In the unabridged version of John Moran’s speech to Engineers Ireland’s annual conference in Limerick last April, he argues here, in Part II, that If Ireland wants to remain competitive on the global stage, it needs to develop and implement modern spatial strategies and related planning rules quickly – even if it does not suit all of the interests vested in a continuation of the status quo. (Part I can be read here.) Putting the east on a diet Firstly, anybody who sits in Dublin ...

In 2017, Shannon airport carried out the resurfacing of 75 per cent of its main runway, within extremely tight night-time possession windows. The €14 million investment ensures the integrity of the runway for the next 20 years. Eoin Colgan, who managed the project on behalf of RPS Consulting Engineers, outlines the issues with the runway, discusses the technical solutions available, and describes how the project was successfully and safely delivered. Background Shannon airport is ...

Engineers from the University of Limerick (UL) are set to play an important role in a new European research project that seeks to revolutionise the shipbuilding sector, by replacing steel with composite materials for the construction of more efficient large-length ships. FIBRESHIP is an ambitious project that will allow for the construction of light commercial vessels, passenger and leisure transport and oceanographic vessels more than 50 metres in length using fibre-reinforced polymer ...

A team of four undergraduate students from the University of Limerick were the 2017 winners of the internationally renowned Engineering and Commerce Case Competition (ECCC) held in Montreal, Canada at the start of March. Patrick Lu (second-year Electronic and Computer Engineering), Eoin Hann (third-year Civil Engineering), Darren Fehilly (second-year Mechanical Engineering) and David Monaghan (second-year BBS) travelled to Montreal to take part in the four-day-long competition and emerged ...

The virtual team concept emerged in the early 1990s when US multinationals and their affiliates overseas began using dispersed teams in order to integrate their work practices. Since then, increased globalisation and rapid improvements in communication technology have resulted in growth in the use of virtual teams, so that today nearly all organisational teams are virtual to some extent. It is therefore important that the working and functioning of virtual teams is well ...

In August 2015, three men were working on a maintenance platform suspended beside the Thomond Bridge in Limerick. The platform was sent underwater when the cable holding the maintenance platform failed. The three men were equipped with automatic-inflation life jackets. However, because their safety harnesses were connected to the maintenance platform by a lanyard, when their life jackets inflated, the buoyancy lifted them away from the sinking platform. Two of the three men were unable to ...