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Construction sector faces urgent decarbonisation challenge whilst Ireland maintains only 11% women in engineering unchanged since 2011 despite ambitious housing and infrastructure targets requiring diverse workforce expansion.

Susan McGarry, Managing Director for Ireland at Ecocem pioneering low carbon concrete company, explains journey from Greenpeace member receiving Rainbow Warrior dolphin pictures to becoming youngest MD at 30 years old, how ACT advanced cement technology reduces clinker from 85% to under 30% achieving 600 kilos CO2 savings per tonne, why Irish regulatory system lacks assessment route for new low carbon materials despite ambitious National Development Plan targets, and how cancer diagnosis at 34 prompted reflection on policy passion over operational leadership.

With expertise spanning technical concrete troubleshooting through European policy advocacy and member of Engineers Ireland Women in Engineering Group, Susan shares practical advice on visibility without egotism, why nice girls who don't ask get nothing, and how senior management diversity influences maternity leave, IVF cover and bereavement policies attracting retaining women throughout career pipeline.


THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
●    Low carbon cement ACT reduces clinker eighty five percent
●    Irish regulatory system lacks assessment route new materials
●    Women engineering eleven percent unchanged since two thousand eleven
●    Visibility senior management influences hiring maternity IVF policies
●    Cancer diagnosis thirty four prompted policy passion reflection

GUEST DETAILS
Susan McGarry is Managing Director for Ireland at Ecocem, pioneering company developing low carbon concrete, expertly handling concrete procurement rules and public affairs guiding construction industry toward ambitious climate targets whilst scaling sustainable building solutions across Ireland. Passionate advocate for diversity as prominent woman in structures and construction sector historically low on female engineers, she uses platform driving inclusion highlighting systemic barriers women face from cultural challenges to logistical issues like accessible female bathrooms on construction sites. Member of Engineers Ireland Women in Engineering Group, she joined Ecocem as environmental services intern in 2011 becoming youngest MD at 30 years old in 2020, now serving as Director of Public Affairs and Sustainability for Ecocem Global after cancer diagnosis prompted career reflection focusing on policy passion over operational leadership spanning European officials and global partnerships.

Connect with Susan McGarry:
●    Website: https://www.ecocemglobal.com/en-ie/
●    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-mcgarry-73582542/?originalSubdomain=ie

QUOTES
"There's still not enough women to see it on mass as a career choice. I think visually, it still looks quite male dominated, and that is off putting. My personal kind of goal would have always been to like help increase the visibility at senior management level for women in engineering, women in construction."  - Susan McGarry

"The state is the biggest consumer of concrete in this country. We do have procurement rules now where 30% clinker substitution is required. That's not super ambitious but we've gone from nothing to something."  - Susan McGarry

"I had a decision to be a generalist or specialist at about 26. The Chairman of Ecocem said I did this course in UCD in industrial engineering in 1965, it turned engineers into CEOs. You should have a look at that."  - Susan McGarry

"You get nothing if you don't ask, and if you don't have confidence, you kind of fake it. By being an open person to opportunities and being a helpful person that you'll take on workload."  - Susan McGarry

"When I graduated as an engineer in 2011, 11% of the engineering population was made up of women. In 2025 it's still only 11%. It has not changed. That's a very small percentage. When you want a network, you do need a network. You need somebody that you can pick up a phone to that's kind of like minded. Women in Engineering Group created that network." - Susan McGarry

 


TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience here is an AI transcription 

Dusty Rhodes  0:02  
Right now on AMPLIFIED, 

Susan McGarry  0:03  
There's still not enough women to see it on mass as a career choice. I think visually, it still looks quite male dominated, and that is off putting. My personal kind of goal would have always been to like help increase the visibility at senior management level for women in engineering, women in construction. 

Dusty Rhodes  0:22  
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes, and you're welcome to AMPLIFIED the Engineers Journal Podcast. Today, we're chatting with a strategic leader in both green procurement, public policy and diversity in engineering, we'll be exploring ways for engineers to become more visible and influential in the work talking about technical shifts in low carbon cement and how to hone your executive and business skills to advance your career. It's a pleasure to welcome the Director of Public Affairs and Sustainability at  Ecocem Global, Susan McGarry.

Susan McGarry  0:59  
Thanks, Dusty, delighted to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Dusty Rhodes  1:03  
So listen, Susan, I always like to start by asking people, how did you get into this world of engineering we all find ourselves in? Yeah.

Susan McGarry  1:11  
So I always just wanted something that was related to the environment. I thought I was going to change the world from a very young age. That was always my thing. I was a member of Greenpeace. I was getting pictures of dolphins sent back from the team on the Rainbow Warrior. That was always my thing. And I was kind of torn between environmental science and engineering. What I like, I have to admit, I probably didn't know a lot about engineering when I put it down. I just knew it was generally, you know, it could be related to sustainability and in that general industry. So that was the course choice that I ended up getting. And I remember, for those first few months, I wasn't really sure if I was going to stay, and it wasn't until kind of the environmental module started that I was like, oh yeah, this is for me. It was like, you know, environmental regulation, planning, all of that. And I said, Oh yeah, I can really do something here, so engineering, but definitely more focused on the sustainability side, and I thought I could make a really practical career out of this.

Dusty Rhodes  2:10  
So Susan, can I ask you just about your career to date and projects that you're kind of most most proud of working on, or that you found most interesting?

Susan McGarry  2:19  
Yeah, so I have a unusual career. I think these days, people tend to change companies a bit more often. I've been with the same company since I graduated in 2011 I started with  Ecocem as a intern, because Environmental Services intern, or marketing intern, or something like that. We were just getting into launching a retail product. So bagged cement, which the company had never been involved in before, we only ever sold in bulk directly to kind of concrete producers, whereas this was dealing with, you know, the retail market, totally different blogging. So I kind of helped on marketing, helping to develop the product, anything and everything, really, that I could be useful with. I tried a hand at and the company gave me a lot of opportunities, so I stayed so while I say I've been with the same company for that long, I think that's nearly 15 years now. Is it coming up on 15 years, I've had a million different roles within that company. And the company that I started with is a very different company to the one I'm with now, because we've grown, we've more than doubled in size. And so I have had various roles, from kind of technical manager in the Irish business to sustainability manager for the group. We didn't have that role, which is funny, we're a low carbon cement company, very focused on sustainability, but we didn't actually have a sustainability function in house. We had kind of relied on consultants. And I sort of said, like, look, this is for me. I could do this. We started implementing all the ISO systems. We had four plants across Europe that we implemented safety, quality and environmental management into at the same time. That was really how I kind of got to know everybody in the business and got around all of our different sites. You learn a lot by, you know, looking in the bins and making sure everyone's compliant for the for the ISO audit. And so that was kind of just prior to me starting a master's in engineering management, I had kind of come to a fork in the road where it was I could either be a specialist and stay technical, stay around, kind of the concrete technology side of things, or go more generalists and do sort of a business thing. I decided to kind of go the general route, and I did engineering management in UCD as a master's and that really kind of opened my eyes to what was possible. And in 2020 I became the first woman MD in the ecosm group, and the youngest MD they've had to date. So I was 30 years of age, and became the managing director of the ecosm Ireland business, which produced about 350,000 tonnes of low carbon cement a year providing that, supplying that to the Irish concrete industry. And so that was for the worst part, was during covid. So that was over four years I was the managing director in Ireland, and just last year I pivoted out of that. And I know the director for sustainability and Public Affairs very. Much in my wheelhouse. So during that time as MD, while I loved it, I love talking to people. So being an MD is great. You get to talk to everyone in the business and be chatting. It's great. But my focus was policy. And a real interesting project that I was on throughout that managing director role was trying to create some sort of legal driver in Ireland around the use of low carbon materials. There was no actual requirement in this state to use a lower carbon material in construction at all. And by 2024, the procurement guidelines for low carbon spent concrete were released by the Department of Enterprise, which dictated that 30% clinker substitution had to be used in all publicly procured concrete. So that was a huge win, like we've been lobbying for this, and, you know, engaging with the with government and kind of other people that were aligned with our views to kind of get something like this in place.

Dusty Rhodes  5:53  
Susan, for people who don't know, can you just very briefly in a sentence, explain  Ecocem and where it operates. And what I really want to ask is, what's the single most exciting project you're working on at the moment?

Susan McGarry  6:06  
So  Ecocem is an Irish business. It was set up by a man called Don Loreen in 2000 so we're a 25 year old business. The core business was focused on ground, granulated blast furnace slag. So that's real tongue twister, ggbs. It is a clinker replacement. So clinkers the polluting component of cement. That's where you burn limestone and shale shale in a kiln, so that the machinery within a cement plant you burn that to produce clinker, and during that process, a lot of carbon is emitted. So the goal around decarbonisation should be reduce the amount of clinker that we're using in cement, and that's really what ggbs does. You can replace clinker with ggbs on a one for one ratio. So the concrete industry really took this on in Ireland. We also opened a plant in the Netherlands around the same time, and then we expanded into France and the UK, and we're soon to open a plant in the US as well. We're working on a US production plant in the Port of LA as well. So we've really grown from an Irish business to a global business, and pivoted slightly from just ggbs to we have a full Research and Innovation Centre focused on new low carbon cement alternatives.

Dusty Rhodes  7:20  
All right, Susan, let's talk cement. I mean, if there was ever foundation for an engineering podcast, you can't get concrete without cement. But listen the thing you're your sustainability is very much a passion of yours, and one thing that the company is known for is for low carbon cement. Tell me how is cement being decarbonized globally?

Susan McGarry  7:45  
Yeah. So there's multiple solutions globally at different levels of technology readiness. So our product is, our new product is called act, and that's, it's at deployment stage. Pretty much now we're working on demonstrator projects across Europe. Why the name act? Act? It's advanced cement technology. Okay, good. Follow their background to where that name came from. Works for me. Yeah, nice and easy. So we that's the culmination of about 10 years of research, and I think about 70 million euros worth of an investment from like, directly from ecosm as a company. So we saw, kind of about a decade ago, the cement industry needs to decarbonize, because of all of the EU legislation that's coming down and because of obviously climate change is becoming more and more critical. We kind of knew that this was coming onto the cement sector, and there was very little new technologies coming through. We also saw that the steel industry, where we get the raw material for ggbs, our main business model, the steel industry, is starting to decarbonize. And over the next couple of decades, they're going to start shutting down the traditional way of producing steel with a bass furnace. They're going to start moving from that to electric arc furnaces. So the raw material that we currently use, GBS, is going to go into decline over the next couple of decades, and the cement industry news need new solutions. So we said, right, we need to focus. We have the expertise in this. We need to focus our attention on creating the next generation of cement technology. What other industrial byproducts can we utilise as cement replacements? How can we use the materials that we do have available now in a more efficient way. So we produce act, and we have our whole Research and Innovation Centre based in Paris, and we've got a team of about 30 researchers working on this. So act uses, like all traditional materials that we've already been using. So it uses the ggbs, it uses clinker, and it uses limestone and mineral additions, but it just uses them in a more efficient way, and using kind of particle size distribution and smart use of admixtures and water reducers to make a fully robust, general purpose cement that can rival the traditional cement that we have on the market now that has a very high clinker component. So that's the most exciting thing. Thing that I working on, and the whole company is working on, is at this point, because we're at deployment stage to get to here, has been years of once it got out of research, once it got out at the lab, it was like, Well, how do you use this in practical terms? How do you get the standards changed to allow it to be used like policy should be encouraging the uptake of low carbon materials this, you know, this is kind of where my main body of work is focused on.

Dusty Rhodes  10:26  
So it's, I mean, it sounds you sell it very well, okay, sounds like a great idea. I'm wondering, why is not every construction site in the country crawling over to your front door to want to use this? Yeah, so

Susan McGarry  10:40  
I would have said things were very different in the construction sector, kind of a decade ago, whereas, like you just kind of want to keep things traditional, there was very little change, or very little appetite for innovation. Now, things are very different. The contractors, who are the guys on site, getting the Concrete Deliveries, pouring the concrete, were the most difficult to persuade to use something new previously, whereas they are now the audience that are coming to us looking for solutions. It's the contractors that want to deliver new, low carbon materials. They want to be producing the best concrete. This isn't just concrete related. Obviously, this is just my wheelhouse. But the same goes for kind of timber construction or using modern mess of construction. The contractors are driving that change now, whereas traditionally, they would have been the hardest to push forward or to get them to take something new on, and whereas now we the reason why we're moving quite rapidly now is we have these demonstrator projects. I call them demonstrator projects. It's that there's a project already happening. There's concrete already being poured. And we're like, Hey, can we do, you know, a small area using this new cement within the concrete, you have to get multiple parties on board to allow something like that to happen. But people are enthusiastic about they want it. Then there's a lot of pride when it's done to kind of showcase it as well. And we'd really good success with CISC in the UK as well. We did a demonstrator project in Wembley Park. We built a two story frame that was, there was multiple partners in that Cray of concrete here in Ireland, produced a precast and sent it over for us. And really hugely successful. And we've all created a huge amount of momentum publicly about that project as well. To say, look, low carbon material is possible. Low Carbon concrete is possible

Dusty Rhodes  12:21  
when you're doing the demonstrator projects, then you're comparing your ACT low carbon cement with regular cement, old fashioned cement, we'll call it just, just for yourself, all right, how do you make the comparison between the two? I mean, it's great to say it's a dentist. Like, hey, there you go. The building is standing so is the other one. Like, you know, what? How do you show people that your product is better?

Susan McGarry  12:44  
Yeah, so there's, like, there's very serious compliance aspects to it, there's safety requirements, fire testing and strength testing, durability testing, all of that. But all of that has been done over the past kind of three years, where we have European technical assessment for this product now, so we've met the European requirements for it. And there you go, market by market, and kind of demonstrate local compliance, depending on what that local compliance is, each country kind of differs, but you're also the best way to kind of show equivalent performance with concrete is that there's no difference. That's like, no news is good news. And that was actually what was said at that large scale demonstrator in London. Was like, Oh, it's just the same. There's nothing exciting. It was just like pouring any other concrete, but it had less than 30% clinker in it, compared to what we use in Ireland, is 85% clinker. And clinker is like the glue that keeps it together. So it's such a big difference in materials. It's like, wow, this is huge, but the actual pouring of it and the visuals of the concrete, it's all the same.

Dusty Rhodes  13:49  
So you can answer this question if you like, and you don't have to answer this question if you like, all right. But as you know, when you're pulling a project together and you're engineering something, eventually it comes to a spreadsheet, and there's a cost. So my what? I'm not an engineer, so my real world example is gluten free bread is three times the price of regular bread. All right, so tell me about low carbon cement. Yeah. How does it compare price wise with regular cement?

Susan McGarry  14:16  
This is what always gets asked. And there's no cost premium, there's no difference. There shouldn't be a difference. It is what we're producing. What Act is the same materials that we use now. It can be produced in the cement production facilities that they have already available. You're just using in a different manner. Instead of producing as much clinker in the kiln, you're going to be grinding it using electricity and blending it using electricity. So there it's a different way of making the material. It's basically just using different kind of or proportions of the of the materials, and that produces less carbon. So you're talking about a tonne of of traditional cement is about 800 kilos of CO two per tonne to produce, whereas act is in around two. 100 kilos of CO two to produce at this point based on kind of what we what we know from our from our production in France. And so it's that much of a difference. There's 600 kilos of carbon in the difference in terms of producing it. But when it comes to cost, what the cement industry is looking at as a whole to decarbonize is carbon capture and storage. This is not really practical or feasible in Ireland as a way of capturing the carbon from the cement installations here on this island, but in Europe, it is. It is being pushed as the solution for to decarbonize and the cement industry, and that's the cost of that is colossal, and it's the industry is going to need subsidies. It's going to need funding, and it's going to result in the cost of cement close to doubly and that that gets knocked on to the cost of housing, the cost of construction, and it's it's not a feasible solution to the whole of the industry. You're not going to build a carbon capture and storage facility beside every cement plant in Europe like that's not practical as well. We need multiple solutions. You need to reduce the clinker now. You need to find new materials. You need to use materials more efficiently. Do all of this to decarbonize from that 800 kilos of CO two per tonne down to as low as possible. And then you might capture some of the carbon residual emissions at the end. And so in terms of cost, I always get, get asked that, and the comparison is, it's it should be the same. There's no big difference. And carbon capture and storage is a much more costly method.

Dusty Rhodes  16:30  
The minute you said it, I could see loads of people looking in the show description of the podcast, going, where is the link for her website? Which is there, of course. But anyway, government plays a huge role in making any change in society. And, you know, there's got all kinds of rules about green buying, and you have to do this and that the other is this changing how contractors are winning big government jobs or big jobs in general.

Susan McGarry  16:54  
Yeah, like the state is the biggest consumer of concrete in this country. Yeah, we do have procurement rules now where 30% clinker substitution is required. That's like, I mean, that's not super ambitious. It's great. We haven't had anything, so we've gone from nothing to something, which is great. And generally the industry is adhering to that, because it's that's not very difficult. We've already been using ggbs, the product that ecosem has been producing for 25 years. We have a business. Years, we have a business model because the industry is consuming ggbs to lower their clinker usage. So in that regard, it's not a huge ask of the industry. I think that the government could maybe do more to push for more to be taken on a more ambitious targets. But I think there's a few different kind of items that we need to fix in the regulatory system around that. So it's quite conservative around using new products. Here in Ireland, obviously there's safety concerns, compliance concerns. We've had mic and pyri from the aggregates being an issue and that people have had to deal with. So there is a general conservative conservatism here. But we have currently no real route of assessment for new low carbon materials, or low carbon binders in in heavy materials like concrete, there's nothing there. I have a new product. I have act in order to allow that for use legally in structural concrete. In Ireland, somebody has to take that risk on themselves through private insurance.

Dusty Rhodes  18:19  
If you had the magic wand. What would you change?

Susan McGarry  18:22  
I think I would, number one, I'd bring some urgency to the situation in that you have a national development plan now, a new housing strategy, very ambitious targets. You're going to need new materials. You're going to need to future proof the materials going into those projects. In order to do that, we need a method for assessment. So anyone creates a new product, they find a new material, they do their testing, they go to the Standards Authority, and they say, Hey, how do I get this approved for use in concrete? We need to start using this to build our houses. With this stuff is great. What do they have to do? There's no, currently no assessment method. So there's no route for that to be taken on other than through an engineering company that wants to do something really innovative and they're willing to put on their own kind of insurance. We need to expedite some sort of route for assessment like that, with resources Manning kind of technical committees, having stakeholder groups or expert groups reviewing these things to speed things up, to get new materials out there. We've seen it happen with modern mess of construction that there's a separate unit kind of set up with NSAI at this point. There's rules around modern methods of construction that we didn't have previously because it was seen as a real need. We needed to we need rapid house building. So modern mess of construction like light gauge, seal, precast concrete, prefabricated materials, all of that, like we've seen a bit of urgency around it, but still, it's all taken years. Everything seems to really just take a little bit too long on the regulatory side, when you have all this level of ambition in the private sector and from the state's own promises, so they kind of need to match. Up the regulatory urgency, or lack of urgency, with the with the industry's urgency, I think,

Dusty Rhodes  20:09  
Susan, I'd like to move on to talk about kind of career progression and leadership and everything, because you've been with ecosm all of your career, and explain to me, because you were the managing director of eco SEM and now you're the Director of Public Affairs and sustainability at Eco sem global, it said they're two different sounding titles. What's the difference?

Susan McGarry  20:30  
Yeah, so the managing director role very focused on Ireland and taking care of the Irish business, growing the Irish business. And my my heart is in policy. Always has been and but I think that was a really necessary step for progression, a necessary step for seniority. As I said, they I got that role at 30 years of age like I was, they took a chance on me without previous management experience, and I really grew into the role. It was challenging at times, but I enjoyed it. I just enjoy a challenge. And what my time had kind of come at that point, I took a I took a step back. I was diagnosed with cancer at 34 and I took some time away. And it was kind of during that I was, you know, thinking, what's, what's the future like for me, kind of going back to work.

Dusty Rhodes  21:17  
That changes your thinking, doesn't it? 

Susan McGarry  21:18  
It really does, really change. So you kind of went, maybe you can make a bigger difference by moving from an Irish leader to be a global leader, or to be promoted as.

Yeah, like, what's, what's the driving force in my career, and it's always been sustainability and policy. So there was a bit I could see a policy role in Eco sem sort of evolving somehow, because we had started, we had applied for some European funding. We had started having conversations with a few European policy makers, because there was legislation coming that was going to affect our business, and different people in the business had had different conversations. And people were really responsive to eco sem story because we were such a small company that grown, we have this technology now that could, like, literally, rapidly decarbonize the entire European cement industry. And so people were listening, but like, no one's in Ireland, or no one in the company had the time to commit to this fully, so I could see that kind of down the line, and I had done the policy piece in Ireland. So while I was off, I really kind of was thinking, you know, I wonder what's what I'm going to go back to? And the call actually came while I was off, and through discussions with the exec team, like, that's what came out of it was, I think this role is basically made for me. So now I do this globally. As I said, we're going to build a plant, hopefully in the US in the next couple of years as well. And so there's a global element to it as well. And we're looking at partnerships globally in lots of different countries, outside of Europe, outside the US. So there's a global aspect to it as well, which is exciting to me, but yeah, dealing with European officials is very It's good. It's interesting.

Dusty Rhodes  23:00  
Susan, can I ask you then, how you went in Eco SEM? Because you kind of started at the in the post room, for one, for better word, I mean, you were pretty much straight out of college, and you went to all the way to the top. What was your path from A to B?

Susan McGarry  23:17  
I'd say a bit zig zaggy in terms of topics, like I did do. I mean, I did the technical assistance stuff where people were calling me saying their concrete hadn't set like I had like, and I'm calling out, I'm looking at plaster like, and seeing, you know what? What way did you throw this stuff up? Do you know like I've done? Yeah, yeah, did that. And then I really, I had to, I that decision point of generalist or specialist came at about, I think I was about 26 and I remember going, Oh, I could there was an opportunity for a research masters in concrete that the company were looking to fulfil. And I could have done that kind of part time. And I remember having discussions with people in ecosm have been my mentors my whole life. They've been great, like, really, everyone's been very responsive to me and very helpful to me. It's been all men up until recently, because, as a small company in first of all, in the construction sector, and then in concrete, even more so, it's very male dominated. But they've always been very helpful to me. And I remember the chairman of ecosm helped kind of hone in that, that that decision. He said, I did this course in UCD and industrial engineering, and I think it was 1965 or 67 he's like, it was great, and it turned engineers into CEOs. You should have a look at that. And the courses was still the course is still running this to this day. And I remember I went to the open day that, and I met the course coordinator, and I was like, coordinator, and I was like, Yeah, I think this is the right idea for me. It was half engineering modules, half MBA modules. And I was like, Yeah, let's do this. And that the two years doing that opened my eyes, and I started bringing stuff back to the company. And it's nearly that I kind of positioned myself as somebody. That is, I'm willing to learn. I'm absorbing everything. I'm trying new things. I can't I always brought new ideas forward. And one of the jokes with the managing director of the Global Business was I'd bring things to him, and he'd say, Do you really want to take this on? Do you really want to, do you understand how hard this is going to be, and there's so much time? And I'm like, yeah, no, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. Let's do it. So I just kind of kept doing that. So then when a role came up as a managing director, the fact that I was considered for that was was because I kind of put myself forward as that person that I'm willing to take on a challenge. I'm willing to really put myself forward for opportunities. And a big part of the engineering degree and background is communications. They always say about engineers and soft skills, the soft skills of engineering, like the comms, presentation, training, all of that, that's what has really propelled me in my career. I don't know if you can tell, but I love chatting. I will chat the hind leg off anyone. I love talking. So honed that in terms of presentation, presentation skills, I was delivering company, CPD presentations to all the engineering practices in the country. Do you know what I mean? I take any opportunity. If one came up, I do it. No problem to architecture practices. They need to know about ecos, and they need to know how to specify ecosystem ggbs. I said I'd do it. So working on that, real presentation skills, the communication skills, really help propel me forward.

Dusty Rhodes  26:29  
So it's important to be visible and to like, you know, stick your head up and to kind of put yourself out there and but you don't want to be like, seen as egotistical. I think that might hold a lot of people back. They kind of went, Well, I don't want them to all think that I'm, you know, a bit of an ego head or whatever. So I mean, where is the line between that, you know? Because I mean that comment, that one comment that you got was, well, there was this course I did in 1965 and it changed people from engineers and CEOs. I'd like the minute you said that, I just went, ding. I'm sure you went ding in your head as well. Like, you know, how do you get to conversations like that? Do you have to go around and say, I'm ambitious? I want to get into management. I want to own this company one day. Or is it a bit more subtle?

Susan McGarry  27:16  
It's definitely more subtle. And I will say one thing that I learned from reading I have absorbed so many of those business books. A lot of the women in business books, like those classics. I read them all in my 20s, and there's one called nice girls don't get the corner office. And I remember reading that you get nothing if you don't ask, and if you don't have confidence, you kind of fake it, and really by being an open person to opportunities and being a helpful person that you'll take on workload. Now there's there's obviously situations where people can take advantage of that, if you're in kind of that type of company where a senior person sees that you'll take on work and give you too much work. But generally people are nice. People are good. And I find in the engineering and construction sector in Ireland, generally, people are very good. And if you have those conversations with people like, you'll be surprised how much people will help you. Like, I've been contacted by so many people. I get asked by people in ecosm questions and stuff like that. Because I'm kind of approachable. I like to think I'm approachable, so if you kind of just think in that way, like nobody's going to think you're egotistical, or, you know, who does she think she is? If you're a 25 year old woman in the engineering sector, and you're having a conversation with someone that's more senior, generally, it's going to make you sound great if you're, if you're interested in career development, and you're, you're asking them, how did they get where they are in their career and what the advice they could give you. I think that's people actually quite enjoy sharing their story and helping in that way. But I did always think and always tell everyone else that I speak to, especially women, nobody else is going to sing your praises or toot your horn. You have to do that, so just doing the work and putting your head down does not get you anywhere. You have to tell people that you did this work and that this work was hard, and this is the time, the energy you put into it, and this is why it's important for the company. And so whatever way that works for you and your company, or in your industry, find way of doing that in a you know, it's in a nice way. You're not trying to push anyone out. You're not trying to push yourself ahead. You're just saying I did a piece of very hard work and it's relevant to you. Please pay attention.

Dusty Rhodes  29:29  
So when you were moving from engineer to management, were the business qualifications that you picked up along the way more important than your technical knowledge?

Susan McGarry  29:41  
Not necessarily. Well, maybe on the people side, people skills really help you, because obviously, as being a younger MD and coming from the more technical side, without that management experience, people could have kind of doubts about my ability, but being. Able to have conversations with people. I mean, like you tell me about your role, you tell me what I can do to help you do things better, or can improve things. What would you think of this type of an improvement, or how we could do things better? And people respond well to that. So the people skills, definitely, but I knew the business inside out because I had the technical background, and I think that's a really key thing with engineers, you can have a re like, get a really strong technical base, and you can be a good manager, if you just, you know, learn the basics of people skills, make sure you're taking care of people. I'm a people led person. Always have been my style would have been an empathetic leader and focused on the people first, but I knew the business inside out. I wasn't so strong in the financials or the commercial because that hadn't been my wheelhouse, so I had to put extra time into those areas. But generally, having some sort of a strong base behind you gives you that advantage, I think, more than anything. As an engineer,

Dusty Rhodes  30:58  
Susan, you're a member of the Women in Engineering Group, which is now a fully fledged society within engineers Ireland. Why is that a big change?

Susan McGarry  31:08  
Yeah, and I love it. I love that topic. So I was listening to back to the other episodes of this podcast, and Colette O'Shea from AECOM was on one of them. She's great. So she was the chair of the group, kind of when I started with them, and she's just stepped down now. So they are the first dedicated women's division, women's society within Engineers Ireland. You would think we don't need it.

Dusty Rhodes  31:35  
That's what that's why I'm asking the question. I would have thought we don't need it. In this day and age,

Susan McGarry  31:39  
it's hard to find a network, because we are in the in the minority. So when I graduated as an engineer in 2011 11% of the engineering population was made up of women. In 2025 it's still only 11% it has not changed. That's a very small percentage. So when you want a network, and you do need a network, that is something that I tell everybody, you need a network. You need somebody that you can pick up a phone to that's kind of like minded or will just listen to you. As I said, I have a lot of men as mentors and ecos, and that's great, but nobody can relate to you in that way. You know, it's just, it's different, and there's certain things that you might things, but I know it's sometimes a little bit easier to have these conversations with women. So you do need a network. And the women and engineering group created that network for anyone that's participated, anyone that's gone to the events. The big event this year, it was amazing. It's in the Mansion House like it was a huge event. I don't think people realised how big this was. It was a huge event. Eyes on one of the panels with Cora Sutton from CS consulting, like, that's a network. Do you know what I mean? That's someone that I know, that she's also in a leadership position in the sector that I can chat to, and she can relate to what I'm talking about. It's so important. And this, I feel like especially rang true when I was when I came back to work after being off for surgery and treatment with breast cancer. There's a lot of impacts on a pre menopausal woman from the treatment. There's a lot of impacts. You have to look at IVF to preserve your fertility, chemo can have a detrimental impact. You're putting to kind of induce menopause to protect yourself during the treatment. All of this is like you're you're seeing all levels of the hormonal changes that women go through in their in their career lifespan, and you need people to talk to during that, like, during those times I had had friends at an IVF. I have friends I've had that are in perimenopause, and when someone's telling you, like, oh yeah, no, that's awful, the reality of it is so much more serious than that that people need help. People need a little bit of grace time. They need. They might need to, you know, take some tasks off their desk for a couple of weeks until they, you know, get to see their GP and get sorted, and then they're fine. Again, that little bit of support keeps women in the industry. But if you don't have anyone that you can share that content with during those times, it's so much harder. It's those little invisible barriers that people don't really recognise that like, you might end up actually, she might actually just leave her a job, step back, you know, whatever it is, and just that's another person exiting, that's another woman exiting our profession, whereas, like, give her a little bit of grace, or give her a support system, she might stay

Dusty Rhodes  34:35  
Having that support system. There is, is fantastic. I want to go back to what you mentioned, about 11% and then it's still 11% why? Why is it still only 11% this is, this is the big mystery that I am banging my head against the wall, going, but I mean, that's ridiculous. 11% why?

Susan McGarry  34:55  
Yeah, and like, the women that you meet in the industry, like are so ambitious and so you. Interesting and all that. It's not like it's such a great career, but I just don't think it's appealing to people at kind of the choice stage, so at that, that second level. But what? What puts them off? There's not, there's still not enough women to see it as I'm on mass as a career choice. I think it's still visually, it still looks quite male dominated, and that is off putting, because it's it's not you don't see someone like yourself doing it. It's not as interesting. There's a lot more now moving there's a lot more women going into, say, biomedical, pharma, that side of things, which is great because it's more visible. There's getting a lot more kind of media coverage. There's loads of jobs in it. It's great money, all of that, whereas, particularly in my sector, heavy like civils, like it's in materials, it's very, seem, very kind of like real dirty, dominated by men, rough and ready, out on site. I'm not on site. I've turned this into a policy career. I still identify very strongly as an engineer, but I've made a policy career out of it. I think there's a lot of work being done to help change things and promote things within kind of school age. But my kind of, my own mission sounds very serious, but my personal kind of goal would have always been to, like, help increase the visibility at senior management level for women in engineering, women in construction, because the senior management levels who makes the hiring decisions can help shape policy around maternity leave, the bereavement leave for for baby loss, IVF, cover all of that. When you have more people in those decision making roles that represent women's interests, you can it can start to see a shift. And you can see that in a lot of the companies, the large employers that have put a lot of time and energy into this side of things, you can see that they've attracted more women in through their pipeline as well, and kept those women from graduate all the way through. So I it's it's not about quotas or anything like that. It's about more women need to get through the system and get to senior management level to help influence the change?

Dusty Rhodes  37:06  
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's a numbers game. If you know, 100,000 people join the engineering system tomorrow, well, then everything would change overnight, and it will be better. I reckon it would be, anyways, so I'm thinking about people who are listening to the podcast now in engineering, what is it that those people need to do to get more women involved? 

Susan McGarry  37:28  
I would say, if you're at a kind of senior management level, decision making level, that to look at your policies number one,

Dusty Rhodes  37:38  
well, no, I'm not. I'm not talking about senior management level. I'm just talking about, say, ordinary engineers, and they're sitting there and they're kind of thinking, yo, yeah, we should have been a better mix around this office. I mean, how do they?

Susan McGarry  37:49  
I would say, speak about, speak about it out loud. That's one of the things, because that kind of, like, it's just it is the way it is. It's always been like that, like there are, there are companies in this country that don't hire women. That is a fact. It's not written anywhere, but that's a fact. It's not in a, in a in a hard and fast rule. It's just generally, look at the interview panels. How many of them are women, and then how many of those women that happen to be on the interview panel get through to actually having a role? Does every company in the country have a maternity leave policy outside of what the state dictates we have to have. What safeguards do you put in place where, when she step has to step back from her role and and takes it back? What's the handover process? What support does she have to come back on maybe a three day week for the first six months? Like it is very much up to everyone, at every level, to say, to question things, and it's just the way it is. It's just been the way it's been for 15 years to two decades. Nothing's changed. We have such ambitious targets in the national development programme, the housing programme, we need to attract people to this industry. We're putting up billboards in Australia to attract people back to Ireland, to build, to build in Ireland, like attract start working on that 50% of the population in this country that does not think this is a career choice, that would be a great way of, kind of boosting our overall workforce.

Dusty Rhodes  39:16  
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you look back to I wasn't, none of us were around, but thinking about World War Two, and, you know, kind of all the men were all foraging, and all the women were getting more into into the workforce, which was fantastic, and it made a huge societal change, you know. And like, if something like that was to happen to engineering, I think we would see the same kind of change, and it would just be, you know, I don't know, it's a huge societal thing, and it'll be time, and it's people like yourselves and the group and everything that are pushing it out there, and they are affecting change. So I just want to say thank you. 

Susan McGarry  39:53  
This is why I say yes to doing the podcast. This is why I said yes to tell my story at the. CIF women's day in March, which was, like, massive for me. It was 600 people. I'd only come back to work the summer beforehand, and I stood up on stage and told everyone I got cancer at 34 and this is my career. And, like, very exposing. Like, that's why I'm okay saying it now, very exposing. But the reason I did it is because you have to be visible. I just feel this kind of need to put myself out there in terms of my career, what I've done to then people will see me. People will see me. They'll see the likes of Colette. They'll see, you know, Mags Dalton from PM Group, whoever it is. Then they go, Oh, that's an interesting career. Look at her, and that's that you just trigger a decision in someone's head.

Dusty Rhodes  40:45  
Well, aside from the product, just what you say about being visible and about how to be visible without being egotistical, I think is a huge learning that I have taken away from our chat today. If you'd like to learn more about Susan's work, please check out the links in the description or area of this podcast. But for now, Director of Public Affairs and Sustainability at  Ecocem Global, Susan McGarry, thank you for joining us. 

Susan McGarry  41:08  
Thank you so much. 

Dusty Rhodes  41:10  
We hope you enjoyed our conversation today. If you know another engineer who would appreciate these insights, please do share the podcast with them. They can find us simply by searching for Engineers Ireland, wherever they listen to podcasts. Our podcast was produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. For advanced episodes, more information on latest trends in infrastructure or career development advice, a tonne of advice on the website at engineers ireland.ie. Until next time for myself. Dusty Rhodes, thank you for listening. 

Low Carbon Cement Decarbonising Construction: Susan McGarry, Director at Ecocem

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

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

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

 

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

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

 

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

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

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

MORE INFORMATION

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

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

QUOTES

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

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

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

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

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

 

KEYWORDS

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

 

 

TRANSCRIPTION

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dusty Rhodes  42:39
If you enjoyed our podcast today, do share with a friend in the business. Just tell them to search for Engineers Ireland in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. For advanced episodes and more information on career development opportunities there are libraries of information on our website at engineersireland.ie. Until next time from myself, Dusty Rhodes, thank you for listening.

Rethinking Ireland Inc: Colette O'Shea, Director at AECOM

The engineering industry thrives on innovation and problem-solving, yet it continues to struggle with one persistent challenge—gender diversity. Women remain under-represented, particularly in leadership roles, leaving many aspiring female engineers wondering how to break through.

Today, we tackle this pressing issue head-on with insights from one of Ireland’s leading engineering voices. We uncover practical strategies for empowering more women into leadership, explore how inclusive teams drive better results, and reveal lessons from high-pressure projects like the London Olympics.

Our guest leads one of Ireland's most progressive engineering and design consultancies, and is a chartered engineer with a passion for change. It's a pleasure to welcome AtkinsRéalis Managing Director, Martina Finn.

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

  • Meeting impossible deadlines on huge projects
  • Necessary disruptions to provide long-term infrastructure
  • Promoting diversity and inclusion in engineering
  • Embracing AI with correct policy implementation
  • Self-development and the power of reverse-mentoring

GUEST DETAILS
Martina Finn is Managing Director at AtkinsRéalis and a Chartered Engineer with over 20 years' experience in the construction industry. She has been with Atkins since 2001.

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.

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

QUOTES

"With every major progression we do, there has to be some disruption and some sacrifice." - Martina Finn

"The percentage of women in engineering globally has fallen since 2020 from 15% to 13.7%." - Martina Finn

"The more diverse our workforce is, both culturally and in gender diversity, then the better solutions we can deliver for our clients and our communities." - Martina Finn

"For anybody entering a company, get into a mentorship programme." - Martina Finn


KEYWORDS
#Engineering #Diversity #Inclusion #Mentorship #CareerDevelopment #AI #ProjectManagement #Education #Gender

TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription.


Dusty Rhodes  00:00
Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the forefront of management minds more than ever. Yet, women are still under-represented in certain industry areas.

Martina Finn  00:09
Believe it or not, the percentage of women in engineering globally has fallen since 2020 from 15% to 13.7%

Dusty Rhodes  00:21
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes, and welcome to AMPLIFIED the Engineers Journal podcast today, we meet a chartered engineer who is driving the way forward for women in engineering. We discuss how to empower more women to reach leadership positions, the role of mentorship in career growth, and how companies can foster truly diverse and inclusive teams. Our guest leads one of Ireland's most progressive engineering and design consultancies, and is passionate about driving real change. It's a pleasure to welcome AtkinsRéalis Managing Director, Martina Finn, Martina, how are you?

Martina Finn  00:52
Very good Dusty, thanks very much for having me on the podcast. Very delighted to be here. 

Dusty Rhodes  00:59
An absolute pleasure to have you. Martina, Listen. Tell me. How did you get into this wonderful world of engineering in the first place,

Martina Finn  01:06
I happened to go to a careers evening in my school. It was in the mix school in Monaghan, and there was someone who was studying engineering in Dundalk Institute of Technology. And I spoke with him on the evening and decided, pardon me, I was doing technical graphics in school, and, you know, aptitude towards maths and technical graphics. So I applied to do civil engineering in Dundalk, and I did a certificate and diploma there, and then I went on to do my degree in Ulster University in Belfast. So something haven't I haven't I haven't regretted since, because it's given me a very, very varied and great, fantastic career to travel with. So no, it's been a fantastic career choice for me.

Dusty Rhodes  01:52
You also like to work to some incredible deadlines, and I love the fact where you know a client will go, well, I need to have this done by January 2035, or whatever it happens to be. But you've worked on two very notable projects where there was no shift in the deadlines, and one of them was the 100th anniversary of the 1916 rising, and you were involved in the military archives there. Can you tell me more about what you did?

Martina Finn  02:16
Yeah, so we were the Civil and Structural engineers on that project, and I was the lead engineer for a country Alice. And essentially it was building a new military archives, which was a sunken basement with a double storey height. But it had to be very sympathetic to link into an existing protected structure on the old cattle Brewer army barracks. So we had a number of challenges there, in terms of just getting with a particular height of building that we had to obtain, to have the, you know, heights of storage required for the archives, the type of building environment, but you also had to consider, then the neighboring properties, which were predominantly residential, and then, as I mentioned, to tie into the sympathetic protective structures, you Know, of the fantastic and the beautiful campus of the cattle Brewer barracks. Then in relation to the program, you know, we had to be finished for the 2016 commemoration celebration. So we literally had a nine month program to get that project built. And with a fantastic, you know, design team and lead architect, along with the contractors, we literally all did just a really collaborative approach to the project. And it was a real can do attitude across the board. And we got the project delivered, you know, on budget and on time, and it was opened by our president, Michael D Higgins, for the commemorations for 2016 and a fantastic project. If anybody gets the opportunity to go down, you can actually go in. There's a visitor's area in there. And if you have had, you know people in your family who are in the military before, it's a, I suppose, a central repository for Ireland, for all of the military archives. So beautiful place to visit if you get the opportunity.

Dusty Rhodes  03:59
So if I'm going down to visit, okay, what should I watch out for? That was a particular challenge for you, and how did you overcome it? Just those little insider thing to look out for.

Martina Finn  04:12
Probably one of the things you won't see, which was one of the biggest challenges, is they're literally part of the whole archives building. So the new part of the building is sunk into the ground, and it literally butts right up against the existing protected structure. Building, which has older buildings have either very shallow foundations or no foundations, so they're very, very thick walls, but literally with no foundation, so there's a lot of underpinning, which essentially is putting in concrete underpinning columns essentially along the existing structure to allow us then to dig down for this new basement structure as part of the military archives. The other thing, then, is with a lot of the. Again, sympathetic refurbishment to do to the existing protected structure a lot, and along with the architects, who are fantastic on the conservation side of things, you know, it's turned out to be a lovely job. Another

Dusty Rhodes  05:14
project that you're working on with a deadline that could just not be moved was the London Olympics. That must have been wildly exciting. What memories do you have of that?

Martina Finn  05:25
Oh, it was a fantastic project to be involved in. And, you know, at that time, we weren't still out of the recession here, yet we were probably starting to maybe see some green shoots. But the big thing for us was to, you know, pick up work where we could to keep our core teams going in Ireland. So essentially, it was keeping people in jobs, you know, over that period, and you know, because of projects like the London Olympics, we came out of it with a stronger portfolio, and also just with a greater rounded experience. That project in particular, we were looking after 1000s of temporary structures across the whole venues for the low cog committee, and right up until the deadline, like literally the night before the opening ceremony, we had people on the ground so we would do the design of the temporary works, and then we had people on the ground who were supervising The construction of them, and, you know, making sure it was all signed off and certified, literally, right up until, you know, the night before the opening ceremony, we got, you know, a fantastic commendation from low cog on the day of the opening ceremony. And it's a project across a country, Alice, we're very proud of. And you know, for myself and leading the Irish team, very, very proud to have been involved in it. And I said, we literally worked 24/7 together. So there was a lot of lot of bonding. And you know, the team did fantastically well on it.

Dusty Rhodes  06:55
And you were coming, as you say to the night before the London Olympics, are you the kind of person who's able to just sleep well and go, it'll be fine. I have everything under control. Do you feel the pressure is there and adrenaline rushing through your blood?

Martina Finn  07:12
I probably didn't appreciate the temporary structures on these type of events before the Olympics. And you're a little bit not nervous, but you just, I suppose, of a bit of apprehension. But no, no, I slept very well. Maybe some of the nights in the weeks beforehand, I didn't sleep so well, but I slept very well that night.

Dusty Rhodes  07:32
Well, listen, that was then. This is now. What kind of projects have you got in the pipeline at the moment that Atkins realized that are kind of lighting your fire, getting you excited. Are you kind of going, This is good?

Martina Finn  07:43
Yeah, we're very fortunate at the moment. You know, we've grown very well over the last number of years, and we're working with, you know, a number of key public and private sector clients in Ireland. I suppose some of the exciting projects we're working on is the Metrolink advanced Works Project, which essentially is the enabling works to allow the Metrolink being contracted. I mean, you know, we've been talking about Metrolink in Ireland for 20 years. Yeah, 20 years. And you know we're seeing it being realised now, you know we're involved in it. It is going to happen. It will be a fantastic project to link up, you know, we're the only city in Europe without a rail link to our airport. So it'll link up, you know, North City to Dublin Airport, to, you know, our rail lines as well, and run to South City. So a fantastic project to be involved in.

Dusty Rhodes  08:36
So where are we sitting with that project at the moment? Has the last 20 years of planning and rails and discussions and funding and not funding and all that, have all the kind of the problems been sorted, and now it's just kind of getting down to putting the preparation works in place and then doing the actual construction.

Martina Finn  08:53
I'll say it's been worked through at the moment, but it's worked through very proactively, because there still are processes to go through in relation to, you know, planning and so forth. What it is, it is underway and it will be realised.

Dusty Rhodes  09:07
Are you able to say, from an engineering point of view, what you, in your opinion, will be the biggest challenge in delivering that project?

Martina Finn  09:16
Gosh, I suppose you always have to consider everybody along that route and along the line. And, you know, nobody likes to see, I suppose, disruption in their backyard. But equally, it's such a critical infrastructure project, I think, collectively, and particularly for people in in within Dublin, but also outside of Dublin, it'll help with that connectivity, and it'll help, you know, ease maybe some of the pressures on on the streets and the greatly enhance the public transport within Dublin, and I say that connectivity to the airport, but also to the rail lines as well. But you know, with every major progression we do, there has to be some disruption. And some sacrifice. So unfortunately, at times, we all have to experience that, but it is important.

Dusty Rhodes  10:08
Let's move on to a topic that comes up quite regularly on the engineers Ireland amplified podcast, and that is equality, diversity and inclusion, which is at the forefront of our minds even more than ever, yet I can't believe in 2025 that women remain under-represented in engineering. What needs to change, in your opinion, to bring more women into the industry?

Martina Finn  10:31
It's something I am very passionate about. You know, obviously being a female engineer and passionate about engineering and it being a fantastic profession to be in, believe it or not, the percentage of women in engineering globally has fallen since 2020 from 15% to 13.7% in Ireland, we're probably maintaining in around the 14 to 15% but I suppose some of the initiatives that myself and my accent realised colleagues do would be, you know, mentoring, reverse mentoring, helping develop our current females in engineering, but a really, really big focus, and I know it is for engineers Ireland too, is the Steps program where we get The opportunity to go out to schools, and that's both at secondary level and primary school level. We've done initiatives where we invite in female students of 15 to 16 years old and teach them what engineering is, the type of career you can have just the varying types of engineering. So, you know, I'm a structural engineer by background, you have structural, civil, mechanical, electrical. Nowadays, you have sustainable initiatives and sustainable engineering that you can do, biomedical, telecoms engineering, power and renewables. There's just so much you can do. And what a diverse career. Again, as I mentioned, the great career to travel with, but there's so many misperceptions for young females on what engineering is, and I think particularly they feel probably either not confident to go into it, because it's a male-dominated industry, and also just very self-conscious. So we try and break down the barriers around that also. The other thing is, we try and make them understand that at any level. And this applies to, you know, young males and females, their entry levels into engineering, from apprenticeship courses through to level seven, you know, level eight, Level Nine, across the board. So at country, Allah started an apprenticeship program last year. And again, people think you need to have honors maths and, you know, honors technical graphics, English and different, different maybe a science subject, but the baseline for, for example, for an apprentice, for our level seven course, is ordinary level maths and ordinary level English. So it's trying to break down some of those barriers. And you know, I would always be keen to present. I live in Dublin, so you know, some of the schools in inner city Dublin, and I, myself, was very lucky to go to university. But some people think they won't get the opportunity to go to university because maybe of social barriers, or that they might not be able to afford it. But it is. There are entry levels at all different levels. You know, from school through apprenticeship programs. There are scholarships through, you know, we're doing a scholarship this year in UCD, and you know, across the board, there are different entry levels that students can uptake. And you know, particularly, to again, to encourage female students to come into engineering.

Dusty Rhodes  13:46
Do you think that engineering is made to sound too complicated? Because, as you said, people imagine that you need to have, you know, higher level English or mathematics or science subjects and stuff like that, which maybe you don't necessarily mean, should there be more emphasis put on what engineers build?

Martina Finn  14:09
I think one of the things, and even, you know, I've been into schools, probably a great age to get children at, and particularly, again, if we're looking at females, is that seven, seven years old, take nine. And when we go into schools at that age, you literally, engineering is literally in everything that we do, from your phone to the headphones we're wearing to the cosmetics, you know, the you know, kids were, you know, on their face to, you know, their nail version. It's people think of it as buildings and bridges and, you know, big roads projects, but it's in, you know, biomedical science. It's literally in every single thing. So particularly when I go into, say, the national schools, I would show them, you know, a picture of a normal street scene, and from the electricity poles. To somebody riding their bike down the street, to, you know, the woman pushing the buggy, to somebody you know, on their phone, the satellite TV. All of that is engineering. And you know, a lot of the, I suppose, a lot of the educational institutions now have a common level entry. And after year one, you can do, you know, a diverse range of courses from that base here. So it's just try and break down those barriers and get a greater understanding of exactly what engineering is. And again, to show it isn't a scary world to go into. You have to be robust as in anything. But you know it is, again, a great career to go into, and particularly for females.

Dusty Rhodes  15:39
And when you're talking to those kids, I mean, they know very little, really, between seven and nine, but what's the reaction when, when, when they're listening to you? Or they kind of go, Yeah, that sounds cool.

Martina Finn  15:51
Oh no, they love it. Absolutely love it. One of the things we do is, and it's, it literally applies to what we do. We bring in a little exercise. So roll sheets of paper with some tape and a book. So if they have a book, we say, right, who can use the least amount of sheets of paper and tape? So you give them a little length each to you know, support this book. And for that age, some of the ideas they come up with just and it really opens their minds, it's just fantastic. And again, you know, you come in with your hard hat and hive is best, and let them try it on. They just get great interaction, great excitement. And you know, I'm really passionate about it in some of the schools, you know, and particularly in around Dublin, some of these kids, you hope they'll even stay on in school. But if they can get the opportunity to go to university or to go to do an apprenticeship or just do another step, you know, in their education, it'll make such a difference in society as a whole, and you get such great satisfaction back from encouraging these children in their education.

Dusty Rhodes  17:01
Martina, you're a very well placed person in this area, because you're very passionate leader of a very large organisation. Tell me about AtkinsRéalis and how you're approaching diversity and equality and inclusion within your own company. Listen

Martina Finn  17:18
dusty, particularly at senior levels across the board. It's a challenge because, you know, when I was coming out of when I graduated from University of Ulster, I was the only one in my year who graduated at the time, and you know, that probably has improved a bit. We're very fortunate in that at the moment, in AtkinsRéalis, we're really targeting, you know, the early careers and mid careers level. And a part of that diversity is attraction of, I suppose, candidates from abroad. So we have a lot of staff from, you know, from Europe, from things like Albania, Portugal. We've a huge South African and South American contingent. And within that, then we've got, I suppose, a large number of female engineers. And I suppose the great thing it helps, both from a cultural point of view and a diversity point of view, is the more that we have that in place. It broadens all of our thinking. It brings more innovation and creativity to you know, engineering is about solving problems for our clients, and you know, for us, delivering our purpose as a country, which is engineering a better future for our planet and its people. And you know, the more diverse our workforce is, both culturally and in terms of, you know, gender diversity, then the better you know solutions, and the better we can deliver for our clients and our communities.

Dusty Rhodes  18:49
As you're working your way through your career and kind of going up things, most things change because you go from solving problems on specific projects. Do you find now that you're solving problems with people and organising, and

Martina Finn  19:05
it's a mixture across the board, yeah. So a lot. I mean, we've got in around 400 people in Southern Ireland. There's another 200 plus in Northern Ireland. The big, big thing for us is, you know, delivering for our clients. What who is delivering for our clients, it's our people. It's our people using technology to deliver. So we have to our people are our biggest asset, and we have to look after our people, and we have to look after the development of our people, and again, the Edna and the more diverse we are, and if we help everybody to come to work being their true self, their authentic self, then it helps with attrition. You know, it makes a great work environment, and it ultimately then delivers the best we can to our clients and keeps our people, you know, happy in their work and getting work satisfaction.

Dusty Rhodes  20:00
Martina, can I ask you to pull out your crystal ball? And I love looking into the future, because there's no right answer. But how do you see it from you, from your position, how do you think engineering is going to evolve over, say, the next decade or so.

Martina Finn  20:16
We definitely will be using, we're already using a lot of digital technology, we need to embrace AI but in the right way. So we do need, you know, a lot of policy in place for that. It's common, whether we like it or not, so we need to utilize it in the right way.

Dusty Rhodes  20:33
And what do you mean by that? I mean, can you give me an example of the wrong way to use it and the right way to use it?

Martina Finn  20:40
We have an AI policy in place within AtkinsRéalis, so there are certain, there's one, I'll not name it, there's one AI program that we use. Others are not allowed to be used in the workplace. But there would be also strict controls around the utilization of that as well. You've probably seen AI generated videos and so forth. So in one of our we do a safety moment at the start of all of our meetings based around our values. So safety, integrity, innovation, collaboration and excellence. So we'd always do one around that, and one recently was our global CEO, and it was an AI generated version of him, and it was him presenting it. And he then told us that this is not him, you know, delivering a message. So it's, it's to look out for those type of things and to have those controls it's going to apply to, you know, all companies across the board. And I think maybe it's still so new to us all, a lot of that maybe policing it still isn't there.

Dusty Rhodes  21:47
I was going to say, how do you form a policy and something that is that new?

Martina Finn  21:51
Yeah, well, within our own intranet, there would be literally strict things. So those are huge it, and data protection teams behind this. So there are the, you know, the internal controls in place. And again, staff can't just upload any program to their their laptops or their work equipment. It's all controlled, so that kind of stuff.

Dusty Rhodes  22:14
Yeah, a lot of people, when they think about AI, and they get very scared, and they kind of think like, you know, oh my God, in 10 years time, or five years time, or whatever, an AI is going to be doing my job. Where do you think AI, I mean, and I'm talking like, think of an Arnold Schwarzenegger sci fi movie kind of a thing. AI in engineering, what do you think the possibilities are?

Martina Finn  22:36
I suppose. Listen, we've had, and I'm a structural engineer, as I mentioned earlier my background. It doesn't matter what software you play. So I'll take AI as another software if you don't understand the fundamentals of what you should be designing and getting out on the other side of it. So anything AI generated needs to be validated, and all of the references behind it need to be checked. So it's the check and processes and review processes that need to be in place. So it has a place, but it has a place with all the checks and reviews and anything we do in engineering, you know, you would have a manual so as a structural engineer, you would do a manual check, and then you would do, you know, a software which will give you a more efficient outcome, but at least you have a good idea of what you're expecting on the back end of it. And for young engineers, and particularly, you know, early careers, it would be something as I'm developing them through, you know, less so now more in a mentoring role, that I would always insist do that by hand, manually, and then do it in your software. You have to understand what you're going to get out on the back end or there, there. But we listen, we have different rules of thumb, etc. But if you don't understand what you're expecting out, and then that's building on your experience and so forth.

Dusty Rhodes  23:58
So, really kind of AI is, a lot of people say that AI will not take over your job, but somebody using AI will, which I think is a great little summary for people who are listening, kind of at the moment, getting into engineering, or early in their engineering career. What kind of skills do you think that they're going to need to thrive?

Martina Finn  24:20
I suppose, again, for anybody in their career having a development path. So I would always say, Have you got a mentor for anybody entering a company? Get into a mentorship program. Talk to your mentor about your development. And it's not just your career development, it's your technical development, but also personal development. So we would do, you know, by yearly reviews with our people, and then there's a development plan that's checked each year. And basically, you know, you will get out of it as much as you put into it, with the support of know, your team. So definitely have a development plan and to get it. Get involved. The more you get. Get involved in engineers Ireland, or the ACA, or your chosen, you know, professional institution. Be involved internally, but also be involved externally. So again, a brilliant example is, you know, steps, we go out and visit the school. There's lists of schools on the engineers Ireland website who would love somebody to visit them. And it's really get involved because, you know, it's fine. It's fine someone like me talking. But I think young people really love hearing from young people, particularly earlier in the careers, and it's good to get that balance across, and at least then the students can see how, you know the career evolves.

Dusty Rhodes  25:46
You mentioned that about getting involved with a mentor or mentorship program. Did you ever have a mentor yourself?

Martina Finn  25:53
Yes, no, I've had, I've had a mentor coming up through I currently have a mentor within a country, Alice, someone at a very senior level. And it's it's bits, fantastic experience. The other thing we have done in the last couple of years is reverse mentoring. So last year, I was mentored by a colleague, reverse mentored by a colleague from South Africa. What does that mean? So essentially, it's someone senior in the organisation been mentored by someone more junior in the organization. How do you take that? It's it's so rewarding, because you learn so much from them, just even, you know, I learned, I suppose, culturally, but you can learn what's on their mind. So then it helps, from a senior leadership point of view, for us to make better decisions, more informed decisions for the whole company. So it is, it's very interesting. And it's, it's, it's a great program. I have a new reverse mentor now this year, which is, you know, a young female within our organisation. I know I'm really looking forward to, we're actually starting our first session next week, but it's a very rewarding one. And I will encourage you know, all of our seniors to be involved, and it gives, you know, our early careers or mid levels engineers, exposure, again, to maybe some people that might meet within the organisation too. You know, we work in different disciplines and sectors, and so we'll give them an opportunity to understand maybe another sector as well. 

Dusty Rhodes  27:23
I think it's interesting with the viewpoints, because you're talking about, I mean, we were talking about the difference mix of people and experiences and cultures and the whole thing when you get that together, but then reverse mentoring, I suppose, is you're learning from somebody younger, and somebody younger is also learning from you.

Martina Finn  27:41
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. 

Dusty Rhodes  27:43
Nice. Okay, well, listen, let's leave it there. If you'd like to find out more about Martina and some of the topics that we spoke about today, you'll find notes and link details in the description area of this podcast. But for now, Martina Finn, Executive Director of AtkinsRéalis, thank you. Thanks very much, Dusty. If you enjoyed our podcast today, please do share with a friend in the business. Just tell them to search for Engineers Ireland AMPLIFIED in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. For advanced episodes and more information on career development opportunities there are libraries of information on our website at engineersireland.ie. Until next time from myself, Dusty Rhodes. Thank you for listening.

 

Bridging The Equality Gap: Managing Director at AtkinsRéalis, Martina Finn

Ireland is working toward sourcing 80% of its electricity from renewable sources in just six years.

One of the key players in this mission is the Head of Engineering at EirGrid who is responsible for overseeing the delivery of critical grid infrastructure. In this podcast she shares experience on the complexities of integrating renewable sources like wind and solar into the grid, about balancing supply and storage solutions, plus technical and regulatory hurdles that engineers must navigate. She also speaks about the challenges she has had to face personally as an engineer in this role. 

Listen now to get a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of Ireland's power grid and our transition to renewable energy.

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

  • The role of Head of Engineering at EirGrid
  • Do we have a creaking old grid?
  • Problems storing energy from renewable sources
  • Moving energy across long distances
  • The planning system
  • Challenges she is facing in 2025

GUEST DETAILS
Louise O’Flanagan is the Head of Engineering and Asset Management at EirGrid, a Fellow of Engineers Ireland, and a leader with two decades of experience in the field.

With her long experience connecting customers such as wind farm developers to the national grid, she possesses a deep understanding of the intricate workings of the power system and the challenges of integrating renewable energy sources.

Louise on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-o-flanagan-3a12ba3a/
EirGrid Website - https://www.eirgrid.ie/ 


 

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
"Leadership is one part of project management. Leadership is about getting people to buy into what you want to deliver and to want to help and assist you in that."

"There is definitely a shortage of female engineers in Ireland. 23% of engineers coming out of university are female and that drops to about 12% actually entering into the workforce. EirGrid have a very active graduate program where you'd see 50% of our graduates are female."

"As an engineer, you can have the most perfect plan on paper. But unless you actually meaningfully engage with your stakeholders, that may be where that plan will stay. On paper."

"It's what a lot of engineers’ face when they're delivering infrastructure projects. First, you need to explain what the need of the project is, but then also listen and take on board that feedback. You must engage with the community."

KEYWORDS

#engineering #renewable #grid #womeninengineering #eirgrid

TRANSCRIPTION

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

Dusty Rhodes  0:00 
Right now on Amplified, lessons learned from an engineer leading the charge for renewable energy in Ireland.

Louise O'Flanagan  0:05 
You know, as an engineer, you can have the most perfect plan on paper, but unless you actually meaningfully engage with your stakeholders, that's maybe where that plan will stay. On paper. It's one lesson that I took away and I've learnt a lot from that experience.

Dusty Rhodes  0:21 
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes, and welcome to Amplified, the Engineers Journal podcast.
Energy demands are skyrocketing and the system needs upgrading. But how are we ensuring a reliable electricity supply and embracing renewable resources today, we're joined by a principal engineer who will share EirGrids ambitious plans to transform the power system and accommodate 80% renewable energy by 2030. She'll also fill us in on the vital role of engineers in this transformation, the complexities of integrating renewable energy and overcoming regulatory hurdles. It’s a pleasure to welcome a Fellow of Engineers Ireland and a leader with two decades of experience in this field, where today she is Head of Engineering at EirGrid, Louis O’Flanagan. You're very welcome.

Louise O'Flanagan  1:09 
Hi, Dusty. How are you really nice to talk to you.

Dusty Rhodes  1:15 
Let me start off with asking about the role of Head of Engineering, for those who may not be familiar with it, what is the Head of Engineering in EirGrid? What does it entail?

Louise O'Flanagan  1:27 
So my role is, I'm within our infrastructure department, and my main focus is providing engineering teams to oversee the delivery of grid infrastructure. And that kind of encompasses setting the standards, the specifications that infrastructure needs to be built to so it can be part, become part of the grid. We've teams of engineers that go out to site or review designs to make sure they're adhering to those standards. And I also have a team that look after asset management. And so that's the grid that's already built. How are we maintaining that is the coming to end of life? Do we need to replace it and refurbish it? So really take care of the grid that we already have, and the teams that we have look after both the grid that's onshore and what will be the new grid that's going to be built offshore to facilitate offshore wind.

Dusty Rhodes  2:10 
One of the things I hear about the grid is problems with getting new renewable energy sources onto the grid in the first place, and because you literally have to make Hey, while the sun shines, what do you do when you have a surplus? How do you how do you store that electricity? What's the thinking on that problem?

Louise O'Flanagan  2:27 
So there's a few things that we can do to support that. So one is, we want to make sure that we have a balance of what's called thermal or conventional generation on the grid. That's kind of the base that we have there, and then we'll have renewables that will be supplying at other times. But you're right, sometimes we are going to have surplus renewables on the grid, and what we want to do there is we want to interconnect to other countries, to other grids, and be able to export that energy when we have a surplus in Ireland. And obviously, the converse of that is when we don't have sufficient renewables being generated on our grid here, we can import we also are looking at, you know, other technologies, such as batteries that can store some of that energy now that still has to go to such a large scale that we would that we can depend on it solely for that purpose. So we'll still remain to be a mix. And there's also other things that need to be brought in as well. So it's not just a case that we can say, once we do all those things, that's it, when we walk away, we need to be able to support the grid as well and make it stable. So there's technologies such as synchronous condensers that need to be built onto the grid as well. And so it's air grid's job to make sure that we have a balance of generation to meet demand. We don't actually generate anything ourselves, but just to make sure that we're planning and developing that grid to accommodate it and then to operate it so that it does remain secure.

Dusty Rhodes  3:41 
So with your engineers hat on and your genius problem solving, when you look at the storage of electricity, what is it that are you actually working on anything at the moment? What are the ideas being floated around?

Louise O'Flanagan  3:55 
In 2021 we launched our roadmap called shaping our electricity future, and that set out how we were going to achieve a grid that was capable at that point, 70% renewables, and now we're looking at 80% renewables, and that's bringing on about 17 gigawatts of renewables in the next 10 years onto the grid that's going to be a mix of wind, of solar, of offshore wind, of battery storage to be able to support that and and it's not just about building new grid to do that, it's about using the existing grid that we have already. And you mentioned some of that grid is quite old, and it is so it's going to be a combination of where we can use our existing grid, make it work harder, make it work smarter. Is it capable of carrying more and deploying new technology to try and do that? Make it work differently, to try and also then incorporate technology to make the grid operate in different ways. So we have a number of initiatives such as dynamic line ratings. So that's looking how, say an overhead line is operating in real time, as opposed to assuming a certain value of what the capacity is of the line. We have other technologies, such as power flow controllers that will actually make the. Power flow through different circuits, through different routes on the grid, to try and reduce some of the, you know, the constraints that we have, or the congestion that we have on the grid. So it's not just one single thing that will make us achieve that. It's a series of different steps that, in combination, will help us to get to those targets that have been set. We'll also need to build new grid that is also there. That's a need that we have. So we need to build more transmission lines, more substations, as we realize that growth over the next 10 years as well. So it's not just a combination bringing on renewables. We're also seeing growth in demand on the island, and we have new interconnectors that are going to be built over to France. EirGrid is progressing, which should be energized in 2026 that's the Celtic interconnector project, and we'll have another one to the UK. That's a green link project. So there's a lot happening on the grid right now. And in fact, if I look at just even Dublin, which is where I live, we have a initiative called the pairing up Dublin scheme, and that is essentially replacing older cables on our grid. They're about 40 to 50 or 60 years old, those cables, so they've come to end of life, and they need to be replaced. But there's an added benefit that the cables that we now replace them with, well, they're going to be newer technology. They're going to be higher capacity, and it means that we can have that added benefit of not just replacing the old cables, but the new cables that come in are going to help us reach that demand growth in Dublin and also help us move renewable energy around the grid. So the renewable energy that's going to come, say from the west of Ireland, and indeed, the offshore wind that's off the east coast of Ireland as well. So it's a really great way of trying to make the grid work in different ways and make most of it, and that's where our network planners come into that picture and try and set out how that roadmap will be developed.

Dusty Rhodes  6:39 
And because, I mean, what I hear is that, you know, the air grid, the whole grid needs, it's been there for 100 years, and we need to put a new one in, all right, that now, that's my uneducated view of what I'm hearing. And you mentioned about certain parts of the grid reaching end of life, which, of course, it does, yeah, roughly, if you were to throw a percentage on it, all right? And I'll say that. I'm not going to quote you on this, because I can ask for statistics. But do you think like we're at a stage where half of the grid needs to be replaced, or a quarter of it needs to or all of it needs to be replaced? No,

Louise O'Flanagan  7:13 
It's nothing like that. I mean, what we have is we've had different stages of building the grid depending on what was needed. You know, we would have had large generation plans, say, built in the 80s or the 90s. And then, you know, when we had 2020 targets, we had a significant amount of grid built again to accommodate that, to get to 40% renewables. There's been a huge amount of investment on the grid. This is just an increased step change, and we're going to be investing billions of euros in developing new grid. I mean, at the moment, we probably have in the region of 200 substations, and there's about 7500 kilometers of circuit. And we estimate that within the next 10 years, we're probably going to see an increase of that number by about 30% of new assets onto the grid. So it's quite a considerable increase. And as I said, where we have, maybe some of the circuits that are older and that we want to replace them, we're going to replace that with newer technology so we can make the most of the grid that we already have.

Dusty Rhodes  8:09 
How do you approach that problem, then, of asset management and innovation? Because firstly, you're you're looking at what's there, what you might need, and then you're looking at what you have now. And I mean, it's terrific looking at new technology, but not all of it is going to be here in 10 years time. Do you know what I mean? Something else would have come along to replace it. So when you're when you're thinking about asset management and innovation, what is the little checklist of things that you do off in your head?

Louise O'Flanagan  8:36 
Well, for me, it goes right back to the start of what is our obligation? It's a license obligation, statutory application, safe, secure, reliable transmission system. And when you're making that investment decision, and when you're making decisions about replacing existing assets, that's what I would have in the back of my mind. Is what we're doing like, are we achieving those objectives right now, or do we need something new to do that? And will it do that in 10 years time? Will it be able to do it in 20 or 30 or 40 years time? And that's the horizon that you're looking at. Like we need to build grid to last, because it takes quite a long time to deliver like by the time we go through planning, what's needed then actually engaging with our stakeholders, with communities, with landowners, and delivering that infrastructure, going into planning process, and then we work very closely with ESB networks for the delivery side of it. It can take quite a number of years to deliver on that infrastructure. So we want to make sure that what we're deciding on is built to last for decades, and it is that kind of future generations that we're thinking of and when we have that purpose in mind.

Dusty Rhodes  9:40 
So then, when you were thinking about what you have to do, say 2025, next year. Okay, what's your own biggest personal challenges you're thinking about for next year? You go, Oh, God, I have to sort this.

Louise O'Flanagan  9:54 
What is immediately ahead of me in the short term is about some of the newer projects that we. Want to deliver over, say, in the West of Ireland, so the North conic projects and we have deployment of new technology onto the grid. But also we'll be looking at what are those, say, circuits or substations that now need to be revisited and see if they're operating correctly or if they come to end of life. So it'll start to look at what that portfolio for the future brings, and also the accommodation of offshore wind. Because, you know, the target is to get five gigawatts of offshore wind connected by 2030 and so that is a very short timeframe in which we need to get all of these projects moving. The first round of them are going to be delivered by developers with their grid delivering a second round on the south coast. So there's a huge focus on offshore wind, it really offers up a step change for us, for Ireland in achieving those renewable targets of 80% so that's probably what the next year will look like for me anyway, and for my colleagues, keeping in mind

Dusty Rhodes  10:52 
that Ireland is aiming to have 80% of the electricity generated by 2030 there's one point that I always here where it's a clog point in any major project or infrastructure or whatever it is, and it's always the planning system. It's a bottleneck, and it's a bottleneck for renewable energy projects as well as anything else. Is this causing any concern for future proofing the grid?

Louise O'Flanagan  11:18 
I think what the planning system is seeing is there's quite a lot of infrastructure being built at the moment and being going through the planning system. So not just for grid, but, you know, there's lots of other projects that are also being submitted at the moment, as well as housing and growth. So it's quite a considerable amount of economic growth in Ireland at the moment, we're seeing lots of projects being progressed. So I think what EirGrid can try and do to support that is when we bring projects to the consenting stage, is that we've, you know, we've done a lot of our done a lot of work before we even get to that stage, in terms of looking at what the options are in front of us, seeing what is the best option that we have, engaging, as I said, with stakeholders and landowners and communities, so that we have really engaged them, told them about the project, taken on board, their feedback, so that when we do get into the planning system, that we have done a huge amount of work of understanding what is the best project that we can bring forward.

Dusty Rhodes  12:15 
The reason I ask that is because when you feel like you're an ordinary engineer and you're going through this planning system, then you're looking, well, air grid wouldn't have that problem because they're enormous, so it's just kind of nice to hear they use the same problems as the rest of us.

Louise O'Flanagan  12:29 
We would factor it in, I suppose it's factoring in that timeline in. When I'm talking about those delivery timelines, we'd have already considered that it might take about 12 months for us to come through the planning system,

Dusty Rhodes  12:41 
You were telling me before we came on the podcast, and I thought it was a great story, and it was a case study that we were chatting about, and it's all to do with the planning system and talking to people, and this whole thing about a substation in Ireland where where you were going to locate it, and, and you kind of thought, yeah, substation. Who cares? But that wasn't the case. What happened?

Louise O'Flanagan  13:04 
Yeah, it's, it was one, when we were chatting about it, I was, you know, I thought about, it's one of the first projects I took on when I joined air grid. So it's going back maybe about 12 years. This project had quite a remote area of Ireland, the West of Ireland, in terms of infrastructure be built. It was quite modest, you know, a substation. It's all enclosed within a building. You can't actually see much of the electrical infrastructure. And was going to connect into an existing overhead line. So I suppose, from my perspective, I thought it was going to be quite a short project, and quite maybe quickly into delivery. And as always, we engage with our communities when we're going to deliver infrastructure. And it was really interesting actually. Then when we went out and we started talking to kind of local community, we realised actually they had quite a lot of interest in the project. Some of it was concerns, some of it was positive, and some of us actually just wondering about what this meant, and trying to make people bring them on this journey of this is to connect renewable energy. This is what our targets are and what that would mean for their area. And I suppose initially there was, as I said, there was some concerns about this, and it's probably what a lot of engineers might face when they're delivering infrastructure projects. And you engage with the community. First is you need to explain what the need of the project is, but then also listen and take on board that feedback, and what the community asked us was, could we look at some of the other options? And some of the options we had ruled out because they were maybe more technically challenging or had maybe more environmental management for us to contend with. We did get that commitment. We said, we'll go back and look at it. So through, I suppose, a period of maybe 12 months, we looked at other options that were available. Some of them, we still realised, but there was one that we said, look, actually, we might be able to take this further. And we had a look at that. And bearing in mind, there's, you know, wind farms that are waiting to connect into it. So there's still a need to progress the project and keep momentum going. But ultimately, what we were able to do as a project team through engaging with our oncologists. With geotechnical engineers, with electrical engineers, we did come up with another option, and we were able to move the substation further away. And I think overall, when it went into the planning system itself, what I found really interesting was there wasn't a single objection to the project. In fact, I actually, you know, actually got a letter of support from that community for the engagement that we'd had on the project. And what it really taught me was, you know, as an engineer, you can have the most perfect plan on paper, but unless you actually meaningfully engage with your stakeholders and communities, that's maybe where that plan will stay, possibly is on paper. And actually, you know, it's one that I took away, and I've learned a lot from that experience.

Dusty Rhodes  15:40 
Louise, let me ask you a little bit about yourself. How did you get into engineering in the first place? You've got a great passion for it.

Louise O'Flanagan  15:48 
I think that, I think that passion has developed over the last 20 years of being an engineer. It was certainly not something that I had ever considered when I was in secondary school, it was a teacher of mine, and she recommended it to me. She said, You know, you're good at maths. You really like science. I know you'd like a profession and you want to help people. Would you consider engineering? And I said to her, No, I've never considered it. I'll go find out more. And it probably wasn't that I constantly said, I you know, I wouldn't be an engineer, but I just didn't know anybody. I didn't know any previous, past pupils that I'd gone on to study engineering. I didn't know anybody's sister that had gone on the engineering I definitely knew some of my friends' brothers had gone on. And so maybe just on some level, I just hadn't considered it as a career path. And then when I got it, I applied to to a number of different colleges, and I got offered a place in UCD. And even when I got there, I wouldn't say it was a passion for it. You know, it's quite overwhelming when you start in engineering, because there's so many different subjects, it's a really broad area to study. But what I found was, in particular, there was this one project that really stood out for me. It was called biosystems for engineering, and it's quite different. And I know it just clicked it when I said I really like this, and I'd like to study more subjects like this. So I looked at what were my options you have to in second year, pick where you might go next. And I realized that the lecturers for those particular subjects were mostly in civil engineering in RSF, terrorists. So that's how I decided to pursue a career in civil engineering in particular. And even as I went through my studies in civil engineering, I kept going towards those subjects that are in the environment were around water hydrology, water treatment, around infrastructure, and that's what ignited that passion in me. So I really just kind of made sure that I kind of followed my own path through to come out with something that I was really interested in,

Dusty Rhodes  17:39 
And you were just exposing yourself to or you were being exposed to lots of different things, and you just followed what interested you. So what was it then that drew you into the energy space?

Louise O'Flanagan  17:49 
Well, initially I started in the water sector, and I spent nine years working as an engineering consultancy in the UK. In Ireland, I worked in with different local authorities around Ireland. I spent a year in Mayo, and me working on different projects of Wicklow and Waterford. And in about 2011 in 2010 I could see that there was really with the economic downturn, going to be a delay in a lot of those projects moving forward. And I was looking around what next is Ireland's biggest challenge? And that's when I happened to cross what Ireland, what ergrid were doing, and it just, once again, just resonated with me, this idea that engineers could bring about solutions and to be part of that solution that need for new infrastructure, and I had a lot of experience in delivering for the water sector, that I could bring their transferable skills over to the energy sector. And that's where I've stayed now for the last 13 years, and that's where my passion is, that idea that you can leave a very sustainable legacy, a very positive legacy, in what you're doing as an engineer.

Dusty Rhodes  18:50 
You mentioned that when engineering was suggested to you, you didn't know any of your own cohort who had gone for it, but you knew some people's brothers and whatever had gone for it, something that you're very passionate about is women in engineering, in your role at the moment, what is the important thing about the shortage of female engineers in Ireland?

Louise O'Flanagan  19:09 
I think firstly, there is a shortage of engineers in Ireland, and then there is definitely a shortage of female engineers in Ireland. I think this is just six hour that about 23% of engineers coming out of university are female, and that drops significantly to about 12% actually entering into the workforce. So but there's huge programs to try and encourage young girls and women into STEM subjects such as engineering. You know, employers such as EirGrid Take a very positive view of trying to encourage engineers to take to encourage women to take up engineering as a profession. In fact, we have a very active graduate program where you'd see, maybe, you know, 50% of our graduates are female, and to try and support that, but it is certainly a stark figure I'd like to. Think that you know other people might follow maybe a similar path that I have, or see that it can be done. I actually heard someone at a conference recently saying you can't be what you can't see. So if you don't see someone that has gone on to take up a more senior role in an organization or as an engineer, if you're maybe earlier in your career, it might not be such a clear path for you.

Dusty Rhodes  20:23 
Now, a lot of people might be looking at you because you're the first female as the Head of Engineering in EirGrid. What does that mean to you?

Louise O'Flanagan  20:30 
I'd like to think once again, there's a there's an opportunity to be a role model and to show that you can take up a senior level position, a senior leadership position within an organisation that is technical. I don't need to have all the technical experience. I need to make sure that I have technical experts in their field as part of that team, and that will be made up, you know, of people that have different disciplines, and diversity is key to it. It's not like you just want to say it's just gender. It's about really supporting diversity on a team, and that's where that collaboration and that different perspectives is really born out. But certainly, I think being female Head of Engineering and asset management does show that you know, this is something that is achievable. If you want to go down this route and go into a leadership role or go into a management role, but still have a technical aspect to to your to your career. And what

Dusty Rhodes  21:26 
Do you think holds women back from careers in engineering in general?

Louise O'Flanagan  21:29 
I think for maybe, maybe for some girls and women, it's like what I went back to at the start, if there isn't a significant number maybe going forward from your class, or that you don't know a lot of your peers that are going forward, you might not, maybe consider it as an obvious choice. So that's why I think the Steps program is really good. And then you know, when you go then through university, as to where do I go next? And I think that's really good if you're coming out of university, is go which employers are the ones that are actually promoting diversity, that are actually genuine and incredible about offering up diversity in the workplace, and the numbers speak for themselves. And as I said, it is challenging, with only 23% of graduates actually being female to make sure that then that organisation encourages female participation in the workplace. Then there's other stages of life that might become more difficult, with families, et cetera, or people having caring roles, and that can disproportionately affect women. But certainly, I'd like to think that if you've, you know you've if that's something that you want to achieve and you want to go on, then you will find the right balance, and there are good employers out there that will support you in that.

Dusty Rhodes  22:34 
I love how you use the word diversity, because you need people of different backgrounds, different skills, different education, different nationalities, different genders, is just another thing on that list. Like, you know, if you were speaking to a female engineer, and I'm sure you probably do, who's feeling a little stuck in her career, and it's kind of, what advice do you give them?

Louise O'Flanagan  22:58 
I think it's for me, it's by finding that passion, what do you enjoy doing, and then finding a balance to make it work for you, if you have a clearer idea where you want to go, and you can see a path, or maybe there's someone just that little bit ahead of you on that path, and then you can get they turn to them and ask them for advice, ask them for feedback. And also, it's not that men don't have a role to play. I think men are very supportive of encouraging diversity and current aging, encouraging gender diversity, and supporting women to going on further in their careers. And it's about normalizing the fact that in those caring roles, it might also be, you know, a man that has to take on his caring roles. And it's just normalizing it for everyone. I think that's a really positive part of it. But certainly, if, if there was a woman joining my team, and I do have a few, I would certainly say, go for what ignites the past in you. Go follow that. You might have to take a little break here and there as other commitments come up in your life, but just try and find a way back in if that's something that you want to do.

Dusty Rhodes  23:58 
And that's just brilliant advice in in general to anybody, I think is something that I've definitely found to be true in my own life, my own career. I want to get back to EirGrid, because I'm thinking about what you said earlier, about many of the projects that you're working on at the moment, or, sorry, many of the projects which are being worked on at the moment, because you don't generate the electricity. You just get it from A to B. There's a lot of wind, solar sites that are being located. And you've mentioned the west of Ireland a number of times. What plans does air grid have to improve how we're getting power from the west of Ireland to the east coast, where the majority of the population are, or to anywhere else in the country, you know what I mean?

Louise O'Flanagan  24:41 
Yeah, no. So, as I mentioned before, when we looked at what the government targets were initially of 70% and onto the 80% we knew that we needed to create a plan of how we were going to achieve that. And there was a roadmap put in place, which is called shaping our electricity future. As I mentioned previous. And we had a huge amount of engagement with industry, with stakeholders, with communities, with local authorities, to explain what the need was and how, what did they think we could do to achieve that? And part of that is what's called a plan led approach so that synergy between where do we have capacity on the grid and where could we place renewables? Or where do we where should we consider demand? So it's really, once again, using that grid in a smarter way than just saying, Okay, we'll just keep building in the one place and try and build more grid to get it from A to B. Is say, well, actually in location C, we have capacity there. And so why? You know that would be a really clear thing. Let's say, What about considering locating wind farms or solar farms or offshore wind in that location, because that's currently where we have capacity on our grid, and then also signaling that this area actually does need reinforcement. We will need to build grid here to support that. And that will take some time, and this is our timeline to do it. It's also about looking at the technologies that I mentioned previously and deploying them throughout different parts of the grid to try and make it work differently. So it's looking at the grid is one thing. It's not separate grids. It's one grid for the whole island, so to see how that operates all together. And so a huge amount of growth on the East Coast, and as you mentioned, we have renewables on the west coast, but what I see as a major step change is offshore wind, because that's now located on the east coast. And you know, there's, you know, maybe three to four gigawatts of offshore wind being planned at the moment for the east coast of Ireland, and that's right off the coast of Dublin. So I think that really is a big change of where we can see generation, renewable generation right on our doorstep. For those that live in Dublin, it's not going to mean that we don't need the other onshore wind that's going to be built in other locations, or the solar energy that's going to be built maybe in the south or other areas, such as the South Coast, for offshore which we need it all. But it's around that. How do we plan it out better in that systematic way?

Dusty Rhodes  27:01 
And it's a very doable thing, because you only have to go on your holidays and realize how big other countries are. And then you come back to our little rock just on the precipice of the Atlantic, and you kind of go, if I drive for more than three hours, I'm going to drown. So it's going to be, it sounds like a huge project. Go West Coast to East Coast, but when you think about it anyways, that's that's a whole other thing. Listen. Louise, I wanted to ask you about, like a lot of engineers, listen to the podcast, who are working in very various engineering firms around the country. You have their ear at the moment. What would you like to say to them in relation to their work and air grid and connecting with air grid, or planning to work with air grid, and what's coming in the next few years?

Louise O'Flanagan  27:50 
Well, I think probably what I've outlined to you just, you could probably imagine there's, there's quite a considerable amount of work in transforming air grids, power system, you know, for generations to come. And this isn't going to be something that's delivered tomorrow or the year after, so we need a huge number of professionals to join us in that challenge. So it could be engineers, ecologists, planners. So, you know, I think if anybody was listening and they wanted to be part of that story, that they're interested in that journey that we're going on look, that are interested in the like sustainability and leaving a very positive legacy. And actually, you know, I talk to people from around the world, and it's really interesting, the number of people that I talk to, of engineers, are saying, I want to make a positive difference, particularly around climate change, and they see this as one of the biggest global threats that we have. And they look at Ireland, they look at air grid, and they tell me, what you're doing there is so transformational that it's so different, that they want to come and join us and be part of that. So maybe that's what I would say. If anybody is listening and they think that's something that they'd like to contribute to or be part of that, I'd maybe suggest even check out our website. We've lots of lots of roles there that might be of interest. But even just to find out more about what we're doing and reach out, even if you're in a community that maybe sees one of our projects coming nearby, are there any particular qualities of skills that you're looking for. At the moment, we're certainly looking for lots of different skills, and it's not even just engineering, but certainly electrical engineering, mechanical, civil process, environmental. You know, I think engineers certainly have a way of thinking and problem solving that lends itself to what we're trying to do. So it's not just one type of engineering, one discipline, but also, as I mentioned, there's other professionals that we need, and then obviously there's other supporting professions that we have. You know, we've solicitors working for us. We have people that work in finance. Our IT sector is massive, and even when you look at where the grid of the future might go, you know, technology plays a massive part of that, of it and AI, so there's, there's plenty of opportunity there. It's not one profession that's ever going to deliver this on its own. You know, it's, it's going to be a whole diverse range of skills that we need.

Dusty Rhodes  29:50 
Looking back on your career, was there any particular incident or story where you learned, like, a big life lesson and just kind of. Wow, and it's stood to your benefit since,

Louise O'Flanagan  30:03 
That's a really good question. Dusty, I think, look, I think in my experience, over the last, you know, as I said, the last 30 years, particularly in project management, what I've learned is about planning for, you know, risks that are unplannable. It's, it's like, you can have a really good schedule, you know, you're going to deliver a project by x date, and then suddenly something comes out of the blue and it throws those plans into disarray. And I think what I've learned over time is just, you know, it's, it's planning for those maybe foreseeable risks, and then having that contingency for the unforeseeable, the unknown. And I think, you know, engineers and project managers tend to be more optimistic and are outlook. If we were pessimistic, we probably wouldn't try and do anything. So you tend to probably err on the side of optimism, and you need to get and that's part of the leadership, although project management is one part. But leadership is getting people to buy into what you want to deliver, and to want to help you and assist you in that. And you know, it's not that you're lying, is that you actually want to drive that on yourself and bring people along. So I think it's about what I've learned is probably having a certain amount of contingency and a plan B if you don't end up doing what Plan A was and being able to keep that momentum going without mentioning any names or places or years.

Dusty Rhodes  31:24 
What happened with that?

Louise O'Flanagan  31:30 

You learned that lesson, and I think it probably even goes back to that, that previous example that I gave you, because I would have thought that I would have gone in maybe with the with the exact plan that I had on paper in a very short period of time and come out with the decision from onboard canola in next many months. I probably would have, even at that stage, probably factored in even a more prolonged planning decision. You know, maybe would have gone to oral hearing. But actually, by doing it the other way around, by spending the time in that development phase prior to going for planning that took a lot longer, that took a year extra onto that project. Was just quite a long time. But actually, on the other side, it saved a huge amount of time because it gave certainty, and that was the point. We came out the other side with a decision that had no conditions, and it was able to go forward. So I think for me, it's about putting a lot of effort into the planning stage and leaving room for that contingency. So that's a project that I was thinking of in particular where, you know, it may set you back in one way, but you actually end up making the time up and giving that greater certainty for things to move forward.

Dusty Rhodes  32:39 
It's been absolutely fascinating and inspiring chatting with you Louise. If you'd like to find out more about Louise and some of the topics that we did speak about today, you'll find notes and link details in the description area of this podcast. But for now, Louise O'Flanagan, Head of Engineering and Asset management at EirGrid, thank you so much for joining us.

Louise O'Flanagan  32:55 
Thank you very much. Dusty.

Dusty Rhodes  32:58 
If you enjoyed our podcast today, please 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 advance 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 for myself Dusty Rhodes, thank you so much for listening. Take care.

Transforming the Grid: Head of Engineering at EirGrid, Louise O’Flanagan

Engineering is a diverse and exciting career that fosters immense creative thinking, but just how far can it take you?

Today we hear from an engineer who turned their wildest dreams into reality and took them all the way to NASA. We hear how an opportunity to attend Space Camp inspired their ‘nothing is impossible’ attitude and how engineering has supported further creative pursuits in different disciplines.

Our guest is a trailblazer in the aerospace engineering industry, but also in promoting the idea that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. She is Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology, Sinéad O’Sullivan.
 

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

  • Early experiences that foster a ‘nothing is impossible’ attitude
  • The impact of surrounding yourself with inspiring people
  • Mission design and AI at NASA
  • Parallels between engineering and other creative pursuits
  • The role of AI and automation in the future of engineering

 

GUEST DETAILS
Sinéad O'Sullivan is an Aerospace Engineer. She formerly led strategy at Harvard Business School’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness with Professor Michael Porter and is currently a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology. Formerly a Research Fellow at MIT’s College of Computing and MIT Sloan as well as a Human Spaceflight mission designer for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her work focuses on the intersection of technology, innovation, geopolitics, and national security. She sits on the board of the European Space Policy Institute, is a frequent contributor to the Financial Times, and is Board Member of IMMA - the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She was also recently nominated as a fellow of Engineers Ireland.

Connect with Sinéad on LinkedIn

 

MORE INFORMATION
Come meet the Engineers Ireland Team at the National Ploughing Championships from September 17th to 19th and have a blast at our Space Station.

We will have three incredible experiences at the Engineers Ireland 'Space Store', ran by former NASA Engineer Steve Ringler - who will be down at the Ploughing Championships with our team.

You can immerse yourself in the cosmos with virtual reality adventures using state-of-the-art headsets, try on a replica spacesuit, or get a hands-on experience with real space rocks, including pieces of the moon.

Join us at Block 2, Row 11, Stand 169 for an unforgettable journey through space and engineering.

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.

Sinead's book “Good Ideas and Power Moves” is due to be published in September 2025.

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

 

QUOTES
"I got to spend time with the engineers at NASA, and it just put this very kind of human, normal person face on this career that seemed totally inaccessible." - Sinéad O’Sullivan.

"There are a ton of really smart engineers that are solving these problems at any given time. But the problem really, I think, lies with the bureaucracy of how we fund science, how we create policy around that." - Sinéad O’Sullivan

"I feel like to be creative, you have to let that child part grow up with you, like if you really want to be good at doing these types of jobs, don't let people tell you they're dumb ideas." - Sinéad O’Sullivan

"To be a great engineer, you need to be around great engineers." - Sinéad O’Sullivan

"My entire career has been curiosity-driven for the simple reason that if I'm really interested in it, I'm going to work hard enough at it to be successful in it." - Sinéad O’Sullivan

"Engineering is really about learning a way of thinking, and it's one that allows you to understand nuance, complexity, and difficult challenges that you can apply to literally any other career." - Sinéad O’Sullivan

 

KEYWORDS
#engineering #nasa #career #space #mission #taylorswift #robots

 

 

TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription:

 

Dusty Rhodes  0:00 
Right now on Amplified, how ordinary engineers achieve extraordinary things.

Sinead O'Sullivan  0:06 
If you're an engineer, you can do anything else, and it nearly makes you a better thing. So for example, maybe I want to do law, but I really am excited about engineering. I would say, do engineering, because guess what, engineers ultimately make better lawyers. Learning engineering is really about learning a way of thinking, and it's one that allows you to understand nuance, complexity, difficult challenges that you can apply to literally any other career. I can do anything with my engineering degree.

Dusty Rhodes  0:37 
Hello there. My name is Dusty Rhodes. Welcome to Amplified, the Engineers Journal podcast. A lot of engineering is thinking about what is possible and then setting out to make it a reality. Our guest today is an expert at doing this because she has pushed the envelope of engineering literally to its limits. As a teenager in Armagh, she decided that she wanted to work with NASA and spent many years there working on models to understand which mission design from a possible million would be the one best one today. As well as working on AI and how some tech platforms are more powerful than countries, she's also found time to set up a record company, work in a two-star Michelin restaurant and study for a diploma and wine. So if you're thinking, ‘how do I make my career dreams come true’ I think our guest today is going to have a few answers and a little inspiration for you. It's a pleasure to welcome Sinead O'Sullivan. Sinead, how are you?

Sinead O'Sullivan  1:28 
I'm great. Thank you so much for having me

Dusty Rhodes  1:33 
Let me start off with I mean, your career is just a dazzling array of accomplishments. Can you just kind of bring me back to the start and tell me the story of how your journey began into aerospace engineering? 

Sinead O'Sullivan  1:46 
Yeah, I mean, I was really, really lucky when I was younger that I got to go to space camp in Houston. They have an international camp. And so it's, it's kind of, it's something like 4045, students from 3036 different countries attend every year, and I was lucky enough to go and represent Northern Ireland, and I got to spend time with the engineers at NASA. And it just put this very kind of human, normal person face on this career that seemed totally inaccessible. And I remember coming back and telling people that, yeah, I want to be a neuroscience engineer, and so I'm going to work at NASA. And they would look at me as if I had three heads, but I had met very normal people who had done it, and it was no big deal for them. So I kind of thought, Well, why can't I do that too?

Dusty Rhodes  2:40 
The following, with NASA. You get the gig with NASA. I mean, there's very, from my limited knowledge of NASA, they're either talking about going to the ISS the International Space Station, going to the moon or going to Mars. Which one of these were you involved in? 

Sinead O'Sullivan  2:54 
So I actually did human spaceflight mission design. So anything that involves, I mean, very simply, there's human and then non-human, you're kind of robotic mission design. I was involved in the planning of anything that was that involves humans in the loop. So if there was an astronaut involved in some capacity, that would have fallen into my my bracket. And, yeah, there were a couple. I mean, you know, any given time we were designing, you know, maybe upwards of 10 different missions. Now, not all of those missions would make it through to being fully funded and something that we would actually work on, but we would look at lots of, you know, kind of like, you know, ideate, lots of different types of missions, and then some would get further along. So for example, the mission to Mars is one that you know, is quite famous and has made it very far along in its trajectory. There were a couple that I worked on that unfortunately did not make it as far along. One of them is, is what was known as the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which is where a close fly by asteroid would be captured by this kind of robotic arm type thing as it went past the Earth's atmosphere, and it would be brought then into lunar lunar orbit, a retrograde orbit, so just an orbit around the moon, and we would then send humans back and forth to that asteroid for mining purposes. Now the reason for that being that we would get to test a lot of the mining equipment that we wanted to send to Mars in a much closer and safer way than sending it to Mars and hoping for the best, and because we also wanted to test some other human-related mission components that were safer done closer to Earth, on the moon rather than Mars. Yeah. I mean, very interesting set of projects. And NASA is doing a lot of very interesting work at any given time. And sorry, you mentioned earlier that I chose the best mission out of a million statistically. And so a lot of the work that I did. Was kind of looking at the statistics and the number of combinations of different types of missions, and trying to optimise for the overall mission design. And you're looking at hundreds of trillions, not a million. And so it becomes this, you know, we would use supercomputers to try and optimise one small part of this that and the code on that supercomputer might take five days to run, and then you realise you're a bug on day four, and you restart it. But yeah, very exciting types of work that NASA's doing, I got to play a very small role in.

Dusty Rhodes  5:35 
You mentioned mining on an asteroid a great distance away from us, and it kind of almost brings that back to engineering here on Earth, because, you know, you're thinking about Greenfield sites and brownfield sites, and nothing is more Greenfield than an asteroid. It's completely barren. I mean, do you have the same kind of problems, if you like, from a different perspective? But are they at the core of them? Are they the same problems that regular engineers have?

Sinead O'Sullivan  6:07 
Well, I mean, NASA engineers are regular engineers. We kind of put these people on pedestals and make it seem like it's impossible to do what they're doing. I mean, they're just regular people that went to university and got a job and have families and go to work nine to five. You know, now, the problems that they work on are a little more abstract, because they're not testing it every day. You know, they might test it once or twice in their career, if they're lucky. I mean, if you look at the Mars Rover, for example, curiosity and endeavour. I mean, you know, I got to spend time with those engineers as they were testing it live. I was in mission control as that landed. I mean, you know, seeing the face of engineers after they've worked on something 24/7, for eight years straight, and then it works. I mean, that's amazing. But these, I mean, they're still, these are very normal people doing normal engineering jobs. Um, one of the closest analogies I would have with, and I did a lot of kind of underwater robotics work for the US Navy. A lot of anyone that's working with water is essentially working with a very similar environment to space. You've got very high-pressure, temperature differentials. Stuff moves like just, it sounds simple but like, stuff just moves in ways that you kind of is hard to control. It's hard to see. Like, sensors don't work that well. So like, if you're you know, if you have this underwater robotic and you're trying to find something to shear, there's glean. Sensors just don't work that well. Everything gets wet, everything gets hot or really cold. So like the closest analogy to kind of an on-Earth environment would definitely be underwater, which is why so many of the astronauts that you see graduating from NASA's astronaut programs have come from institutions like Woods Hole, which is kind of ocean oceanographic research centre. But, yeah, no, these engineers are, are regular engineers. They're, they're building, they're building very normal stuff. And there's a reason that JCB is one of the larger lunar mining research kind of institutions, you know, these, these are not totally abstract. Some of it feels very abstract.

Dusty Rhodes  8:22 
Sure, but yeah, so engineers at NASA are like engineers all over the world. Okay, very intelligent, very curious. People always looking for a solution. The problems that get thrown at you are, as you say, abstract or unusual, but the problem processing, solving problems, your thought process, the method is the same. So can you give me an example, then, of a problem that you were given where you would have used the same method to figure it out?

Sinead O'Sullivan  8:49 
I can give you dozens. I mean, what, you know, what my specialisation was actually in. I came from a kind of world-renowned centre, Academic Centre which created engineering methodologies. And so the methodologies that we would use at NASA were exactly the same engineering methodologies that were used for Boeing, creating, designing aircraft. You know, I have classmates I went to Queen's University in Belfast, and I have classmates that went on to work for spirit of shorts in Belfast. They worked for Airbus. They would use the same methodologies, except the difference is that we would get to test ours slightly less often, and it would be a lot more kind of hypothetical, which is why, and sorry, the budgets for ours were extremely different. You know, the budget for a spaceflight program is infinitely larger than, I shouldn't say infinitely larger, but it's significantly larger than most kind of Earth-constrained problems. So you know, I'd say the big difference is that you have to get really, really creative in how you think about testing some of the. Stuff. You spend a lot of time modelling how you think things are going to react, the behaviour, the interaction between, you know, different levels of gravity, or, you know, you spend a lot of time modelling components and how they might interact. And then you hope to God that those models work because you've, you've just built a whole thing around that there's less of a feedback loop. So that's probably the big difference with a lot of the stuff.

Dusty Rhodes  10:26 
But what about that? You say you need to get creative. How do you get creative with these problems?

Sinead O'Sullivan  10:30 
Going back to this, the Space Camp thing, I went to mentor, and to be one of the kind of, yeah, the mentors at space camp, and you have these 16-year-olds, and they're kind of throwing out ideas like, why don't we just do some Hyperloop, kind of magnetic, you know, launch system? And you're thinking, or, I don't know if that's, you know, okay, sure. Why not? Or a space elevator or something like that, and you kind of think that doesn't seem very realistic or practical. But then several years later, you hear in the news that there is now a company that's being funded with hundreds of millions of dollars to do these things. And so one of the most amazing things about the space and the aerospace industry, I find, is that it actually really helps you to not lose that sense of anything is possible that you have at a young age, because it is literally and, you know, I spend so much time with people at NASA and the GERD propulsion lab and other really cool places and they spitball ideas as if they're five years Old. Like, why don't we just do this? And the adult in you says, well, budget, Paul, you know, there's a there's 10 million different reasons why that's not going to work. But you have to really, really restrain yourself and say, Actually that forget about all of those kind of other reasons the technology and that could actually work. So then you realise is the problem with a lot of our science R and D, actually, the inability to get the politicians on board, the financing on board, and that's kind of the direction that I moved in with my career because I realised that there are a ton of really smart engineers that are solving these problems at any given time that we have. But the problem, really, I think, lies with the bureaucracy of how we fund science, how we create policy around that. And it's like, if we could just give money to these people that are like, Let's build a space elevator without thinking about the technological or the other kind of constraints we would probably have 16-year-olds building really sophisticated solutions to problems that we've been trying to solve for a really long time. So I kind of feel like to be creative, you have to like as you get older, right? And you're gonna know this, everyone feels it the child, in you get smaller and smaller and smaller. The child that would have said, just do this or that, but you have to kind of let that child grow up with you, like if you really want to be good at doing these types of jobs, don't let people tell you they're dumb ideas.

Dusty Rhodes  13:18 
Another part of that is going to make a bigger impression, I think, in the future. And you must have had experience of this is robots and automation, because obviously you can't send humans to asteroids or to Mars or, you know, hopefully we're going back to the moon. But robot, and I've seen a lot of stuff where they're talking about building a base on the moon, but it will be built by automated robots before a single man or woman lands there. And I find that's amazing. Have you gotten involved in this? Have you?

Sinead O'Sullivan  13:47 
I haven't done anything specifically on lunar construction, but I did a lot of work on autonomous systems.

Dusty Rhodes  13:54 
Yeah, that's what I was talking about robots and automation. Yeah, tell me more.

Sinead O'Sullivan  13:58 
I mean, it's just, it's really incredible. I, you know, we live in an interesting period at the minute, because I spent many years working on kind of robotics and autonomous systems, um, and now we're at the stage where the difference between an autonomous system, the work that it can do, the constraints that there are in, in how we should expect these systems to work, and kind of societal expectations of an understanding of these systems are not that well understood. So, so. So, for example, there are two types of people generally, and people will kind of fall into one of these two categories. You're either somebody who thinks never gonna happen, how could, how could a robot do something that humans do? And even AI. But let's stick with robots and automation, autonomous systems for a minute, and then there are people who think these things are gonna do everything, and they're gonna kill us, and they're gonna kill everyone. And people typically fall very quickly into one of these two categories. You know, having built some of the most sophisticated autonomous systems for the Department of Defense, particularly as I mentioned underwater - I spent quite a bit of time working underwater, which is the hardest environment you could build a system in because it doesn't ever really know where it is because things move constantly under water. GPS, oh my god GPS does not work underwater. How do you locate yourself if you have a system of three different robots and they're trying to do something together, how do they know where each other is? Because of the refraction of water itself, it's actually very hard to do this quickly. One of the hardest things to do is to get underwater systems to communicate with each other. And there's a lot we can learn from underwater autonomous systems that can help us understand how autonomous cars communicate with each other when there's high traffic. There's a lot of really exciting stuff happening there. I want to ask people, whatever bucket they fall into, either 'Oh it's going to fix everything' or  'it's going to kill us all', to kind of have some restraint there and look at where they're really good at what they're doing and where they're just not as good. I kind of like to think of autonomous systems as a tool that humans use, never in a full replacement capacity, but that we can use to make our lives better and easier. That helps us in some capacity, but not in a full replacement mode and certainly not in a robot that has super-intelligence of itself that is going to kill us all. 

Dusty Rhodes  17:07 
I definitely want to dig into more about that because robots, automation, AI and all in that bucket is something I want to dig in with you about. But first, just a quick mention that if you're listening to the podcast and you're kind of thinking that this whole space exploration and everything just sounds amazing, and you're thinking to yourself what it would feel like to get into a rocket ship and go off to space, well, here's an invitation to come to the Engineers Ireland Team, at the National Ploughing Championships, September 17th-19th, because we have got our very own Engineers Ireland Space Station on-site! There's going to be three incredible experiences there for you in the Space Store, which is run by former NASA Engineer Steve Ringler, who will be down at the Ploughing Championships with out Team. Immerse yourself in the cosmos with virtual reality adventures using state-of-the-art VR headsets, you can try on a replica space suit - that's top of my list, or you can get a hands-on experience of real space rocks, including actual pieces of the moon. To do that, just join us at Block 2, Row 11, Stand 169 for an unforgettable journey through space and engineering. Find out more here!

Dusty Rhodes  18:19
Sinéad I can see you making a note, is it about the Ploughing Championships? 

Sinead O'Sullivan  18:23
It absolutely is. It's very exciting, it's very, very cool, the space suit in particular, I spent a long time working with Space Suit designers and material engineers, oh my god they're just unbelievably complicated. I remember trying on my first space suit when I was younger and that had probably the biggest impression on me because you forget how hard it is of an environment on humans and you've got this one thing that protects you and they're just so unbelievably cool, but complicated things. So definitely go and look at the space suit.

Dusty Rhodes  19:09
Sinéad I want to move on and just ask you about how you think about life, because working for NASA is a lofty ambition, and you were talking about the kid inside you and the kid goes 'yeah of course you can!' A lot of us lose that as we get older. But you've gone and done that and worked at NASA, and I'm sure a lot of us would be like 'we'll I'd love to be a wine expert', you've done all these things I mean you're writing books, let me know how is it that when your brain works when you get a creative idea in your head you go from crazy idea to actually doing it and achieving it?

Sinead O'Sullivan  19:48
Yeah, that's an interesting question, I mean, I think you've kind of answered it in your question. And I've kind of discussed it before but like I'd say if there was something I've learned when I was younger, maybe 16 / 17, when I feel like I was making career decisions that stayed with me, is that I met people who did extraordinary things and they were just ordinary people and I think there's something about that that made me internalise the idea that there's literally nothing that you cannot do. My friends have just done amazing stuff and I see them on their journey and they're not easy things to do like you have to have grit, determination and resiliency, but nothing feels like it's impossible for me. It's not necessarily an ego thing, I am never the smartest person in a room and I didn't get the best grades in school, and people probably laughed at me when I said I was going to NASA, because I was never the top of my class. And you know, normal people can do extraordinary things. At a young age if you develop agency like 'I can go and do those things', sure it might take you a while to figure out how to do them, but nothing feels impossible. One you realise that the hard part is actually figuring out what thing you want to do if you could do anything, because there are so many things to do. And so the hard part is waking up every day and thinking 'what do I really want to dedicate the next month, six months, year, five years, to doing what is the goal?' And once you've decided on the goal, I mean, it really is just a matter of going and doing it and sticking at it.

Dusty Rhodes  22:13 
A lot of a lot of engineers will have dreams, as we all do, and they say, I want to buy, build the first, you know, 50-story skyscraper in Ireland or I want to run my own firm, or I want to do something, you know, you know, crazy at the in the middle of the Atlantic, or whatever, and they have the you kind of just get stuck in a rut, and you don't move on. I've heard two things that I have found to be true, and I just want to ask you if you found them be true. Number one is, you have those crazy ideas and you think, okay, great, I'm going to do it. All right, you should try and hang out with the people that you want to be like. So if you want to be a millionaire, hang out with millionaires. All right? And the other thing is, is that when you start hanging out with the people that you want to be like they're more giving because they're ahead of you. And it's just a natural thing in life where kind of, you know, somebody who's climbing up the ladder doesn't want somebody in their way, but somebody who's behind is not important. So you're quite happy to go, oh yeah. Well, listen, if you want to do NASA, here's the thing. You go through the whole, whole steps of them, and you get all that. Have you found that also to be true in your career?

Sinead O'Sullivan  23:23 
Yeah, you've nailed it. I mean, so many people don't understand that 90% of trying to do something hard isn't about the sure you need the technical skills, right? So, like, for engineering is a great example. I can't be an engineer at NASA. If I don't understand maths, like there is a basic requirement, yeah, technically. But I think once you have that, like, how many engineers are there in the world? So many, but not everyone gets to work at NASA. You know, I say that these are ordinary people, but, you know, there are few of them, and it's a very prestigious job. But I think what people don't quite understand, and it took me a really, really long time to understand this, is that most of the stuff that you learn about how to actually get these jobs and do them, is like implicit learning. It's not in a textbook. It's not written down anywhere. It's the kind of stuff that you only pick up. It's a mentality, it's how to go about things, it's how you communicate that you only really learn when you spend time with the people that are doing it. And so there's this kind of insider, outsider perspective, which is hard like it is unbelievably hard to break through, but if you spend time with the people that are doing those things, you don't even realise that you're learning how to be one of those people, and then you wake up one day and you are one of them. And there's so much of the world is about implicit learning, which is why, during COVID, when people stopped going to offices, I felt really bad for younger people, because they're not implicitly learning these things. They might be sitting doing a spreadsheet or using CAD or something, but to be a great engineer, you need to be around great engineers. When you surround yourself with people that you want to be like and you find interesting and, you know it really it's not in a weird or superficial way. I mean, just people that you like, and you find interesting, and you aspire to be, you become one of them over time. I fully believe that we are, you know, we are the sum of the people that we spend the closest amount of time or the most amount of time with. And I'm lucky that I got to travel a lot and meet really cool people all over the world. And I would like to think that I'm a sum of these very cool, interesting people. That's not to say I am cool and interesting, but it's more likely that I will be if I spend time with people like that.

Dusty Rhodes  25:50 
Very, very true. I'm going to hit you now with the strangest twist in an interview that I've ever had in my entire career because we've been talking about career moves. We've been talking about NASA. We've been talking about building crazy things underwater and on remote asteroids and stuff like that. And now we're going to talk about Taylor Swift, oh my gosh. And it's all related to everything that we have been talking about. Okay, because you've written a book called 'Good Ideas and Power Moves'. Link is in the description of the podcast for you. But Taylor Swift almost embodies everything you've been talking about. Tell me about this.

Sinead O'Sullivan  26:29 
I just, I listened to a lot of Taylor Swift music, and I followed her quite closely. You know her kind of personal, unprofessional trials and tribulations. I've seen her as somebody who just does exactly the stuff that I've talked about, and I've always felt really amazed by by somebody like her.

Dusty Rhodes  26:49 
So give me, give me an example of something Taylor did that relates to what we were talking about.

Sinead O'Sullivan  26:53 
I mean, more recently, she re-recorded all of her albums, and literally every executive under the sun. Told her not to do that. She went against a private equity firm with more than a trillion dollars behind it, which told her not to do that, and she still did it. And she there was, I mean, statistically, it was much more likely than not that what she was doing was career suicide, but she just very strongly believed in it, and she had a gut instinct about it, and it worked in her favour for lots of various different reasons. It could easily not have been done, but I just feel like, you know, that is one example of somebody who she still has that child inside of her that says, actually, this is what I want to do, and this is what I'm going to do, and this is what I believe in. And I don't care if the spreadsheets or Wall Street or whoever these, these kind of childless, soulless people tell me that I'm wrong, I'm just gonna go and do it and see what happens. And this is a path that I'm gonna take. I just think she's just incredibly young, fun, courageous, and I just think she's done a lot of really, really interesting stuff. I mean, again, she is someone who against whom the odds have been completely stacked. And she, you know, she wasn't always as successful as she is today. And a lot of people probably don't remember the years when everyone hated her, and a lot of people would have given up and been like, Okay, well, I had a good career so far, I should be thankful for that. And you know, now I'm going to retire because I've made a ton of money, and the time, you know, the time in the limelight is over for me. She didn't do that. She kind of forged her own very, very atypical path. Any executive in the music industry would not have told any of their musicians to do what she did at any given stage of that.

Dusty Rhodes  28:45 
So, would it be true then that Taylor Swift's problem-solving in Taylor Swift, the brain of Taylor Swift, the way it solves problems and the way it makes decisions is something we should learn from.

Sinead O'Sullivan  28:56 
I definitely think so. I, you know, it kind of frustrates me. We were talking earlier about, you know, staying and being creative. And I think that, like not a lot of people for a very long time, took her seriously. I first started to write about Taylor Swift in a more business kind of professional finance capacity several years before, you know, kind of the mainstream, oh, she's amazing and oh, she's making so much money, started to happen. And I remember because I write for the Financial Times, having an argument with my editor there trying to get a piece published about her several years ago. And they said, No, I mean, she's just, you know, she's just a musician, you know, she's just so and so. But the reality is that, and we now know she was never just so and so. She was never just a musician. But getting back to my point, which is that you kind of have to look outside of the box in terms of who's doing something that's really interesting or unique. And don't you know there's in the same way that that adults, part of you will be like, oh, never gonna work bureaucracy, politics, finance, whatever? You have to have that same remove, that same mask when you look at who is inspiring you, or where you find your creativity, a lot of people would for for most of her career, did not take her, did not view her as a serious person, in the same way that most engineers don't go to art museums to try and find you know something that's going to inspire the next NASA mission. But if you want to be creative, you have to look at people just doing weird stuff that is not on this kind of escalator of a career and learn something from that.

Dusty Rhodes  30:42 
One of the things you said at the start of our conversation was it's ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and Taylor Swift is a great example of that because she's just a girl. Where was it Philadelphia, or the state of where she was from? Pennsylvania? Oh, Pennsylvania, that's it. Sorry. So she's from the state of Pennsylvania, small town, Pennsylvania, and, you know, she'd no major, like, you know, her dad wasn't a pop star and like that, but she just came from that, and she had the determination. And many people have seen the video of her sitting as a 14-year-old singing beside some river or whatever, and there was, like, nobody there, all right? And I think the same thing about Ed Sheeran, because he, again, was, he was, I mean, he was a red-headed kid, all right, not blessed with the looks blessing, all right. But he said, I want to be a pop star. And he was a terrible singer when he was a kid.

Sinead O'Sullivan  31:34 
So I love this, yes, I this is my favorite example, and I actually wrote about him in the book. And this is exactly what I refer to, and Taylor Swift writes about it in her lyrics frequently. Yeah, she was never born like this, she had to work so damn hard Yes, to get to where she is today. And I fully believe that, Oh, my God, I was never if you, if you would have asked my maths teacher when I was 15 if I was going to go to NASA, they would have laughed.

Dusty Rhodes  32:03 
Yes, honestly, but if you have that dream and you have that crazy idea, you will then do the work that takes to get there.

Sinead O'Sullivan  32:09 
I believe that, and that's why I, you know, I saw a professor of Aerospace Engineering, and I teach a lot of undergrad engineering, and they kind of all ask me for career advice at certain stages, even after they've kind of long graduated. It's, it's always really nice to hear from from previous students. And they're always kind of, there's, there's a choice that they have to make. Should I do this thing and it's stable, and I know what it and it's a great career, and, yeah, or this other thing. And I was going to say, like, you're asking me this question because you're interested in this other thing. Otherwise, you would have said, No, you would have taken the like, and it's this isn't great advice for everybody, and I acknowledge that you know this. This works for me and it works for a small number of people, but, like, my entire career has been curiosity driven for the simple reason that if I'm really interested in it, I'm going to work hard enough at it to be successful in it. If I'm not interested in it, like there's just no way I'm ever going to be good at it, because I just every there's nothing, nobody is born with a single talent that they're good enough at to get them to the top without trying. And so it's like, what are the things I'm excited about? Because those are the things that I'm going to get off at eight o'clock in the morning and be like, Oh, I can't wait to pick up where I left off yesterday. And so it's like, do the thing that you really love. And when I was younger, I remember, and in Ireland, you know, I think so many people might have experienced this, but if you get good grades, they try to, especially in science, they try to tell you, you should be a doctor, and that's a that's a great job for a lot of people. I just never it. Just never even entered like I just didn't even think about it because I knew I just very specifically. I decided I was going to go wherever NASA and I remember at the time of school being like, okay, cool, but just go and do medicine and I just had no interest. I would have failed. I just would have failed medical school. I just wouldn't have been able to pass it. It would have been too boring for me. Yeah, that it's boring. But for me, I just didn't find it interesting.

Dusty Rhodes  34:24 
But I think it's one of those things where you find the thing, or whatever you go, that's what I want to do. And very, very few people have that. A lot of people, as you say, they go to school and they go to numbers and they get the grades and they go, I'll go be a lawyer, be a doctor, you know, whatever. Be an accountant, you know, whatever. And they make great money, but our their hearts aren't in it. I find most of the engineers that I speak to are not like that, because there was always something about engineering where they kind of went. I love a really good problem. That's why they got into engineering.

Sinead O'Sullivan  34:56 
Yeah, and I worked with a lot of people in finance at the minute and have done for the last few years. And I remember when I went to Harvard Business School, I had gone from working at NASA, where people, I mean, it would be midnight on a Friday night, and I'd be running code, and people would grab a few beers and watch like, you know, it was like a hobby and a job all in one and everyone was super excited about what everyone else was doing. And then I remember going to Harvard Business School and being with a ton of kind of hedge fund, private equity, investment banking type people, and they hated their jobs, and there was no part of them that wanted to ever be in the office. And I remember thinking at the time like, wow, this is the difference between, I mean, an engineer has, like I said, has the ability to make a ton of money in so many different ways that are not engineering. So you can be you can go into accounting, you can go into banking, you can be a doctor, and a lot of the time you'll be pushed into those areas. But you kind of, the engineers are the people who kind of said, I actually don't want to do that. I want to do this other thing. And they're very specific about that thing being engineering. They've chosen engineering, which is why I love working with engineers, because they choose to be there every day when they have alternatives, people that work in finance. And I mean, this is not to say that they're bad or horrible or boring. A lot of people in finance, and they're very cool, but nobody wakes up in the morning as a 15-year-old, and I cannot wait to be an accountant with engineering. You have to, you have to choose that. And there's something so amazing with working with people who are passionate about what they're doing. You can't replace, like there's no there is nothing. There's no amount of money in the world, salary wise, that you can replace working with cool, interested people with.

Dusty Rhodes  36:52 
Describe to me the feeling you get when you're working with cool, interesting people, and you have this enormous problem, and then you come up with an idea. And then you fix it. What's that feeling like when you go it worked?

Sinead O'Sullivan  37:04 
It's priceless to see something that you've built. Work is priceless. And people feel this at a really young age, and this is the thing that they lose, I think, when they get older, this kind of problem solving, because problems get more complex and they get more kind of ethereal, and so many more people are involved in fixing it that no one really takes ownership over it. But when you're a kid, right? And you're building Lego, and the thing works, you know, like, Huh? You know, I've been working with chefs recently, like top chefs at a two-star mission restaurant, I see the same thing. It's engineering. They see it every they build something, and there's a reason that they work 18 hour days, every day, is because they get so much satisfaction from the thing that they made than going and working. There's something about that that just, it's just money. It's like, it's, it's like doing a hobby and getting paid for it. That just doesn't get replicated in finance when your spreadsheet tells you you're gonna make money. You know, there's, there's something so satisfying about building or designing, and even if it doesn't work, because 99% of the time it doesn't work, right? And no one talks about that.

Dusty Rhodes  38:16 
Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. Even if it doesn't work, you've always learned something so you know, it's not a failed exercise, by by any accounts. Listen, let me wrap up our conversation just kind of looking to the future, because I think you might have a better idea than most of us. AI and big tech is what everybody is talking about. I'm wondering where what you know of AI is going to help engineers with problem-solving and decision-making. What do you see coming down the line?

Sinead O'Sullivan  38:45 
I will give you a good example in biotech, which is where we kind of seen some of the impacts of AI, actually, even in terms of the type of work that I did at NASA, which is very statistically driven types of work. So let's say you have a needle and a haystack. A lot of the work at NASA that I did was trying to find the needle, which is a mission that was like the optimal mission in amongst the haystack. And we wrote a lot of code, and a lot of the stuff that I did was writing optimisation, and it's kind of a what would kind of now be considered like AI algorithms to try and find that that needle faster and faster and faster, in the same way, that in biotech, you're trying to find chemical solutions to health problems. So let's say that there, you know, there are a trillion different ways that enzymes can work together in a vaccine to do something. Well, it used to be that scientists would have to go through one by one, testing each of these to realise that it worked or didn't work. Now we have AI that can nearly do this in the blink of an eye, where we used to need supercomputers at NASA. I mean, one of my friends at the Jet Propulsion Lab has a side curiosity in in biology and run the code for the COVID vaccine the week that it was released, the week that the paper on that was released, he was able to do that on his home computer and validated that it worked. So we have this kind of shift in the computational ability to do some of the grunt work that people would have done. And I think right now that's where we are, that this has just become such an amazing tool that should, and I think will allow us to say, Okay, I used to spend 18 hours a day for four years trying to get to this point that I was able to get at in three and a half seconds using AI. Now that I'm there, the really hard stuff can start. The hard work really begins, of trying to figure out, how does this vaccine interact with complex systems? Um, how does this mission? How do we get this mission through Congress? How? I mean, the New Yorker just wrote an amazing piece on writing because people are convinced that it's going to kill the work of writers and journalists. And it's like writing is also this kind of combinatorial problem. There are 8 trillion different ways that you can write a sentence. A writer has to specifically choose one, and it's like, what are the constraints? Who is it writing for writing doesn't happen in a vacuum. You have to think about your readers and what emotions you're trying to convey. So there's this higher level of thinking that an engineer, a writer, a biotechnologist, has to make where they look at the complex world around them, the markets, financing, policy, and that's the part that I think a human is uniquely good at doing, and humans will uniquely do, but they'll just be doing it so much faster and better with the use of tools like AI.

Dusty Rhodes  42:00 
Yeah, so, AI is a good thing in a short sentence.

Sinead O'Sullivan  42:04 
Yes, I, you know, I there are, again, like, like, autonomous systems. People think it's either gonna kill us or make us redundant, or, no, it's a really great tool. And actually, I was giving a talk with the editor of The Economist recently, and he had a really good line, which I'm going to steal here, which is that, you know, chat GPT, for example, people, everyone's talking about chat GPT. Chat GPT is like having an intern. They do a lot of work for you, but you still have to go through to make sure that they didn't screw it off anywhere. Make sure to correct, but that intern is never going to replace the writer or the editor, but it certainly helps them so they're a tool. All of these things that we build are tools. We can decide what we want to do with them. Even, oh, my God, even if there was a runaway rogue AI that tried to kill us all, we can decide to do something about that, because we have agency, right? Like we're not stuck in a vacuum with this stuff happening to us. That's why we have policy and law and regulation. So I I'm not worried about it. I'm excited about it.

Dusty Rhodes  43:12 
I'm excited about it as well. I'm a little bit tin hat about it as well. And another third of me it just keeps thinking about the animal Schwarzenegger movie, The Terminator, where Skynet eventually, yeah, there you go. So, but it's the future, and nobody knows. Listen to wrap-up today. Sinead, it's been absolutely fascinating. Is there anything else, or any final thoughts that you would like to share on engineering and stuff like that with our audience?

Sinead O'Sullivan  43:37 
Yeah. I mean, here's the thing that, you know, I get a lot of younger people asking me if they should do engineering or something, or how to think about, like a career in engineering at that stage. And I guess my guiding principle, because I still make career decisions every day, like even adults have to think about them all the time. And I always think about a couple of things. One is like, am I going to have fun doing this? And I kind of optimise nearly all of my career decisions for fun, because I don't. I don't think jobs have to be boring. That's so dumb. You can having a boring job as a choice, but one that I've never made. The other thing is that I always try to choose something that gives me more optionality. So for example, medicine, my sister's a doctor. There are very few things that she can do that is not being a doctor. Now that she's done her 12 years of training, if you're an engineer, you can do anything else, and it only makes you a better thing. So for example, if you think down the line, maybe, maybe I want to do law like something totally different, right? Maybe I want to do law, but I really am excited about engineering. I would say do engineering because guess what? Engineers, it has been, literally make better lawyers. And I'll tell you one other thing, I'm a friend who was an engineer who went into law. They make way more money if they understand technology, way more money. So there's nearly, you know, I've worked with engineers that have become traders. I can tell you one thing, they're better traders. Engineering, learning. Engineering is really about learning a way of thinking, and it's one that allows you to understand nuance, complexity, and difficult challenges that you can apply to literally any other career. And so it's fun. You can be an engineer, or you can be literally anything else once you have it, but there's no way that you're not going to enjoy the process of becoming it. And I think, at the stage where you don't really know much about what you like and don't like, and careers and jobs and what I had no idea what engineers did like, none, none when I chose to do engineering. But I love the people and everyone fun that I met was always an engineer, and so baby steps, just do what you think is fun and the engineering you can use to double your success in any other career. Should you decide at a later stage that's not what you wanted to do? But yes, I there's, you know, people always ask me, if you could go back and do it again, what would you change? And like, absolutely nothing. I can do anything with my engineering degree.

Dusty Rhodes  46:30 
And on that note, I'm going to say it's been hugely inspirational chatting with you if you'd like to find out more about Sinead O'Sullivan and some of the topics that we spoke about today. You find notes and link details in the description area of this podcast, but for now, Sinead O'Sullivan, thank you so so much for being so giving.

Sinead O'Sullivan  46:47 
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a ton of fun.

Dusty Rhodes  46:51 
If you enjoyed our podcast today, do share with a friend in the business, just on the search for Engineers Ireland on their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. For pre-release episodes, more information on engineering across Ireland or career development opportunities, there are libraries of information on our website at www.engineersireland.ie 

Until next time for myself, Dusty Rhodes, thank you so much for listening.

Reaching for the Stars: Sinéad O’Sullivan, NASA

Engineering innovation has created incredible technology and found new ways to use current technology to overcome engineering challenges.

LiDAR is an example of one of these revolutionary tools and today we hear from an art historian turned civil engineer who is using it to scan our cities. We hear about their creation of the world's densest urban aerial laser scanning dataset, which was conducted using a large slice of the centre of Dublin City, and the challenges they’ve overcome in transforming how we understand, plan, and protect our cities.

Our guest is a pioneering force in urban data science and has authored over 160 peer reviewed publications, been awarded four patents and worked as a professor in UCD Dublin. She is Professor at New York University's Centre for Urban science and Progress Dr Debra Laefer.

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

  • Using LIDAR technology to create highly detailed 3D scans of cities
  • Developing methods to efficiently store, process, and analyse LIDAR data
  • How 3D scans are revolutionising urban flood modelling and emergency response
  • Applying the LIDAR data and 3D models to real-world engineering challenges
  • Exploring the use of 3D printing technology in conjunction with LIDAR data

GUEST DETAILS
With degrees from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (MS, Ph.D.), NYU (MEng), and Columbia University (BS, BA), Prof. Debra Laefer has a wide-ranging background spanning from geotechnical and structural engineering to art history and historic preservation.

In her decade and a half as a faculty member in both the US and Europe, Prof. Laefer has served as the principal investigator for grants from a wide range of sponsors including the National Science Foundation, the US Federal Highway Administration, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Science Foundation Ireland, and the European Research Council (including a €1.5 million single investigator award from the flagship ERC program for which she is the only civil engineer to have been funded in Ireland in the program’s 11 year history).

Prof. Laefer has authored over 160 peer-reviewed publications, been awarded 4 patents, and has supervised 15 doctoral and 20 Masters theses. Among many honors from IEEE, ISPRS, and other professional societies, the most notable is perhaps the 2016 commissioning and hanging of her portrait by the Royal Irish Academy as one of eight researchers selected for the Women on Walls project to celebrate Irish women in science and engineering.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/debra-f-laefer-09510a11/

 

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
"We didn't devise a sensor, we didn't even improve the sensor, but we took a fundamentally engineering approach to it. We took this more systematic approach of; let's reverse engineer the process, figure out what we want to get and figure out how to use the sensor to obtain that data."  - Dr. Debra Laefer

"This technique has been used in fields as far from civil engineering as breast cancer research. So that not only has it been transferred to other LIDAR applications, but people have used it for other remote sensing and medical imaging datasets." - Dr. Debra Laefer

"It's good to make mistakes, and it's good to have senior engineers check them." - Dr. Debra Laefer

"As crazy as your idea may seem, a lot of the time the best ideas are initially too far ahead of the curve, so don't give up on them." - Dr. Debra Laefer

KEYWORDS
#buildings #data #dublin #engineers #civilengineering #lidar #computationalmodel

 

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 to make a 3D scan of Dublin.

Debra Laefer  00:05
If people think they have a good idea, they shouldn't give up, that if you push on it hard enough long enough, it will happen. As crazy as your idea may seem, and a lot of times the best ideas are initially too far ahead of the curve. But don't give up on it.

Dusty Rhodes  00:24
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes and welcome to AMPLIFIED the Engineers Journal podcast. We're very familiar with the BIM and LiDAR in civil engineering but how far can you go with those technologies? Could you apply them to a full city and still get millimetre level accuracy. Our guest today is behind the world's densest urban aerial laser scanning dataset, which was conducted using a large slice of the centre of Dublin City. She is a pioneering force in urban data science, addressing the challenge of handling massive amounts of information collected by drones, satellites and laser measurements, and then using smart ways to store search and turn that data into useful visuals. She is a qualified civil engineer, has authored over 160 peer reviewed publications, been awarded four patents, worked as a professor in UCD Dublin, and is currently serving as a professor at New York University's Centre for Urban science and Progress. I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Debra Laefer to the podcast. How are you, Debra?

Debra Laefer  01:24
Great, thanks so much for having me.

Dusty Rhodes  01:26
It's a delight to have you with us. Before we get into the world's densest LiDAR data set, which you generated here in Ireland, you had a very interesting route into engineering, you had a kind of an art history degree and then got into civil engineering. What, tell me the story behind that.

Debra Laefer  01:43
So I fell in love with painting and old buildings and decided I wanted to become an art historian. So I applied to the best program in the United States and got admitted to Columbia University. And as part of this, I gotten involved with creating a student art gallery. So this was supposed to be a place for students and faculty and alumni could show their own artworks. And then we were informed that we had to temporarily move out of space, because they were going to do construction through it to put in some new telecom lines. So this was back in the mid late to late 80s. And I was concerned because it was a historic building. So I started asking around, started doing some investigation, and found out that not only was the district building, but it had been damaged. In fact, it had been damaged the last time they did construction near it, so called the Landmarks Preservation people to confirm that yes, the building was protected. We reached out to a people at the historic preservation program at Columbia University. And they put me in touch with one of their students who is a civil engineer. And I was so impressed with this, this young woman, her name is Marie Ennis, she's actually still a practising engineer here in New York City. And that she could combine this large toolbox of thoughts and knowledge and conveyed in a way that was meaningful to people in practice. And I was very, I think, influenced by that. And over the next few months, I started thinking, well, if I really love old buildings, maybe this is what I want to do, maybe I need to be come a civil engineer. So there I was finishing my last year in my Bachelors of Arts degree in art history. And starting my first year in my Bachelors of Engineering and civil engineering. And ultimately, I persevered with this, I been worked in the construction industry, at a time where it was it was pretty rough, a lot of organised crime, a lot of violence on the sides. It was a pretty exciting time in New York construction. But I really was happy doing that. And I thought, Oh, well, you know, I feel like I still don't know enough. So we're going to start a master's program at night part time. And as part of that, I met some amazing people in the geotechnical engineering realm. So that's a division of civil engineering. And a lot of them surprisingly, had PhDs. And they were in the midst of really important a lot of amazing technologies from Europe, into the United States, things that were very well suited to protect existing structures when you did excavation or drilling or blasting or de watering, or tunnelling near them. So I finished my master's degree I applied and got a Fulbright to Italy, I spent a year at the Polytechnic of Milan, really studying brick masonry and its vulnerabilities and then I came back to the US, and I took my PhD and Geotechnics. But I had also the opportunity to do some travelling as part of that research. And we went to Korea, and I got a chance to come over to the UK, and to spend some time, particularly some people from McDonald, looking at the Jubilee line. So at the time, this was the most expensive tunnelling project that had ever happened, it was about, I think, 2 billion pounds. And about 25% of this was being spent either on predicting which buildings were going to move, monitoring them, or, you know, kind of free tunnelling intervention where they were pumping grout under the ground, in particular, under Big Bend. And despite this huge investment, a lot of buildings did get damaged. So when we spoke to the engineers, who simply what kind of great computational Shanell models are you using to predict which buildings are going to get damaged, and they said, Oh, we don't use the computational models at home, what's wrong with them? And they said, No, because there's nothing wrong with the model. But we do not have documentation of all of the above ground buildings. Many of these buildings date back hundreds and hundreds of years, and to go out and to survey each building, and then convert to generate drawings. And then to convert that into a computational model would be impossible for the hundreds and hundreds of buildings that are along this tunnel route. So instead, we're using a fairly simplistic set of numerical equations that date back mostly to the 50s, but then kind of improved in the early 70s. So here we are, we're pushing the turn of the millennium. And we're using stuff that's at least 30, if not 40 years old.

Dusty Rhodes  06:53
So that I understand it, you find yourself in London, and you have all of this tunnelling going on, they can't correctly tunnel because they can't do the computations for all of the buildings because it's just too big an area.

Debra Laefer  07:07
It's not that they can't tunnel if they can tunnel but it at greater risk to the structures than need be.

Dusty Rhodes  07:14
So, you said to yourself, aha, here's a problem. I'm gonna come up with a solution for this.

Debra Laefer  07:20
Not quite, I just went home and thought, Wow, I'm surprised this is a problem. Yeah. So I went, I bet back, I finished my degree. And about two, three years later, I had just finished, I had moved to North Carolina to become a young faculty member. And 911 happened. And having spent many years in New York studying and working, having Mitch family there. My parents were born there. My grandparents were born there, many people from our families still live there. It was a very disturbing and moving kind of time. And I was very interested in what they were doing, how they were trying to do the rescuing, because I'd been involved with some kind of post disaster earthquake work while I was also at the university. So it was kind of a little tied into the emergency management community at that point. And I started to learn about a fellow named Dave Bloomquist, who is a faculty member down at the University of Florida in Gainesville. And his work with NOAA, and the work that they did to basically put up a small plane, and to do heat detection and LIDAR over the World Trade Centre disaster zone, so that it could help them both figure out where there might be fires happening underground still, and how to start to remove debris at that point, they already realised that there are no survivors. So but it started looking at these 3d models, or 3d representations using this LIDAR data. And I thought, wow, that's really interesting. And about four months later, I was up in New York, and I had an opportunity to work to get to know an engineer who was really helping coordinate a lot of that removal, and had the opportunity to actually go down into the site. So this is like January 2 2002. And the site is still on fire. Even with a gas mask, it was very hard to go through. But I'm looking around and I'm seeing you know, these buildings on the damage and thinking about the work that Bloomquist did, and I said, No, no, maybe we could use LIDAR to document all these structures. So I called him up and he was very generous and he helped share some of experience and help get my group started and we started doing some work in this area. And we started doing some work for the owner Emergency Management Agency. Looking at prediction have trees falling across roadways, where we would go and MIT from the LIDAR they already had, we could measure the height of the tree and the distance to the road and make estimates to what extent if the tree fell over, it would either partially, completely or not at all block the road. So that was kind of our first foray into that. And once I started, I was completely locked.

Dusty Rhodes  10:25
Okay, so now, it sounds like you are looking for data over huge areas of land and very highly populated land, with a lot of buildings in it. That's a huge amount of information that you need LIDAR piqued your attention. For engineers who are not working in this space. Can you explain how that technology works? How do you 3d scan an area?

Debra Laefer  10:48
Yeah, so it's a technology that can be used from multiple platforms from even right now through your iPhone, or from some type of stationary unit, the unit can be mounted on a car, it could be a small lens mounted on drones, on helicopters on airplanes, the technology is fundamentally the same, you're sending out a laser signal, kind of a beam of light, you know, what time it left your piece of equipment.

Dusty Rhodes  11:27
And you know, where kind of in the world your equipment is, is it on the ground? Is it above is it at the bottom of the broad of a craft.

Debra Laefer  11:29
So, that beam part of it will come back, it will hit something and it will come back. And you will know and the equipment will record the time that it comes back. So based on the change in time, we have a certain distance that can be calculated because we know what the speed of light is. And we use that to determine what they call the range.

Dusty Rhodes  11:52
And you were doing this millions and millions. And it's I imagine millions and millions of times a second.

Debra Laefer  11:58
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, obviously some of its limited by your equipment, but it's actually more limited by the how much data the equipment can take back. And how long your battery is good for.

Dusty Rhodes  12:15
Let's put a picture on it. Okay, you somehow found yourself in Dublin and you decided Grafton Street. Okay, we're going to 3d scan that we're gonna measure that down to what kind of measurement Did you get it down to what scale?

Debra Laefer  12:28
The first scan we did was about four centimetres. Wow. Okay. And the second I think was down to about two and a half centimetres. Wow. So tell me maybe a actually even less than that. So made that a centimetre.

Dusty Rhodes  12:47
Tell me about this story about how you use helicopters, drones, whatever centre of Dublin Grafton Street, the whole block and you measured it and 3d scanner to within a centimetre.

Debra Laefer  12:57
So what we really wanted to do was to provide these representations of these buildings to the engineering community. So you have to set your mind back to 2004. Celtic Tiger, Ireland's booming, and a lot of discussion about putting in Dublin's first metro to go from the bottom of Grafton Street, or more specifically, in the northwest corner of St. Stephen's Green, yeah, up to the airport. So Dublin, and Ireland, in general, at that point had had almost no tunnelling. And obviously, here we are in a country that has limited experience with this technology, you have a very complicated geology with a lot of small, granular material mixed in with kind of big boulders and stuff. So it's a tough thing to tunnel through without a lot of disturbance of the ground. And here you have this amazing architectural resource in terms of the centre of Dublin, that at that moment was actually under consideration as a World Heritage Site. So you have this kind of conflict happening about preserving and the future and at risk. So I was fortunate put together a proposal to science foundation Ireland, with a colleague at UC Dublin, Hamish Carr and a colleague up at our collaborator up at Trinity, we were able to come up with kind of a plan of not only how to acquire this data, but how to process it and make it usable.

Dusty Rhodes  14:39
Okay, tell me about acquiring it.

Debra Laefer  14:40
So, when most people even today, put this kind of unit under a plane or a drone or helicopter, it faces down so the unit swings, and depending on the equipment, it might swing thing, just left to right. Or it may have kind of an arc to it. But it's kind of, you know, it's not just capturing exactly what's below it, but kind of a swath, but it's pretty much focused on what's directly underneath. And as the LIDAR unit swings to the side, the quality and quantity of data that you get, when it intersects a building facade is pretty limited. So most of the good data that you're getting is roads, and roofs. But if the thing that you're interested in knowing about and protecting is the building's facade and its structure, knowing about its roof and knowing about the street next to it's not going to help very much. So we kind of took a big step back, and Hamish and I really like, Well, how do we capture these building facades? And we said, well, let's let's think about the equipment, how does the equipment work? And how do they traditionally fly? Even though old kind of medieval city, like Dublin has a kind of pattern to it. And much of it's a grid. So typically, what they do is they say, Okay, we're gonna fly from x to y, and from A to B, this is our kind of area, and they will fly along the grid line, they'll go down, turn around, back down, back. And then when they're finished with that, they'll come around 90 degrees and do it the other way. It's great for the pilots, they really get lost, it's not so great for the data acquisition for the con, we watched you. So we show through geometry that if you flew diagonal, to the street grid, that you could pick up significant like basically double the information, just because the angle, just because the angle, the other thing we realised is that the amount of overlap that they fly was only enough to basically sew together, you know, one group of data from the next. So when you're flying down one street, they would go over, they wouldn't necessarily do the next street, that they would position themselves so that there was only about a 10% overlap. So if you're from the geomatics community, and you're interested in mapping, and you're interested in floodplain, or using this for floodplain risk analysis, this is great. But if you're interested in looking at these facades, it's not so great. And it basically really limits what you can pick up, because it's in that swing at the edge of the scan, that we're picking up the facades, right, because we're looking down, we're looking at the street, and now we're swinging to the left. And only at the end of that swing, do we start picking up the data. So again, we went back to basic geometry, and established that we needed about a 60% overlap, to achieve a complete scan so that we didn't have these is good blank spots, because you have with this line of sight technology, if you can't see it, you can't capture it, like the camera. So you have a situation if you're in front of one, if you're standing in front of a building, you obviously can't see what's on the back. But also, sometimes buildings preclude you seeing a building behind them. So if you're up in the air, and you've got a tallest building, and maybe there's a small one across the street, maybe you can't see that. So again, we had to kind of compensate for a lot of these things. When we originally did this, people thought we were insane. They're like, why do you want to do this, you know, like, trust us trust us. And it was very hard to even find a contractor to do it. And when we got the data, they were astonished. They're like, Wow, we had no idea we could get this kind of data.

Dusty Rhodes  19:08
Let me just say that there is a YouTube video of the data that you got. And when you watch the video, your jaw will drop and go, Oh, my God. And I have put a link directly to that video in the show notes in the description area of this podcast that we're listening to right now. So you can just click on it. And you can see it. Apologies, Deborah go on.

Debra Laefer  19:28
No, thank you. I think that's one of the best demonstrations of it. Because we're taking we didn't devise a sensor. We didn't even improve the sensor. But we took a fundamentally engineering approach to it. So I think that the way the technology had been used this idea was like more data is better and you just get we can you smash it together and you kind of muddle through the best you can. And we took this more systematic approach of let's reverse engineer the process. fear what we want to get and figure out how to use the sensor to obtain that data.

Dusty Rhodes  20:06
So now you have the data, what the problem is, is that you have an enormous amount of data. And that's the next problem. The next challenge, what do you do with it? I mean, how do you sort? Those many ones and zeros? Yeah.

Debra Laefer  20:22
So the basic storage of it, the I would call the static store, it's just, you know, putting it somewhere is not so much a problem. My brother used to work for Google, and he would joke, you know, what's a petabyte between friends? So it's not the storage, it's, as you said, it's the sorting. It's the what they call the queering. It's the retrieving of the data. And so we really, with my help, my long term colleague and collaborator Michela Berta loto, at UCD, really sat down and looked at a lot of the work that she had done in database and database structures, and talked about, well, what were our needs? How is the community currently doing at least some of this work? And what was that opportunity. And so in about 2006, we really started in earnest, taking on that problem. And I would say that that work really culminated about nine years later, when we graduated, jointly drew graduated a PhD student who demonstrated that you could very effectively use the data structure as the fundamental building block for post processing algorithms. So that you already have stored the data in a way that is highly usable. The paper that on jeuveau are joins graduate student who is still in Ireland is the lead author on is in the top point, zero 1% of all papers cited. For the years published, this technique has been used in fields as far from civil engineering as breast cancer research, so that not only has it been transferred to other LIDAR applications, but people have used it for other remote sensing and medical imaging datasets. So which is really amazing.

Dusty Rhodes  22:24
So you put some banners on the data, then how do you integrate it with other technologies? So a lot of people talk about GIS and bi M and stuff like that? How do you get that data then interacting with them? So engineers can actually use it? 

Debra Laefer  22:37
Yeah, I'd say actually, most of the ways that us engineers use it reaction, computational models. So certainly, there are ways to tie it to GIS systems, the time we were working, there wasn't even a full 3d solution, which meant that it was what they call two and a half d solution, which means that every Z point, every elevation point, there could only be one unique one for every xy point. So if you had a building that was truly straight, there was no way at that x, y point, you know, at that corner of your street, or the corner of your building, to represent both the bottom and the top. So you had this kind of slightly wedding cake effect, where the points were actually slightly offset. Obviously, the technology has moved on from now, these GIS systems can both produce and host 3d models. But to just to give you a sense of kind of where we were, you know, with us BIM kind of really wasn't even really a thing by then. And the challenge is, is that unlike a photograph, when you have a photograph, and you look at it, every pixel, every little space is filled, right? There's no blank spots. With the LIDAR data. It's not that way. Maybe the beam went through a window, and it didn't come back or you know, maybe it went through a tree and you it came back in like six different pieces. So you get this data set that's very non homogeneous. These often refer to a sparse, it's an ordered. So there's not no, there's no natural order, when you get it back from the vendor. mean, it's been geo referenced. But there's, it doesn't like say, Oh, this point belongs to a building. And this other point belongs to a building.

Dusty Rhodes  24:30
It's a bit scattered.

Debra Laefer  24:31
It's a bit scattered. It's a bit chaotic. So So we continue to pioneer really groundbreaking work in how to fundamentally store that data. Because very early on, it became clear that the sheer size of the data, it was a major impediment to people using it. And it's still content used to be so some of my most recent work that we've not published yet, really looks at how do you take a billion points and process them actually Just on a regular PC, you know, can you do that? So, for us, the bigger question was, how do you get these points into a computational model? We don't care, we're labelling them necessarily, may eventually want to label them to a certain extent, because you want to know if your material model for each piece is correct. But the bigger thing is, how do you generate what they call a watertight model. And this is where the 3d printing starts to sneak in. So to do a computational model, you have to do create what they call a watertight mesh, which means that every point has to be connected to other points through a set of lines, but these lines must connect at nodes, they can't overlap, they can't be a little short of them, right. And when you use the traditional transfer transformation processes that were available for ticket in the late 2000s, you ended up having to do a huge amount of manual correction. And if you're looking at a terabyte of data, that's not gonna work, right. Yeah. So we really had to kind of think about how do you overcome those problems. And through this wonderful kind of collaboration between computer science and through civil engineering that we had going on at UCD, between myself and Hamish Carr and our students, Tommy Hanks, and Lynch ronghong, we had this kind of Eureka moment that the way the computational models were set up, many of them used would look like almost a little bricks, that they were these eight noted elements, and that these eight nodes had no elements, which didn't have to be squares, that could be rectangles looked an awful like, the elements that we were using to do the storage axis that this is acting like a key is that, yeah,

Debra Laefer  27:02
in this, so we divided the data in something called an octree. So we're you chop it up into basically eight quadrants. And if there's no data in the quadrant, you forget about that part. And then you keep kind of digging down either until you only have a certain amount of points in a box. Maybe that's the amount of points that can be stored in the computer's cache and dealt with comfortably. Or maybe you do it more generically. And say you're just going to do you know, five divisions of these things. We realise that the octree and the computation model in the finite element, they looked a lot like so then we came up with two really pioneering algorithms to do that transformation. So as we were thinking about watertight, so what is starting to happen, the patents for the original 3d printers are expiring, and we're starting to see this boom of three. So actually, this is about 2012 2013. Starting to see this boom of home 3d printers, or the you know, low low in 3d printers. There's 3d printers this 3d printed that people are even talking about maybe can you 3d print a house, you know, all these things that people are now really excited the same way? Everybody's talking about AI now. So if you cast yourself back to 2013, everybody started with 3d printing through their predict 3d printed clothing and hats, and, and, and, and everything. How do we start saying, Well, if we're creating this watertight model, couldn't we use that same watertight model approach for 3d printing, because that's what you need. The input files for 3d printing have to be these watertight models. So there was an opportunity to apply for a competitive commercialisation type grant through the EU. At that point, I had received the European Research Council Award, which was the single largest single PI award that you could obtain at that time. And they had a program they wanted to really try to commercialise work. So you could then say, Okay, this piece of work came from his project. And we'd now like to try to commercialise it. So went through that competitive program, and we got a good amount of money. And we said, Okay, we have this wonderful used 3d printer, commercial grade metal 3d printer that we were able to acquire. And it quickly became apparent that this is a very expensive thing to run. It requires a huge amount of knowledge that you have to keep in the group. And we said, how are we going to sustain this? So we said, well, there's no 3d printing centres in Ireland. What if we just opened one, and that's that so that was our next big adventure. And we started to acquire other funding and other equipment and we really, you know, kind of graduated a whole class of people who then went on many of them to really lead the introduction of what are called Advanced Manufacturing in Ireland, including a guy named Brian Marin, who came to us off the dole through a, you know, train to work program. And it was so successful, that Brian became the main initial technician for the first National Advanced Manufacturing Centre. So I think, a real success.

Dusty Rhodes  30:31
Let me put this into some kind of a context, then on the engineering and design side of things because of our use of BIM. And we're used to digital twins, and you're able to play around the buildings and change things and see how it looks. How can you do that? Like, can you use this technology that you are working on to do that on a city wide level? 

Debra Laefer  30:50
Yeah. So obviously, acquiring the data takes a while processing the data. So it's not something that you just go out and do every day. But we do see that communities, municipalities, even states are doing this now on a pretty regular basis, if not once a year, once every two years, in fact, the United States, we are having the completion of our first national scam, which is pretty exceptional. The difficulty of processing and storing that data is in part related to the quantity of the data. If you want really good sub centimetre data, it's gonna be a lot. So that always has to be part of it. But we have certainly taken that data when we've, you know, generated middle little 3d models of parts of Dublin.

Dusty Rhodes  31:41
And where would an engineer be able to use that if he is looking as as a city planner? What kind of things would he be able to do with it?

Debra Laefer  31:48
So I think one of our very early visions when particularly we got our first data set back in 2008, we said status, so good, but it's not quite good enough. That the I think the aspiration was to have a data set that was so good, you could pick out the curb height. Wow. And I think that is what we really achieved in 2015, that the data was so good that we could determine bather, basically whether the edge of the sidewalk was handicapped accessible. So I think that's a very easy, accessible use case. We've now most recently moved, we just completed a project called Urban Ark, with UCD. And with work off under her up at Queen's University, Belfast, looking at urban flooding. And one of the key components to that was the detection of subsurface spaces, basements, parking garages, things like that. And although Lidar is a line of sight technology, we can get a pretty good understanding of some things, that there are the spaces and some extent the size of them. Based on if you're you know, the angle, you're collecting the data, you might see kind of the stairwell that many of our Georgian town-houses have, or even be able to capture some of the data through the windows, or the entrances to parking garages. And by incorporating that into a larger flooding model, we can determine more effectively where the risks really are, where's the water going? Are we over predicting, or these people are particularly at risk. And we've generated flood models that show that the subsurface spaces really have an impact of where the water's going, and how fast it's building up. So if you're trying to evacuate parts of the city, or deploy emergency services, you want to know where to do that you don't want to send people to the wrong places.

Dusty Rhodes  33:45
So listen, you've done Dublin City, I believe you're going for something slightly bigger for your next project.

Debra Laefer  33:51
We don't so much bigger, but maybe more technically advanced. So we've recently completed a one square kilometre area in south-west Brooklyn. And what's really special about that dataset is not only do you have this great LIDAR data, pretty much the equivalent but we didn't delve in a little bit denser. But we've coupled it with something called hyperspectral data, and hyperspectral data, ours is in the bottom of the shortwave range downward. So if you have materials that are known, and you can get the what they call the spectral signal from them, we can match that spectral signal with things in the built environment. So a computational model has two important components. One is the geometry. And that project through our lab work and those of others has largely been solved. But the assigning of those materials and those material properties has not and hyperspectral gives us that opportunity to start doing that.

Dusty Rhodes  35:02
So some exciting stuff happening, a lot going on. I love talking to you, because you're talking about things you did 20 years ago, that are almost like cutting edge. Now you have a type of brain that just thinks 2030 4050 years in advance. So I have to ask you, what do you consider now the main challenges that engineers today need to start thinking about?

Debra Laefer  35:25
I would say one of the main challenges is coupling these major weather systems or storm systems with that kind of urban level weather system, we have huge investments of, you know, trying to predict where hurricanes are going, and how much rain and how much storm surge. But what's really happening from the street level, say, up to the first 100 or two feet, there are not a lot of models. And yet all of that's controlling all these urban heat problems that we're having. And we just don't have those couple of models. So it's that multi-scale physics, that we're kind of missing right now, where people like me very much on the crowd at the bottom, could work with somebody like one of my collaborators, Olivia police here in our Chaos Group, which is our weather group in our maths department. Between Olivia and myself, there's a big space. And there's not too many people in that space. So I think that that's really where we need to start going.

Dusty Rhodes  36:32
I also wanted to ask you, because I was watching an interview with you, you were talking about the advice you give to your students, which I mean, it just rang true with me. It's when you're a student, make mistakes, because you learn more from mistakes. And when things go right. Now, that's great to say to students, we're all engineers listening to this podcast. Can you apply that to engineering in a real life professional situation? Or should you just have made audio mistakes in college?

Debra Laefer  37:02
One of the highlights of my educational career was getting to meet a geotechnical engineer named Ralph back. And Ralph peck at the time was the most important living geotechnical engineer in the world. And he had been a student of Karl Terzaghi, who is the founder of geotechnical engineering. And he would come at the age of, you know, 79. And he would give these talks about when he was a young engineer, working under Karl Terzaghi, and all the mistakes that he made. So it's good to make mistakes. And it's good to have senior engineers check them.

Dusty Rhodes  37:42
Keep trying new things, regardless. Yeah, kind of wrap up then by just ask, is there anything else that you'd like to add to our chat today that I haven't thought of? Or haven't brought up?

Debra Laefer  37:53
Yeah, I mean, I think that if people think they have a good idea, they shouldn't give up. That if you push on it hard enough, long enough, it will happen. As crazy as your idea may seem that a lot of times the best ideas are initially too far ahead of the curve. But don't give up on them.

Dusty Rhodes  38:15
If you'd like to find out more about Debra and some of the topics that we spoke about today, you'll find notes and link details in the description area of this podcast. But for now, Professor Debra Laefer from NYU Centre for Urban Science and Progress, thank you so much for an absolutely fascinating chat.

Debra Laefer  38:31
Lovely to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Dusty Rhodes  38:35
And if you enjoyed our podcast today do share with a friend in the business just tell them to search for Engineers Ireland in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. For pre-released episodes, more information on engineering across Ireland or career development opportunities, there are libraries of information on our website at engineersireland.ie. But for now, until next time, from myself, Dusty Rhodes, thank you for listening.

How to 3D Scan Dublin City: Professor at New York University, Debra Laefer

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