Engineers Ireland is calling on its members and the public to view the six winning engineering projects shortlisted as part of a new Engineering Excellence Digital Series, held in association with ESB and supported by Accenture and Geoscience Ireland, and to vote for their preferred ‘Engineering Endeavour of 2020’ by midnight on Friday 11 December.

Find out more about each of the shortlisted projects below and cast your vote today.

Engineering Infrastructure and Buildings

N25 New Ross Bypass PPP incorporating the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge over the River Barrow

Constructed by BAM-Dragados with the detailed design undertaken by Arup, in collaboration with Carlos Fernandez Casado, this project comprises of a 14km bypass which includes an 887m long, nine-span, three-tower extradosed Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge.

The structure is part of the N25 New Ross Bypass scheme which strengthens connections between the communities of Wexford and Kilkenny, while also enhancing local and regional connectivity. By reducing congestion, improving road safety and opening economic opportunities, the bridge has improved the lives of residents on both sides of the River Barrow and, indeed, the much wider community.

The bridge includes four extradosed concrete spans; two of which are 230m in length. The construction method, balanced cantilever, in conjunction with the asymmetry of the tower’s cables on each tower, led to a main cantilever of 140m at the longest stage of construction, a world record for concrete deck extradosed bridges.

Structural analysis tools, such as explicit time dependent creep curves and step-by-step non-linear iterative analysis, were used. The largest cables consist of 125 strands and went through a full-scale fatigue test of two million cycles in a lab in Chicago, one of only two labs worldwide that have the capacity to test cables of this size.

Ireland’s longest bridge will now stand as a world-class 21st century engineering structure. The consciously chosen asymmetry of the three towers, with the central tower slightly higher than the side towers, also provides this structure with unique personality, contributing to the Wexford-Kilkenny skyline.  The opening of the N25 New Ross Bypass on 29 January 2020 was a landmark day for the designers and contractors and for Transport Infrastructure Ireland, Wexford County Council, Kilkenny County Council and the technical advisors for the scheme, Mott MacDonald Ireland.

The Coastal Mobility Route

The Coastal Mobility Route, delivered by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council with project partners, Clonmel Enterprises and the National Transport Authority, is a two-way segregated cycle-lane with buff surfacing, extending over 3.6km in two uninterrupted sections from Newtown Avenue in Blackrock, Co. Dublin to Coal Quay Bridge, and from Queens Road to the Forty Foot in Sandycove. With a further 0.9km section through quiet streets, the route is approx. 4.5km in length.

Due to restrictions in movement associated with the current pandemic, there was a significant increase in walking and cycling, with a 100% increase in cycling recorded on the coastal route by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown in May 2020, compared with the same period in 2019.  Pedestrians often faced situations where there was not enough footway width to maintain two-metre physical distancing, which led to people stepping off the footpath.

In response, the Coastal Mobility Route, delivered in less than eight weeks by a multi-disciplinary team comprising of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council engineers, architects and construction managers, reconfigured the public realm to respond to COVID-19 risks, creating safer and improved facilities for walking and cycling. The project also enhanced the public space to provide safe and inviting places, that the public can visit, spend time in and enjoy while supporting local businesses as they reopen.

With about 20,000 cyclists utilising the route each week, this Coastal Mobility Route now promotes and facilitates a necessary shift to walking and cycling, along this strategic coastal transport corridor, by delivering safe and enjoyable sustainable transport for all ages and abilities.

Engineering Innovation and Sustainability

The ADVANCER Project by Thermo King and Trane Technologies – a disruptive reimagining of the trailer refrigeration unit

Thermo King – by Trane Technologies, a global climate innovator – is a worldwide leader in sustainable transport temperature control solutions. Their refrigeration and temperature control products are responsible for protecting sensitive cargo from the food we eat to pharmaceuticals, vaccines and much more.

In response to their parent company’s 2030 sustainability aspirations, and the commitment to reduce their customers’ CO₂e  emissions by one gigaton by 2030 – equivalent to 2% of the world's annual emissions or, the annual emissions of France, Italy & UK combined -  Thermo King responded with the introduction of ADVANCER, a disruptive new re-imagining of the trailer refrigeration unit.

Built with ambitious sustainability goals at its core, ADVANCER was born to life in Thermo King’s manufacturing site in Galway through the use of all-new Mild Hybrid electrified architecture that creates a new standard for performance, fuel efficiency, temperature control and environmental sustainability. This architecture enables paradigm shifting fuel efficiency which is at least 30% lower than the market average. This combined with the unrivalled electrical efficiencies contributes to over 50% reduction in overall emissions and CO2 footprint.

Additionally, the ADVANCER product is built on a new world class sustainable assembly line that has reduced its energy consumption by 60%, utilising 100% renewable energy. This Galway-based assembly line is now on track to become the first Carbon Neutral assembly line in the sector.

Coppermills Water Treatment Works New Roughing Filters – The innovative use of collaboration and digital engineering tools to protect London’s water supply by Irish engineering company, EPS Group

Founded upon 52 years of operating experience, EPS Group has grown from an electrical and pumping services business in to an innovative, internationally exporting group, headquartered in Mallow, Co. Cork and focused upon the water and wastewater and clean technology sectors.

Coppermills Water Treatment Works is located in north London adjacent to the Walthamstow Wetlands, a 300-acre reservoir system providing approximately one third of London’s drinking water.

Challenges to the supply of water from Coppermills were identified by Thames Water with effective capacity being reduced during periods of algal bloom. These periods of bloom placed an increased workload on the existing 24 rapid gravity filters within the treatment works, which in turn could restrict output to 380 Million of Litres Per Day (MLD), limiting headroom in the London supply demand balance.

As a solution it was decided to build an additional 12 rapid gravity filters to augment the existing infrastructural capacity on site.  The overall project was co-ordinated by SMB as part of the eight2o delivery alliance and collaboration was supported by EPS/MWH through their MEPS JV.

EPS Group undertook the concept design, production and off-site construction of 12 filter flumes in stainless steel to provide 200MLD capacity, using an off-site ethos to maximum effect while massively reducing health and safety risks when compared with traditional construction methods.

This 18-month programme of work and off-site approach saved £6 million in preliminaries, in addition to a 40% reduction in carbon. A total of 3,400 tonnes of pre-cast concrete was installed in 18 weeks; with zero temporary works or formwork and zero accidents on site.

Contribution of Engineering to the COVID-19 response

I-Form's Rapid Response Manufacturing Hub

In March 2020, as Ireland went into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) was beginning to impact front-line workers in the Irish health service. In response, researchers at I-Form, the SFI Research Centre for Advanced Manufacturing, used their engineering expertise in additive manufacturing – also known as 3D printing – to provide essential PPE to frontline staff, and to support other aspects of the health service.    

Under I-Form Director Professor Denis Dowling at UCD and I-Form Deputy Director Professor Dermot Brabazon at DCU, the I-Form team, which is based across the seven third-level institutes of UCD, DCU, TCD, WIT, NUIG, IT Sligo and NUI Maynooth, worked around the clock to 3D-print 5,000 face shields for doctors, nurses, and care-home workers across Ireland. Researchers used their engineering skills to develop a process flow that maximised throughput across the available bank of 3D printers, while ensuring repeatable quality.  

Face shields were distributed initially to local hospitals and then to hospitals further afield, as well as to HSE COVID-19 testing centres, nursing homes, community healthcare facilities and GP practices. Face shields were also sent overseas to a mission hospital in Tanzania, and knowledge and expertise were shared with researchers in Namibia. A heavy-duty version of the visor, more suited to outdoor use, was also produced using laser cutting, with several hundred supplied to ambulance services personnel.

Alongside requests for face shields, the team also received calls from doctors and ICU staff concerned about the potential impact of COVID-19 on their supply chain for ventilation and respiratory equipment. Using their 3D printing expertise, I-Form researchers addressed this clinical need and collaborated with hospitals in Cavan, Sligo and Galway to produce 3D-printed ventilator parts and alternative breathing devices for use in the event of a total supply chain collapse. 

The COVID Alliance – How Ireland’s Engineers rallied to the COVID emergency

Established in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 crisis, the COVID Alliance comprises of over 50 project partners from key Irish engineering and manufacturing sectors who came together to volunteer their services to the Health Service Executive (HSE).

This informal grouping of organisations who provided services primarily on a pro bono basis was organised into a series of volunteer work streams, all of which were focused on meeting the needs of the crisis. 

With each project partner aligned to a work stream based on their specific capabilities, the Alliance’s expertise was central to the development of a number of healthcare supports and initiatives. This included a review of medical gas infrastructure in more than 30 of the country’s acute hospitals, and subsequent capacity delivery projects, such as servicing the Citywest stepdown facility with medical gas infrastructure and upgrades to five hospitals to increase or de-bottleneck oxygen supplies and medical air systems.

With a diverse project team, the Alliance has also enabled the servicing of temporary clinical facilities, including the design of temporary reception wards for county hospitals.

The Alliance was also central to the scaling up of the reagent supply chain to address shortages that were impacting national testing capabilities, commercialisation support of a rapid home-testing system and the design of locally produced goggles for medical personnel, for which an order for over a million units is in process with the HSE.