavy rain going into River, it churns up everything that's in the in the in the riverbed and in the lake, in the lakes. So it makes our plants work an awful lot harder. So they, they some of them are can can struggle when we get those heavy rain events. But probably the biggest factor is the on the wastewater side. What we have in the original designs, and most of Europe has the same thing as we've got combined storm water and wastewater drains. So the in the vast majority of houses in your state and Dublin, the water that comes off your roof goes into the wastewater system. And the water that goes in off the road goes into the wastewater system as well. So when you get heavy, heavy rains, the wastewater system gets overloaded. And we have what are called storm water overflows. So rather than the water coming up to manholes, which is what would happen if we didn't have these. You have these overflows that allow the sewage, very dilute sewage to go out into rivers or rivers or directly into the sea through these overflow pipes. And that's one of the challenges that we're having where we're getting these more heavy deluge. And you can see it where people are talking about bathing water quality, and all that kind of thing. And sorry, people are becoming much more conscious because we're swimming all year round, actually swim all year round myself. So I'm in Dublin Bay. So I'm very conscious of the issue but as climate change, and as we get those more heavy event and rainfall events that is becoming a more acute problem, but to separate the two systems is a multi billion euro problem project. And I don't think we're, we're a long way for doing that. So what we've got to do is try and work with people upstream to sort of reduce those deluges reduce the, you know, maybe put in those stormwater butts in your house so that you can collect a certain amount of water before it starts overflow, instead of putting in tarmac or carbon lock, put in gravel, those kind of, we're working with the local authorities to see if we can allow more of that water to soak into the ground. Because as soon as it hits hard surfaces, it's straight into the drains and straight into the stormwater and that leads to the to the overflows.

Dusty Rhodes  20:52

And the when you're talking about big massive projects like that you need professional problem solvers that are engineers, what role do engineers play in the operation of each Garin?

Niall Gleeson  21:02

Yeah, look, we're very engineering heavy organization does enough, you know, between operations, you've got our construction site and our construction delivery side, they would be a lot of engineering design an upstream of that, you'd have an asset management team that we'd be looking at, where do we need to invest? What kind of equipment do we need to put in, then you have delivery, and then you have operations, all full with engineers, a lot of scientists in there as well let environment environmental people. So really, we have an awful lot of engineers, it's a great place for engineers to to work, I mean, from here, it's a fantastic area to work, you're delivering water for 4 million people a day, and you're taking their wastewater away. It's quite a fulfilling job. You know, it's it's a great place to work. But it's also very innovative, a lot of exciting stuff going on. So for engineers, I think we took 50 graduates in this year, not all engineers, probably about 20 engineers, but it is a good place to, to get experience and to grow and learn

Dusty Rhodes  21:54

what kind of skills make an engineer stand out in this particular sector.

Niall Gleeson  21:58

I do think I think problem solving skills, but I think you also need to be able to work with the community, we're very much you know, a people facing business, you know, when you're out there solving problems, or if there's leaks, or people are having discolored water, it's good for you to have a bit of a poor bit of the of the ability to talk to customers, and to explain in layman's terms, what are the issues because people don't really understand why, you know, why we're having a burst of Why's the water gun and when your water goes your head, it's it's a big deal. You know, it's there's a lot of stuff you can't do, you can't do now, most houses are supposed to have a you know, you have your water tank in the attic, and you're supposed to have that 24 hour storage. But regulation of plumbing isn't always great. And so sometimes when when the water runs out in the mains, people have problems immediately with, you know, showers and sinks that are fed from the main. So again, explaining those kinds of situations to people is, is useful. So a bit of rapport, I think, as well as being a good engineer.

Dusty Rhodes  22:49

If an engineer is listening to this today, and they're kind of thinking I want to get in on some really big projects. And this sounds like you know, very enticing, what kind of training should they have had up to this point? Or maybe what kind of continuous career development should they be looking at to be part of this Garin?

Niall Gleeson  23:07

Yeah, I look, I don't think there's a will. We have a lot of civil engineers, but we take mechanical, electrical, it's the engineering, discipline, the way you think, is the most important thing. I think, ability to change and be flexible, I think that's going to be really important going forward, you know that you are not soft innovation. As I've said to my own people, innovation is difficult, because the easiest thing for us to do is build the equipment we built last week, because we know it works. And we've delivered that. So trying to innovate trying to change. So it's tricky. So we want people coming in who are you know, entrepreneurial, and will think differently. And if we ask them to to work differently, and they'll, they'll, and change the way they're doing stuff. That's what we want, you know.

Dusty Rhodes  23:52

But I had something very similar when I went into RT first because I was entrepreneurial, or in the words of my manager, I was a troublemaker. And you always have this with a very large organization and people who've been there for decades and done things in certain ways. You're saying you want people to come in and shake that up a little, but it's kind of hard to do. So what's the reality of joining a really large organization and actually being able to have new ideas that you have being implemented?

Niall Gleeson  24:25

Yeah, look, a lot of it is because we have to do our day to day job and we have to deliver that water every day. Let's innovation can be tricky, but we are driving. Like our sustainability program is driving a lot of innovation. We're looking at, you know, solar panels on the roofs of buildings and that kind of stuff. We're also looking at, you know, things like biodiversity, so we want to put in more, you can put in what they call a constructed wetland, which is where you actually create because we are wetland that the wastewater flows through so there's no concrete, there's no pumps, there's no filters. It just literally goes through reedbeds very slowly and they're amazing for wildlife If they're amazing for plant life, and they suit populations of around 1000, to 2000, so small villages that can something, they're not really scalable beyond that, but when you get those the right factors, they're great. And for engineers, that's a real change in mindset, because we love pipes and pumps and concrete, you know what I mean? So, and tell them that you're putting in a bunch of plants there, and you got to pick the right plants. That's an anathema to some engineers, but it is, it is the way we need to start thinking of a mix of solutions, you know. So innovation is something that we were working very hard on. To me, it's looking at pilot projects and getting those to work and demonstrating them and then moving on. So I think you can, it is, you know, you can become institutionalized. But right now he's scared, this is quite dynamic, we've got a really good, we've got really good teams of people who are working to change things. And we've got such a, such a demand ahead, and so much work to do that we have to be innovative. Like, one of the things I'd love to see is, how do we fix pipe from the inside, because we've, we kind of keep digging holes at the rate we're doing. We've 64,000 kilometers of drinking water pipe around the country. So how can we possibly maintain that, by continuously digging up and ripping up pipes, we need to do somehow somehow work from the inside and, you know, through tunneling, or through whatever it is, and I don't know the solution. But somebody has to come up with that for me. And that's stuff we'd like to work on, you know. So you're

Dusty Rhodes  26:24

looking for people who are coming up with new ideas, and there is a fostering of new ideas within the organization, outside of the organization, you mentioned before to bring Irish drinking water up to EU standards. Are you getting innovation from in the EU and elsewhere in the world as to the quality of water and how we can do things better?

Niall Gleeson  26:42

Yeah, there's, I mean, there's lots of stuff going on. And we do we do, try and get me to talk to suppliers and see who's who's innovating and what's working. So yeah, all around Europe and around the world, there are there are people with with clever ideas, there's a lot of clever stuff around, there's an awful problem with leakage in the in the drinking water networks word about 36%. Nationally, as far as the leakage rates, which means a third of our water is going to waste, you know, which is a huge problem. But in Europe, the standard you know, the norm would be around 20%, which is still very high. So has water becomes more and more precious and the cost to make it becomes more and more expensive, looking at leakage and looking at clever ways to fix leakages because a real industry and the some really good stuff going on there like things like acoustic loggers where you put you literally listen to the pipes and see where the leaks are. And that kind of stuff, you know. So it's there's a lot of clever stuff, a lot of smart metering smart networks, they call them where you kind of you know exactly what's happening. We're a little bit away from that. But we're working towards getting those smart networks moving. So a lot of clever technology there as well. It's not just all, you know, digging holes in the ground.

Dusty Rhodes  27:49

No, it does. It sounds like there's a lot of innovation going on. There's a lot of change going on internally, and a lot of modernization which is going on and big problems which needs to be solved, which is fantastic. Do you think as you say you're very engineering heavy. Do you think you're going to be taking on more engineers in the immediate future?

Niall Gleeson  28:06

Definitely. Yeah. I mean, we're crying out for engineers at the moment. So we have a huge recruitment loan program going on. As part of our transformation to you know, the the scare and transformation program, we call it. One of the challenges we have is with our own teams and with the local authorities. A lot of there's a lot of gray hair. I mean, I have it myself, but there's a lot of people who are approaching retirement. So we knew we need a new batch of people coming through to to learn from the existing people, but also take over, you know, the operations and the construction of those sites. So yeah, we're definitely we need we need graduates, we need young engineers who with a few years experience and an even more senior engineer, so across the board we're looking for, for engineers and scientists and accountants and a lot of there's a lot of hiring going on in our industry. And the other area we're looking at is apprenticeships and technicians and those kinds of skills that we want to bring in more out as value.

Dusty Rhodes  28:57

Let me pull out a look at the bigger bigger picture because it can Aaron is just one of the as you say, you know, we've got power. We've got water, we've got the road networks and everything. Where does ishka Aaron's role sit in the building infrastructure to support the national economy?

Niall Gleeson  29:15

Yeah, look, I our friends in Northern Ireland water say there's no no cranes without drains. So we have an abundance of water, like I said at the start. So we should be able to attract industry that needs water. A lot of a lot of industries are very water heavy, but we need to make sure that the infrastructure is there to support that. So I think going forward that is going to be an area you know, as we maybe our tax benefits may not be as strong our national resource of water will will be a big selling point for the country. So definitely I think that will be a good point. But the reality is like a Dublin city without that water supply from the Shannon, towards the end of the decade or early in the next decade will be saying to people we can't take you can't build any more houses. We can't You can't we have no One more capacity for industry doubling this bowl as far as the you know, that we're taking 14% of the flow of the Liffey is being used by Dublin City, we're taking 40% of the river itself to for drinking water and process water. So that is not sustainable. We need it, we need an alternative supply. But, you know, how can you tell people that Dublin is stopped growing, that's just not a practical, that's just not practical. You know, I mean, people talk about, you know, diverting, make, you know, more spatial planning, putting the jobs in other parts of the country, but Dublin is not competing with cork, and Limerick, Dublin is competing with Frankfurt, and Birmingham, and, you know, not not necessarily Paris, but places like that, that that's where the competition that that's where we need to make sure that when we're when we're growing, or when, when we want to attract industry, or people into jobs, that, that we have a place that they can, they can get a house so they can that the industry can come in, and they'll del operate well with the water, you know,

Dusty Rhodes  30:56

finally, Niall to wrap up the podcast today I want to veer off into career progression and development. Because you've done very well starting off from, you know, kind of di t and then going up into into big projects, and then going into management, for people who are listening and that kind of thinking, I want to go more towards the top. What lessons have you learned yourself? That kind of helped you move up the ladder as at work?

Niall Gleeson  31:25

Yeah, look, you move from, I think the move from engineering from being an engineer, where you're kind of designing something or you're installing or fixing something, to moving into management, that's a big change in your in your head, you almost, you have to stop solving people's problems for them. So you know, you might as a more senior engineer, you might immediately say, Okay, I know that guy's problem, and I can tell them the answer. But actually, that's the wrong thing to do. First of all, you don't have the capacity anymore, because you've got lots of other people reporting to you. So you need people to solve problems themselves or to, to work themselves. So it's actually stepping back from the engineering side of things and becoming a team leader or showing the leadership. That's, that's a big transition. And I think that's something that people should learn. And it's hard to do. Because if you're, if you've got a technical speciality, or you, quite often we promote people based on their expertise. And the fact that they were a brilliant engineer, they become a 10 become a manager, that doesn't necessarily translate to being a great manager of people, you know. So it's, it's learning those, that scale of how to manage teams, and how to step back a little bit yourself and not solve the problems, but help the team solve the problems, you know,

Dusty Rhodes  32:36

and when was the first time you realize that?

Niall Gleeson  32:40

Yeah, I mean, I was I was up on a project in Finland, probably in one of my early projects, and there were, you know, there were problems with with the machine. And I was stepping into early with the commissioning engineer tried to solve the problem for him. And rather than, and at the same time, there was other problems having, you know, other other issues happening that I missed, because I was kind of doing the other thing I was going around, actually redoing wiring and things of that, you know what I mean? Because I, you know, I felt that was more capacity, but it wasn't really the management things that I should have been doing, I should have been looking at issues that were happening and issues around cost, and all that kind of stuff that I had probably missed as well. So from the commissioning point of view, everything went great. But from a budget point of view, we, we didn't do quite as well. So that was somewhere that was a an area where I kind of learned the lesson. Now it wasn't, wasn't huge losses, or huge money, but it was kind of you know, don't get into the detail in it.

Dusty Rhodes  33:34

It is a huge change in mindset where you're using your experience and your skill. And you're obviously you could be a very talented engineer, to not solve other people's problems. But to help use all that experience you have to help them figure out whatever the problem is, or to point them in the right direction. It's, it's, it's quite a thing, but it's worked very successfully for you. So congratulations on on all of your success. Also. Thank you Niall, for a fascinating interview today. I mean, it really has been eye opening as to the whole operation of Uisce Eireann and the amount of things you have to do and the scale of it and the amount of engineers you have in there as well working with it. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast and just sharing a little bit of time telling us everything.

Niall Gleeson  34:17

Great, thanks, Dusty. It's been a pleasure. Thanks very much.

Dusty Rhodes  34:21

If you'd like to find out more about Niall and some of the topics we talked about today, you'll find notes and link details in the show notes area of your player right now. And of course you'll find more information and exclusive advanced episodes of our podcast at engineersireland.ie. Our podcast today was produced by dustpod.io. If you'd like more episodes, do click the Follow button on your podcast player so you get access to all of our past and future shows automatically. Until next time, from myself, Dusty Rhodes, thank you for listening.

Bridging Communities: Public Sector Engineering in Focus

Engineers are having a meaningful impact across communities in Ireland through working in the public sector.

Today we hear from three professionals with extensive experience working within the public sector about the rewarding projects they have worked on and the career paths they have taken.

Our guests are Head of the National Building Control & Market Surveillance Office in Dublin and a fellow with Engineers Ireland Mairéad Phelan, Executive Engineer with Limerick City and County Council Fergal Timlin and Senior Executive Engineer with Louth County Council Claire Hughes.

After the introductory text, but before the podcast link, put in this line with hyperlink: Listen below or on your podcast player!

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

01:09 Public sector and private sector differences

02:15 Job fulfilment in public sector work

04:40 Time scales in public sector work

06:46 Working with members of the public

10:41 Advice for those looking to move into the public sector

12:06 Taking a step back from the business calculations

16:27 The variation of work in the public sector

19:02 Career progression in the public sector

26:58 Changing the perception of engineering gender stereotypes at school level

GUEST DETAILS

Claire Hughes has a degree in Civil, Structural & Environmental Engineering from Trinity College Dublin in 2006, an MSc Eng in Fire Safety Engineering from University of Ulster in 2013 and Postgraduate Dip in Road & Transport Engineering (inaugural year of the course) from IT Sligo in 2017. Claire is over 17 years working in Local Authorities (Monaghan, Offaly, Meath and now Louth County Councils) across a number of Departments such as Housing Capital, Road Design, Operations, Water & Wastewater services and Environmental services. She is currently working in Louth County Council as a Senior Executive Engineer in Waste Management & Environment Department.

Website: https://www.louthcoco.ie/en/

Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-hughes-3215961b7

Mairéad Phelan is Head of the National Building Control and Market Surveillance Office. A Chartered Engineer and Fellow of Engineers Ireland she was a Programme Manager with the Local Government Management Agency on national projects. Prior to this, she was Fingal County Council’s head of the Built Environment Inspectorate Division; preceded by Senior Engineer Road Safety, Transportation and Bridges Division. She spent 10 years as Municipal Town Engineer with Carlow County Council while also performing the role of Conservation Officer. Her career commenced with Consulting Engineering work on Major Water & Drainage Schemes. Mairéad is an Associate Lecturer with SETU Carlow and is passionate about promoting the construction of safe and healthy buildings and the sustainable reuse of our existing building stock. She was awarded the Civil Service Excellence and Innovation award in 2015.

She holds an MBA, a Diploma in Law, and a PG. Cert. in Governance, a PGDip in Highway & Geotechnical Engineering, a PGDip in Project Management, and a Cert in GDPR.

Website: https://nbco.localgov.ie/

Social Media: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/mair%C3%A9ad-phelan-a9b42a20

Fergal has 13 years’ experience in civil/environmental engineering. He has amassed a large amount of experience in a wide range of Civil Engineering disciplines, such as the construction of roads and drainage infrastructure.

Fergal is currently a member of the Thomond Region Committee and the Civil Division Committee of Engineers Ireland. He is also the planning lead for the Construction Sector Circular Economy Roadmap Report .

Website: https://www.limerick.ie/council

Social Media: www.linkedin.com/in/fergal-d-timlin-88ab7b39  

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

The pressure is on you in the public sector, you're answerable to everybody in the general public and everything that you do in your work is under scrutiny. - Claire Hughes

I was able to improve the towns and the small villages that were in my area, and I can see where I improved the signage, the parks, the town, and putting in something simple like a basketball arena. I found it very, very rewarding working in local authorities. - Mairead Phelan

A lot of people have mixed views or mixed opinions about what working in a local authority is. It is such a fantastic and varied career. - Claire Hughes

There's times where I do need to step back from projects and stop looking at the big calculations and just remember that these small improvements have a dramatic change to people and are greatly welcomed. - Fergal Timlim

There is a very clear progressions layout  in place in local authorities. - Claire Hughes

I see myself as an engineer first and foremost, a problem solver and a designer. That's all I ever wanted to be, even as a child, but nobody ever told me that it was a totally male orientated profession  - Mairead Phelan

The simplest definition of an engineer is that we're just problem solvers. We need to explain that to the primary school students, and not that there's these gender assigned roles or stereotypes associated with engineering. We have to break them to actually get young women into engineering. - Fergal Timlin

Every child loves a brick to play with, every child loves Lego. I've never met a child that doesn't love the box that the stuff comes in. So why are we not bringing that along through the schools and teaching? - Mairead Phelan

TRANSCRIPTION

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

Dusty Rhodes  00:00

So how big is the difference between the private and public engineering sectors? We're about to find out.

Fergal Timlin 00:08

Like in the private sector, it can almost feel aggressive the way you're trying to approach your job. You're trying to gain as much experience as quickly as possible to kind of, I suppose establish yourself, make people know who you are. It's more transparent in the public sector. We can talk about the grades we're at, the wages we're at, and the steps of where we are at a particular grade.

Dusty Rhodes 00:29

Hello there, my name is Dusty Rhodes, and welcome to AMPLIFIED the Engineers Journal Podcast. Today we're taking a look at engineering in the public sector and hearing some brilliant stories from three professionals with extensive experience in the area. Joining us are the head of the National Building Control and Market Surveillance office in Dublin and a fellow with Engineers Ireland Mairéad Phelan, Mairéad how are you? Thank you for having me. Executive Engineer with Limerick city and county council. Fergal Timlin is also joining us how are you doin, Fergal? Good, dusty, how are you? And Senior Executive Engineer with Louth County Council Claire Hughes is with as well. Thanks for joining us, Claire.

Claire Hughes 01:07

And good morning dusty.

Dusty Rhodes 01:09

Claire, can I start off with you by asking how does engineering work differ in the public sector?

Claire Hughes 01:16

Well, the pressure is on you in the public sector in terms of you being answerable to everybody in the general public. And everything that you do in your work is under scrutiny, you have to obviously get permission to do standard roadwork schemes, or if you're going to build houses, you have to go and get, go through public consultation and make sure that everybody is all fair with everything that you're planning and proposing to do. So I feel you're very much more answerable when you're in the public sector, because it is the public purse, and it's public spending money. So you have to make sure that you're doing it correctly, and obviously doing it to the right specifications and standards as well. So you're definitely under more scrutiny on the public end of it, and the private end of it as well. It's a different kind of pressure that's on you when you're working in the private sector. Again, you have to produce, you're under much more demand. And again, it's a different kind of scrutiny than as well, like, you know, we're not going to obviously produce something that's not workable or not functional. So it is a different kind of pressure, but it's still pressure all the same in both ends of it.

Dusty Rhodes 02:15

And you're answering to the public all the time, of course, that everybody has an opinion, and when you do that large. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Can I ask you your point of view on public sector work because it is contributing positively to communities? Do you think that that adds kind of a level of fulfilment to your job or job satisfaction?

Mairéad Phelan 02:36

Well, it did when I started off in Nicosia doors and partners building large water and sewage works which was, you know, quite intensive work design, oversight, and huge monies. Then I went to the local authorities in Kerala county council. My work was as an area engineer. And for 10 years I worked as an area engineer and he also worked as a Conservation Officer. So they work in the local authority as actually wonderful and fulfilling in that, as an area engineer, I'd over half the county, I had all the responsibility for the roads, the water services, the storage works, the town renewal, the urban renewal, so I was the 140, the road men, the lollipop ladies, this school, the school traffic systems, and I was a social worker, I was an area engineer, I was the designer surface dressing the local town engineer to the town councils when they were there, the local area engineer to the municipal authorities. As such, I had very good autonomy, I was able to do a lot of urban design schemes or urban renewal schemes. So as part of my roadworks schemes and my yulara the water and sewerage maintenance and operation, I was also able to improve the towns, the small towns, and the small villages that were in my area. And even today, over 25 years later, they invite me back to little openings for their community development works and everything. I can see where I improved the signage, the parks, the town parks that are designed by putting in something simple like a basketball arena as part of my roadworks and they work in the local authority. You can do as much as you want to give as much or you can just do the basic roads and water services and everything. So I found it very, very rewarding that piece of my early life and local authorities.

Dusty Rhodes 04:40

Burger we were chatting just before we came on about kind of public versus private and I was saying that I did 15 years of public service work with Artie and my experience there is that it can take longer to go from having an idea to something actually happening because there's so many levels to go through. That's broadcasting, is this the same with public service engineering?

Fergal Timlin 05:02

Depends on the scale of the project. Like I, when I was with Punch consulting, we worked on the mixed-use development up in Galway. Now I won't give details, but it was worth about a quarter billion. And at the end of the day like, it's the project that started back before the last recession got to put the ground, then there's a whole lot investigation works in terms of looking at the structure of the pre-existing building itself, making sure it was actually usable. And then we have the whole issue with like going through planning and onboard knowledge, appeals and actually getting that over the line. So like, realistically, even from the private side of things when it comes to like planning, and we said claim your design and everything else, it can take up to three or four years to actually get the planning secured, to actually construct something, the public sector is exactly the same, we go through the same process involved like the same, I suppose, transparency, when it comes to members of the public, the difference for us is that I suppose we are looking at the fact that we can do improvements, not just within a specific project, we're not squared off like a client who's basically trying to, I want to achieve x by doing this. And it's completely focused on himself. Whereas the public, we're basically saying, Look, while I'm doing this, I need to look into the boundary walls, I need to look into the pre-existing surface water and foul drainage, I need to look into the water mains, the air airlines, I basically need to look into what we can do if I'm going into the middle of a town and I'm tearing it up, I get one clean opportunity to talk with everyone say like, let's bring it all in terms of parks, environment and everything else. So that we actually end up with something that people have to live with for the next 1520 3040 50 years. So you want them to be happy and proud of the placemaking. We've done with them. In this particular example.

Dusty Rhodes 06:46

And I asked you all about public servants' work because it's very clear from what you are saying that, you know, the public is a much bigger boss to deal with. And you've got to think a lot wider than you would on say a singular private project. But projects in the public realm can often disrupt public life and make the general public kind of cranky, do you feel that there was a little bit more understanding of what it is that you're trying to achieve?

Claire Hughes 07:13

One project I worked on in Tullamore was the construction of footbridges over the Grand Canal and Tullamore and the construction of a boardwalk. And it was a very interesting project. And it was a fantastic idea. For the time of Tullamore, it was going to give access for different parts of the time directly into the town centre. Everything was fantastic in theory. And when it came to actual construction on site, the number of complaints, we actually had to stop the work at one stage because of the number of complaints that were coming in and coming in through elected representatives. I suppose at the time, the best way was we opened the doors in the town hall and make everything we'd already done our part here and our public consultation prior to this. But when it came to actually being on the ground and the disruption to people's lives, I think the message kind of was lost in translation. So we opened the doors in the town hall and we invited people to come in and we met with different groups and explained this as this phase of work, this street will be closed off for this, this traffic management will be put in place for this. But let's look at the bigger picture here. Let's look at what the finished product is going to be. So that project finished, let's say 10 years ago. And now it was recently in the time they're about a month or two ago. And the number of people that use those bridges, and they're fully accessible to everybody. It cuts off a massive amount of time for people travelling into the town centre on foot, which is what we all want to do. We want to get people out on their feet, out walking into town and it's all about active travel. No. So it's getting people and bringing the public along with you to see the bigger picture. Yes, there is disruption to your lives at the moment. There are delays, there are road closures, and there is what there is, but looking at the bigger picture and what will actually be there at the end of a project, getting people to see that then as well is just as important.

Dusty Rhodes 08:53

You've also worked on loads of other projects, Claire, that was a wastewater project you worked on in Burr, I've done if you want to talk about that, or maybe one of the housing schemes that you've worked on which would be your favourite.

Claire Hughes 09:05

Yeah, like Maria, I suppose I cut my teeth on the water and wastewater end of things and working in kind of Councillors. But I suppose one time that I look back at was the two years that I spent in this kind of council in the housing construction team that was there. So I was there from January 2021 to just earlier this year. And an extremely busy department everyone knows what the story is with housing at the moment the pressure that is on every country kinds of to deliver new housing units in whatever manner that they are going to deliver them whether it's through direct construction, purchasing, through approved housing bodies, etc. So the two years that I worked there, there were the busiest two years of my working life, but I look back on it with such pleasure and happiness because I grew as an engineer, I got to see the direct effects of what I was doing. In my day-to-day work. I got to see people actually moving into houses and giving people keys to their houses. And I suppose That was that's one end of things that you get in the public sector, and particularly in local authorities, you actually get to see the direct influence that your work as an engineer has on the local community. So it was a fantastic learning experience for me, dealing with contractors dealing with massive projects and massive budgets, dealing with all sorts of people dealing with members of the public, again, that are obviously maybe disgruntled with regards to what you're proposing to do. And it might be a contentious project, or you're building on what you're proposing to do. But at the end of the day, when you go back and look at a finished product, and see how it fits in with the community, and actually see people coming off of social housing lists that have been on a social housing list for many, many years, it definitely makes you feel very happy about your work.

Dusty Rhodes 10:41

Tell me, Claire, what kind of advice would you have for somebody who's looking to begin their career in the public sector?

Claire Hughes 10:47

I speak to a lot of people who are starting out and making decisions in their careers after maybe, let's say, doing their undergraduate degree in engineering. Starting in a local authority, a lot of people probably may have mixed views or mixed opinions about what working in a local authority is. It is such a fantastic and varied career. I've worked in local authorities for over 17 years, I did six months in the private sector. However, I always knew I wanted to work in the public sector. So I've been working with clients since ever since. My advice is that coming in as an undergraduate, you think you know everything in life, we all think at 22 or 23, we know everything in life. But you'd go on to you've got the bare essentials of knowledge and engineering when you graduate from college, you go into local authorities, and you are moulded into a very well rounded engineer with a great broad knowledge, you get to work with a wide variety of people and your people skills become so developed, you get to develop your management skills and your leadership skills and working as well. There are fantastic graduate programs that will take you in and you get to work, as I said, across housing, water, wastewater, road design, face making all these different departments that are in kind of clients. And so I can guarantee that it will never be a boring career. It's very, very unexciting, and it is what you make of it every career is what you make of it.

Dusty Rhodes 12:06

Can I ask you also about projects that you've worked on in the past? Is there any one that you're particularly proud of?

Fergal Timlin 12:13

I suppose the one that I'm currently working on that we're heading out to tender on is the Abbeyfield public grand scheme. It's a national road running through the heart of every field, which the 21 basically connects Kerry to Limerick. So you get a significant amount of traffic there every day, I suppose one of the feelings that we do when you work inside the park service is that when you're looking at your towns or villages and such, and you want to get speaking with people so that they don't feel like they're getting left behind or be feeling, I think there was a kind of a feeling that they're starting to get a little bit left behind. Now, there's a myriad of issues here in terms of social issues, and cultural and economic issues going on in the background. But we were finding that basically, a lot of the younger generation was moving on to every field, and moving into the cities or moving abroad, which as you know, we all grew wings at one stage, we all left so and so I suppose some of the buildings, some of the commercial buildings start starting to kind of shut off shut her up. So I think we're looking at this as kind of an opportunity for the city and county council to actually put John's capital investment into the field, to change it from it's a true road associated with the national road into a place of its own making a place that I suppose people can stop off and do a little bit of a sharp and take a break charge a character for a cup of coffee, kind of peruse the streets, you know. So there's it's a significant significant investment. And it's over the course of nearly 1.5 kilometres, which is basically the town itself. What you're saying thereby meeting the people, it was amazing to kind of slowly but surely speak with the individuals on the street. We also have like technical advisory groups that would say like the Abbeyfield Community Account Council, so we actually do a lot of engaging with the public that I think people sometimes don't see. And I think that's what happens when when you're looking in when you're looking in and say like, look, they're the council's jumping in to plow something into the ground. They haven't spoken to anyone they haven't inferred. There has been significant conversation every step of the way to make sure that they're happy with everything that we're providing.

Dusty Rhodes 14:06

Can I ask after doing all of that, then what takeaways did you get from talking to people that changed the way you think?

Fergal Timlin 14:12

I suppose sometimes we forget to like, I'm looking at his drawings and specifications. And I'm looking at kind of the work schedules, and I suppose engaged with consultants, and it's constant like this is something that's pouring through my head all the time. I suppose in the engineering world, what we call shaving time, is when I wake up in the morning, and I kind of have a quick shave. There are problems that I'm going through, that I'm trying to resolve so that when I walk into work, I can say, right, this is how we're going to face this. Like meeting people. Sometimes we do forget that they don't necessarily have the same kind of base of knowledge that we're jumping into it. So we're kind of saying like, this is what we're doing. These are the figures that line up for what we want to do. Here are the calculations behind everything that we're doing. And that's all well and good. But not everyone you meet wants to go through that the minutia wants to go down to the piecemeal justification shouldn't cost estimates that come into all of this? Sometimes it just wants to know like, what is this, like for the people who live on this particular street? There's a community of us who live in 10 houses on this side of the road. We've been a community here for the last 40 years. What is what is it you're trying to achieve? And well, how does it help us? It's even tiny little things like I remember, we were looking at a particular section of road, and we put in a pedestrian crossing, and we moved to a pedestrian crossing a couple of times. And we finally found that we just put it outside the pharmacy. And I was going down, I was kind of having a word with people here about the footpath upgrades and the different kinds of I supposed to Landscaping we're doing, and it completely jumped off the page. And every time oh my god, we've been looking for this pedestrian crossing for 20 years. Oh, my God, it's finally here thank God Council stepped in and gave us a pedestrian crossing, and the pedestrian crossing, I was looking at it from roads, do you know a road safety point of view, I was looking from a health and safety point of view. And I knew that there was a desire line there. But like I didn't stop to say like, well, how does this benefit these people in this particular role? It's like and then that there's they're so happy and so engaged, see this, like, you could have told them you're painting do the street green, they would have accepted as long as they got the pedestrian crossing to go with it like so I suppose there are times where I do need to step back a small bit from the projects I'm looking at and stop looking at the big calculations. And I suppose just remember that when I meet the people on site, there are just the little bits and pieces the small improvements that do have a dramatic change to people and are greatly welcomed.

Dusty Rhodes 16:27

Mairead, in your experience, these stories that Fergal and Claire are sharing, do they resonate with you?

Mairéad Phelan 16:32

Yeah, I've been involved in everything from water sewerage to roads, to community development to conservation to designing play areas. So I've had kind of a long career at this stage. And I suppose the big and the small and it brings me to mind when I was an area engineer and had a derelict site in a little village. And a pair of cottages called the weavers cottages and they were quite derelict, there was a lot of rubbish around them and everything else. So as opposed to knocking them down, I did a bit of research on them got a conservation grant, put the two of them back into use, and this area beside it, which was also derelict, I also got money from the Department of Housing and built two local authority houses that actually complemented and match the old style of the weavers cottages. So I was able to house two families and clean an area and also provide a tourist attraction and tourist immunity in that village and looked at weaving and designing and got a local craftsman to design a spinning wheel and a loom which is now used. So engineering is so varied, and then you can take them to go into Fingal and be involved in the M 50 Motorway design and doing the Coolock interchange rehabilitation works and Rathcoole bridge together. So really, I suppose the way I look at it is our work as public servants, servants of the people making life better everywhere we go by using our innovative design and problem-solving skills to actually make life better. And UK that is in itself is very rewarding. And during the boom times, I was often asked why didn't I go and get a job and loads of money. And I think the fulfilment of actually using your design your innovation, problem-solving skills, to actually do the small things really well and make life very much better or do huge, big M 50. Radical, they're they're huge shops, it can be so varied, and you're not confined to one thing and community engagement, what the people want what communities want, and how you can deliver it and solve that problem. And sometimes you are there and it's like you're looking at the really the wider thing. So you have at your hands at different service delivery areas that you can access to actually bring a project to completion without having to go back out again and dig up the road again.

Dusty Rhodes 19:02

Sounds like it is very rewarding. And it's coming across very clearly from all of you that it is incredibly rewarding work and you can actually walk around in your locality to go I helped improve that. I and you can see people enjoying the improvements. But can I ask you just kind of about yourselves and your own careers and promotion because you know, we all want to move open. We want to improve and careers. And I just want to ask you about that. Claire, you've got 17 years of experience with local authorities. What does career progression look like in the public sector?

Claire Hughes 19:31

Well, there are different grades that you sort of work in. So you come in as a graduate I started as a graduate, and then I moved to an African Council as an assistant engineer. Then I moved back to Monterey County Council as an executive and then I went to meet as a senior executive and load now senior executive again. So there is progression. Very clear progressions laid out there in place and local authorities. You know, you come in and you have to be moulded into a good local authority engineer. You can't just jump in and expect to be in management or leaders from day one, that takes a bit of time, you have to cut your teeth, and you have to get the knowledge, not just the technical knowledge, the knowledge of dealing with members of the public dealing with the statutory processes that are in place, dealing with your fellow colleagues. And the way that that works is you need to give yourself time, but to have the opportunities for career progression is there, it's there for the taking for everybody. And that goes for any career, but particularly in local authorities as well. It's a very clear sort of layout of how you can progress your own career. And if you are hungry for it, and you're hungry to learn, the opportunities are there for you.

Dusty Rhodes 20:35

Forgive, you've got a bit of a taste of both moving up the ladder, do you find that kind of you know, more structured way of climbing up the the various scales is better in the public service? Or did you kind of prefer the more promotional side of things with private?

Fergal Timlin 20:51

Look, I suppose like in the private sector, it can almost feel aggressive, the way you're trying to approach your job, you're trying to get gain as much experience as quickly as possible to kind of I suppose establish yourself, make people know who you are. You're always looking for the biggest possible schemes with the biggest names so that you kind of like when you come back to your company, you're like, Okay, I've done two years of this. Now, I want to be technical director, bang, I've done 10 years this now I want to be director, you're constantly kind of you're you're pushing yourself all the time, in the public service. When it comes down to it. Yes, there is a scene taken to say that you have the experience. And you've gone through these different projects. And you've kind of, I suppose, looked at the different structures involved when it comes to public procurement itself. Now, that's a big thing that you do not do. In the private sector. There's a whole host of procurement guidelines and such where you have to build up quite a repertoire of information before you kind of make your way through the myriad of procurement itself. But I suppose it's it's more transparent in the public sector, I'll be honest with you, like we can talk about the grades we're at the wages we're at, and the steps of where we are at our particular grades, it's much more open to like you're not afraid of a topic, your wages, your colleagues. And when you look at the terms of the kind of advancing yourself, you know that there are interviews going to come up, you look at what they're looking for, in terms of experience, you apply for the jobs, a lot of what we do ticketing, once it gets to kind of senior exec kind of grades and up, you're doing a true pass anyway, which is a centralised body open Dublin. So you know that when people are assessing you and looking at you, they're looking at the merits of who you are and your experience and what you've achieved throughout your career. Whereas in the private sector, it can be a little bit more cultural in terms of the politics that may be taking place in the background that may not be spoken about as openly as we're willing to say.

Dusty Rhodes 22:31

Ah, interesting. So there's more politics in the private sector than there is in the public sector because the public sector is clearer and more open. Is that what you're saying?

Fergal Timlin 22:40

Depends on where you define politics.

Dusty Rhodes 22:44

Let's not go there. Yeah, let's not go there. It's a mermaid. Can I ask you because your career path is slightly different from Claire and Fergal, you're now the head of the National Building Control and Market Surveillance office. How did you go from all the projects and stories you were telling us earlier into that particular position? How did your career lead you there?

Mairéad Phelan 23:05

I suppose I've always followed the projects rather than the career. I've never followed the career straight lineup, and I could have done it. And I have, purposely not followed projects, I follow projects that interest me. If you look I was in the private sector, and I was a senior resident engineer and senior designer and I took a pay cut for an area engineer IVC, myself, as an engineer, first and foremost, and a problem solver and a designer. That's all I ever wanted to be. Even as a child. That's all I put. Nobody ever told me that it was a totally male-orientated, professional Tiller who walked into UCD in tears with tears promotionally from eight years in a school with not even male teachers, or girl school from five years in a boarding school girls boarding school. And I remember walking in a little bit late the first morning in terms of testing, I was looking up and I'm thinking, this is interesting. Nobody ever I actually never I never thought to ask and I had an uncle in engineering never never dawned on me. I just saw a guy building a bridge one time and he drove a lovely car and I was hooked. In Cleveland, I'm the head of the National buildings and roll-offs and how I came there really was pirate in Fingal was a serious issue. And I was tasked with dealing with people who were suffering, the adverse consequences of the floor is heaving because of impurity in the underfloor fill and meeting people who lived in houses, ordinary people who were not people that bought second houses, and the suffering that they were going through, actually did affect me. And I came back and I looked at the building control system. And I looked at it in conjunction with the chief executive at the time and said, Actually, we haven't got enough oversight here. We need to do something. This is too much self-regulation and nobody really oversees itself. That's where I went and had a look at a few of my staff and said, look at how do we collect this. So we actually designed a bespoke compliance management system and national IT system to collate all of the commencement notices, the fire safety certificates, and the disability access certificates into one place one unit. So I follow the job. And the job followed me to improve how we do building control and compliance with the requirements of the building regulations in Ireland because nobody had looked at the building regulations in the context of why they were there, because regulation in civilised societies for health and safety, the citizen and protection of the environment, and that's what we all do. But the building regulations specifically say health, safety, and welfare of people in or about buildings. So everybody was looking at the requirements, all these technical requirements, engineers have made them and it's very difficult to build and anybody can build. But every single part of the regulations is for the health or the safety or the welfare of the person living inside the buildings. And we had to kind of re-look at the way we implemented them. So part of my next couple of years was a national ICT system. So now I'm suddenly gone from a bridge designer to an ICT computer interface. So Linux, everything has, we designed up the only fully designed online ICT system for service delivery earlier in local authorities. So now what we have now is we have oversight of all the designs for every building, every home in the country, and we can go in there, do a risk assessment, get people out to inspect them, pull designers in if one designer in a county is not living up to what they should be, we have them in the system, we can pick them out of every other county and ask the billing and loan officers look at, you need to look at this building, prevent proliferation, we have a long way to go still. But as I said, I've always followed the project and the impact.

Dusty Rhodes 26:58

And I asked you about what you were saying when you know you just saw the guy building the bridge, neat, nice car and you went, I want to be an engineer and you never thought about gender. It never entered your head, which is great. And then you ended up as an Air Force terrorist and you kind of go, Huh, hello. Has that changed in your time?

Mairéad Phelan 27:16

I'd say Not really. And I'm now I'm coming back. And I thought about this quite a lot. And I'm looking at it in the context of education for people building houses. The subjects in secondary school are still the same boy-girl subjects, the way they make them up that they were in my day. Even the community schools, will package domestic science or home economics as it's called these days, which I believe should be be subject for everybody, because people I tell you what, when I was did engineering, all the guys that couldn't cook, they couldn't do anything. And I couldn't draw because I didn't do mechanical drawing or anything else. So I took them jelly, and they helped me do my mechanical drawing. And they thought I was a genius. You know, you guys look at not being able to make better custard or jelly or something. But anyway, that's an aside. But the thing about it is, the schools are not doing enough with this boy-girl subject. I had severe difficulties, even the nuns told my mother about doing engineering, and they wanted me to do primary teaching. So there is still the nursing, the teaching, the civil service aspect to every secondary school in Ireland. And that's very disappointing.

Dusty Rhodes 28:27

Fergal, do you want to come in there?

Fergal Timlin 28:30

Yeah, look, I was just gonna say my work with the Thailand region and civil division of engineers, Ireland, and I suppose Women in Engineering is a big item on the list. It's always been pushed for the last 1520 years, I suppose everything they've done, they've only changed the percentages, a couple of points still the same way. It was like when I was in any way G I think it was something to 10% of the undergrads are women. And like, it's, I think it's up to 14%. Now, you know, we're not talking about major changes, even though the culture has changed. I completely agree. There's a big push on, though, for engineers to get into primary schools and secondary schools. And realistically, it's to get into primary schools and to meet them when they're in the formative years. And kind of explain particularly to the girls what it is like to be on-site or what it is like to be a designer. And what is like in the industry, I think we can all agree the simplest definition of an engineer is that we're just problem solvers. We love problems. We love solving them. And like just explain that the students and why it's open to everyone, and not that there's these, I suppose gender assigned kind of roles or stereotypes associated with engineering that we have to break to actually get young women into engineering.

Claire Hughes 29:35

Absolutely. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree with Maria, they sort of have the same experience as you Maria would go into an all-female secondary school, and I was very lucky to be able to actually do physics and chemistry. Together. There was no option for Applied Maths or engineering or computer science or technical graphics. None of that was available to me when I went to college, and like that, I went into a room of 200 people, 170 of them were males and I hadn't seen a guy in a bar I took 15 years. It's quite a shock to the system and feel like you're constantly on the catch-up the first two years in Trinity we did all engineering mechanical, and we did all subjects that were for all different types of engineering. And you constantly felt like you were on the catch-up all the time because you were in a class with students that had done tactical graphics that had done all these other different subjects that were available to them. But coming from the school that I had, I literally just had physics and chemistry and maybe a strong background in maths. So definitely looking at, in particular all female secondary schools, to see the subject choices that are available and see what can be done having these subjects available to everybody, and tend to look at it from a grassroots point of view.

Mairéad Phelan 30:42

I take it another step forward, forward, sorry, I'm interrupting you, am I, I take it another step forward, in that we actually all live in houses, houses need maintenance, children are not taught how to hammer a nail straight anymore. So there's a whole lot of education is for life, and to actually be able to live in the world that we are that you know, we live in. And we should actually come out with the tools to actually be able to eat to be able to survive, and to be able to live in our houses. So we're not getting that anymore. And I think that's a shame because I am on building sites and I'm in houses and I see the poor younger that comes out and you can't even hammer the nail straight. And I'd like to take the nail and then say, well, could I show you how to do this. And then I look at nice brickwork and I'm thinking, that actually would be a lovely job for a boy or a girl, because the bricks are lies, but they're not exposed to it at an early enough stage. And I think every child loves a brick to play with every child loves Lego. I've never met one that doesn't. I've never met a child who doesn't love the box that the stuff comes in, the dialogue comes in, and they want to play with the box. So why are we not bringing that along through the schools? We've kind of headed in the wrong direction, I think. Anytime to teach.

Dusty Rhodes 32:01

I love this because we don't restraint into what engineering is all about. We have come across a problem. We need more women in the industry, and why are they in there? unbraid has got some brilliant ideas. But I'm wondering what you think, about this particular problem? What would you suggest as a fix?

Claire Hughes 32:18

Just I'm thinking back on my own experience. Career Guidance is also an element in school that I find, like Maria was saying there. When I mentioned engineering to my career guidance counselor, I was an older lady, she was a non it's like, what is that? She got her perspective Stein on she was like, going through the pages going what is engineering, again, she was pointing in the direction of nursing or primary school teaching that seemed to be just what we were meant to do, or whatever, you know. So career guidance is very important. You have to recognise that everybody has so many different talents, so many different areas where they will flourish and I suppose maybe making sure that they have a very strong element of that. And the schooling as well would be very important.

Dusty Rhodes 32:59

And Fergal any quick fix them yourself?

Fergal Timlin 33:02

Yeah, I think I'm a firm believer in placement programs. Now I know not every student is going to have access to kind of the year or two, six months to actually undertake these placements. Like a good example for me is that my family, my father, and most of my uncles are engineers. My mother is a town planner. So like I've always had this background that I kind of wanted to kind of fit into that role and construction itself. So I wanted to be a civil engineer, I have wanted to be a civil engineers since I was seven years old. When I did my first year in college, my father met me after I got back off the bus and said to me, right for what is the civil engineer. And I went, I don't know. So after all this ambition, all this passion to become a civil engineer, I actually didn't know what it meant to be one. Because like you said, you can just read a prospectus or read a summary of what engineering is and go, Oh, okay, that's what I want to spend the next 50 years of my life doing. It's, it's something that you have to jump into. So like I took a year out of college, and I worked for a construction company, Brian McCarthy. So yes, it was it was tough. It was long hours, it was constantly up against in terms of resources, making sure we managed time and everything else. And I absolutely adored it, I loved it. And it just ignited the fire inside me, even more, to get back into cars to get through college to get out and cited stuff. So like for me, if I hadn't done that kind of taste or if there was a potential that all this time had been spent convincing myself and wanted to be a civil engineer would have done four years of degree. Okay, most of it. He's had been on site. He's been working in the office, doing the designs all day, and maybe went off and being an accountant. But I would have thought I'd wasted four years of my life. So for me, like I've seen when I have students inside the offices, if we've undergrads working with us, like I love spending time with them explaining what we're doing and why we're doing it. I love bringing them on-site so they can actually see it. So like I think a big one for me is that if you can get them for even three months inside a placement program you can give them an amazing perspective on what we actually do and he why we want people to do with us.

Dusty Rhodes 34:53

Well, I have to say from from speaking with the three of you on the podcast today, the passion that each of you have for what you're doing and all of you have been in the career for, you know, kind of you're not beginners, shall we say. It's great to see that you still have that passion. I love that, and the satisfaction that you're getting from working kind of on the local and the more public end and being able to walk around. I think it's just, it's amazing. It's been a real eye-opener for me and just absolutely brilliant. And then we came up with loads of great ideas to fix the problem. So this has been the perfect engineering podcast, as far as I'm concerned, Mairéad Phelan from the National Building Control and Market Surveillance Office, Fergal Timlin with Limerick City and county council, and Claire Hughes from Louth County Council. Thank you all for joining us today.

Mairéad Phelan 35:35

Thank you very much. Thank you.

35:36

Thank you very much.

Dusty Rhodes 35:39

If you'd like to find out more about Fergal, Mairéád, and Claire and some of the topics that we talked about today, you'll find notes and link details in the show notes area on your podcast player right now. And of course, you'll find more information and exclusive advance episodes of our podcast on our website at EngineersIreland.ie. Our podcast today was produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. If you'd like more episodes, just click the Follow button on your podcast player to get access to all of our past and future shows automatically. Until next time from myself, Dusty Rhodes Thank you for listening.