After 20 years in engineering, John’s career continues to climb. His firm is breaking new ground in engineering practice, they have big plans to expand and have been officially recognised as one of the Best Workplaces in Ireland.
In this episode, we hear how John’s experience and willingness to try new things, has built huge trust in the team and how the freedom they enjoy has delivered huge results for everybody. We cover everything from taking over ghost estates in the 2008 property crash to finding mentors and how thinking out of the box has found success.
Listen below or on your podcast player!
Topics we discussed include:
01:23 Accidentally falling into engineering
04:22 How he found his mentors and how they helped his career
06:52 Why ORS is ‘multi-disiplinary’
10:16 The challenges of finishing a job someone else started
11:39 The secret to winning Best Workplace in Ireland
13:51 Does he take constructive criticism from staff
15:21 Why he has been a fan of remote working since 2015
20:11 The benefits of CPD for engineers in particular
25:45 Expansion and an exciting future for ORS
Guest details
John Brennan is Managing Director and a part-owner at one of Ireland's leading multi-disciplinary building consultancies, ORS. John has been with the company since graduating UCD. In 2019 he led a MBO and today has plans to expand the business across the country and beyond. He is an engineer who has used networking, professional development and new technology to drive success for himself and his team.
Based in Mullingar, ORS is one of an exclusive number of Engineers Ireland CPD Accredited Employers in the country. It is also one of a small number of Irish companies who are ISO certified in standards ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001. ORS are at the forefront of training and technology, where investment in the latest cutting-edge tools allows their staff to perform at their best.
Contact details
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbrennanceng/
https://www.ors.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/
Quotes
In 2018 we had a draft person who was very productive, efficient and wanted to work at home. So we did a pilot. He worked four days at home and his productivity went up by 40%. Why? When he was at work, he’d be asked to go into a meeting on X Y or Z project even though he wasn't working on it. That would take two hours out of his day. So there was a lot of distraction. That’s why we started remote work before COVID.
We have 94 staff and they decide where they're most productive and where they want to work. If you can give people that choice, trust gets built. They see that as a reward and it's reciprocated with increased productivity. If you start putting rules around that, such as you must be in one day a week or two days a week, it then becomes an entitlement. And that's when you see productive productivity drop off. Building that trust has been very, very beneficial for us.
Engineers get boxed. A couple of previous podcasts say engineers don't like to put themselves out there. Some are like that, absolutely, but some are not. The key to a successful business is realizing everybody has different wants and needs. Just listen to that and adapt to suit.
Transcription
For your convenience, here is a 90% accurate AI transcription of the episode.
Dusty Rhodes 0:39
Hello, my name is Dusty Rhodes. Welcome to Amplified the engineers journal podcast where today we're chatting with a man sharing some of his 20 years experience in the business. Currently, he's managing director and a part owner at ORS, one of Ireland's leading multidisciplinary building consultancies, which is headquartered in Mullingar County Westmeath. The company is breaking new ground in engineering practice has big plans to expand. After two years running has been recognized as one of the best workplaces in Ireland. Let's find out more about the company and the man as we welcome John Brennan. John, how you doing?
John Brennan 1:16
Good. Thanks for having me.
Dusty Rhodes 1:18
Listen, tell me what attracted you to the whole business of engineering in the first place.
John Brennan 1:23
And I suppose I have to go back to my my school days I was I was in secondary school and Malanga and the Midlands and the Bacchus was they had a very good career guidance teacher at the time, they called Nick McCoy, who probably recognized that I was okay with maths and science. So I remember him staring me staring me that way I can remember also my dad, bringing me to just for career coaches one or two back then to try and see, you know, what was what I had a flair for. So yes, I was lucky enough to get into UCD. And originais wants to be a chemical engineer, believe it or not, I was I was okay, chemistry, and UCD have a common first year. And I think my lucky stars to this day that to do because it enabled me to, you know, reading it as a Unicode type of engineering wants to be. So I found that I had more of an affinity to civil engineering than anything else went back, you know, the second year of college, I had to choose, and I got some great advice of one of the founders of Rs. And because I'd been there as a student, so he helped me decide. So I picked several, like structured as well, but just preferred to several areas and fluids, hydraulics, blood risk and that kind of thing. So yeah, qualified, chosen three as a civil engineer.
Dusty Rhodes 2:35
So when you started then working professionally and coming up the ranks as a designer? Was there any particular job that gave you certain satisfaction? You know, kind of like when you go from the theory of university, and you're into the real world, and you have a job and you kind of go, oh, how am I gonna fix this? And you think about it, you think about it, and then suddenly, you have an aha moment to try one that you remember?
John Brennan 3:00
Yeah, I do that there's one that probably, you know, I'd hold close to my heart because it was the project I used when I became charters. And it was a large and still is a very large industrial park and Melinda Recology, recarpet. Park, I would have been the first project that I worked on. So I had for the recession is I had five or six years of pretty intense civil engineering design. So I would have worked on a lot of projects, small, large, residential, commercial, industrial. And so I was lucky enough to see all of that was luxury repair, I had just started, there was you know, there's four phases in that part. It's, it's still been developed to this day. Last year, only phase four planning permission was granted for Ireland's largest film studio hammertek Studios. And it's also about that. So the full civil engineering design, I would have taken that from phase one right up to phase four over over the years, but mostly in those areas. So, you know, it's when I kind of always think about five to eight, it was chartered, you know, I think five years in and reviews that project a lot focus on the issues that we overcame, I mean, it had Iran's largest surface water attenuation, so that he at one point, it had ground stabilization, there was all manner of engineering issues to deal with. So I remember that quite fondly. And the client in that case is Monica, mighty Kelly, who went on to be a mentor of mine over the years and an animal friend of mine to this day. So yeah, that's, that's what I always had. I was thinking, Well,
Dusty Rhodes 4:22
tell me a little bit more, Michael, because one of the things that I want to chat about a little bit later, CPD, having a mentor in place, what did you get from Michael as a mentor?
John Brennan 4:33
I'd be lucky to have a few mentors. Like it's something that's always been very important to me. And I think back to my parents, but then when I started working, the two founders in the IRS business would have been mentors in different ways. And then I've had a couple clients as well. My family just mentioned so it's really you know, it's a number of things like it's listening is a big one. You know, like you some days you have a bad day and you just want to talk somebody voters and vent about who you are necessarily need that The advice you know, but that's that's one way they can be very helpful. But it's just to give you that that push arm. These are people that are very experienced business, they've seen it all, and have come across lots of different issues. And it's something within or us today, we as part of our CPD accreditation with engineers, Ireland, we have a mentoring facility there. So you know, all the teams are encouraged to seek mentors and have mentors from within the business. And like to this day, I depend on mentors for advice. And I'm very proud to say that and it's very important part of what I do from my own personal development and continues to be so.
Dusty Rhodes 5:34
So if you are listening to this, and you want to bump up your career, or even you just want a little bit of inspiration to kind of get back into working again, to a certain extent, how do you go about looking for a mentor? Is it somebody that needs to be nearby to close? Or is it somebody that you search for online and pay
John Brennan 5:51
mentors to me that the best that I found have been people close to me that I've got to know over a period of time that they've gelled with that, I suppose that I link up well, with that understand me and understand my personality. Coaching is a little bit different to me, we work very closely in business again with a man called Jerry Duffy, who is a motivation coach and motivational motivational speaker, and he would do a lot of coaching with our team, in groups and singly, particularly on the personal development side. So just mine have come out of just people that would have been close to me what became close to me over a period of time. And I started to realize that these people are actually mentoring me even though I don't really know us. And there are people you know, there are people you can go to for advice and and and they're always there to pick up the phone and they don't necessarily have to be close to you. They just have to be good at it and understand you as best.
Dusty Rhodes 6:39
I think one of the best piece of advice I ever got was hanging out with the people you want to be like, that was very Yeah, right. This is dumb. Tell me about Rs turnover. For people who don't know about the company. Give me an overview.
John Brennan 6:52
Yeah, so we are a multidisciplinary team building consultancy, we have nine different service lines in the business. So the more traditional things you'd expect, except the structural engineering, project management, health and safety and infrastructure, and then we have five niche areas that stand on their own, but also feed into the forest floor. So the role of the certifier fire safety, energy, environmental and building survey. So it started off originally 30 odd years ago as a Civil and Structural business with fire safety. And it's developed since then into the nine service lines that we see today. So go back to, you know, when the recession hits originally, like people we don't, we don't have to talk about too much. But there's other life lessons to be learned, you know, back then what we would have from the post recession years, you know, for four or five years after that, until the economy started to kick up, kick off again, we would have had the other night thinking about how we would restructure the business and get the business going again, and I remember 2013 When Patricia gets signed, Mandy Kenny started talking to a green shoots, and we would have had kind of a law month followed by a very successful month very quickly, and then things from then start to get busier again. So in 2015, we started to think very deeply about what made us different as a business. So you know, we've done from when I joined it as a student, or just over college, it was quite small, and it got the business got quite big very quickly. And then it scaled back when the recession happened, like most consultancies did. So in 2015, we were on the verge of scaling again, but we wanted to look back at what we learned from previous and try and take that forward to make the business better. So we started thinking about you know, being multi disciplined, obviously, is a big draw for customers because you know, you can guess, different services under the same roof it's, it's a lot easier for clients and a lot of cases, you know, at one point contact and all that is beneficial. But the big game changer for us. And thing we really started to focus on back then was the culture of the business. So when I joined the business as well, whenever Dean as a student, there was always a very nice feeling to the business. I couldn't explain us back then I now know today that culture, but I didn't know back then they say that that you know, comes or originates from founders of the business which would have been back in the 19th meeting or whatever it was. So we decided that we want to we wanted to work on that formalizes or processes around really marketed to people to try and attract talent into the business around that.
Dusty Rhodes 9:20
While you've done very well with it because you were one best workplace in Ireland two years in a row and I want to find out why you will not award it later. But tell me about the when you say multi-discipline with O R S, does this branch into areas where you're getting into modular building and also design and build services
John Brennan 9:40
I chose yet because there's so many so many facets to us. Our simple structural team would be involved in in some modular building and our assigned certifiers will be involved in mature buildings or whatever Fire Safety Engineering so I mean a lot of projects when they come in, you know how you could have your if I'd be one service might be too late. be five or six. So and design builders the same way we would have contractors approach us who would ask us to get involved with them. And they might be just looking for similar structure or they might be looking for fire safety, or they might be looking for both. And the ability to be able to adapt to that is is a key strength to the business.
Dusty Rhodes 10:16
So let me talk about those dark days, as you mentioned, the the 2008 financial crash when we were just like, you know, all in terrible trouble. One of the things you did at the time, if I'm not mistaken, was taking charge projects.
John Brennan 10:27
Correct? Yeah.
Dusty Rhodes 10:29
I'm just wondering what kind of challenges you have to overcome when you're finishing a job that somebody else started?
John Brennan 10:38
Yeah, good question. I mean, so you back then. Yeah, like there was plenty of fish goes to stay at things like that there was plenty of them. I can remember Aaron's first goes to say it actually was in the station, nonfood called battery court. And I remember, plantar, were involved in the blood center to have a look at dashboards that became service of the business over the next few years. And there was there was I said, there was lots of them. So the challenges are to bring infrastructure up to a standard that is certified at the end and things of course, to stay at things essentially, that the local authority are happy with. And so relationships with the local authority in each case are absolutely vital, having obviously technical knowledge to know when something is is built, right. And only part work, it needs to bring it up standard is obviously just as vital. But they're the two main challenges. I mean, we would have developed lots of very strong relationships with all the local authorities around our HQ at that time, and we would have been involved in lots of those, those ghost states to bring them up. And they're still they're still the odd one, even now, you know.
Dusty Rhodes 11:39
Now, as I've mentioned, Rs, the company has been recognized officially as the one of the best workplaces in Ireland, it's something that you have won two years in a row. And I know that you've been nominated for many other years, why are you such a great place to work?
John Brennan 11:57
I suppose, you know, back to the culture points. And 2015, I started thinking about the culture and how to, you know, push processes rather than Markedness. And in Great Place to Work was was something that we had an eye on. And I remember, I remember going to me to see your cognitively back around 2016 or 17. And essentially, the advice I would have got from him was that, you know, if you're going to get involved with this process that, you know, you need to, you know, to see it for what it is it's a process. It's about building trust. And it's about, you know, it's really about how the company uses it utilizes and handles that with team. So we were very clear, it's essentially a 50 question survey that goes out, you know, in our case, just before Christmas, every year, and all the team will answer questions about the entire business. And we always ask them to just be honest, you know, be not to be overly positive, overly negative, just to be honest with what they see and give us the constructive feedback, because without the constructive feedback, well, then we can't we can't make any changes. So we are first year was 2018 2017, I think, and we've been, we've been ranked every year, as a great place to work to just a couple of weeks ago, we were awarded the position of tent in our category, which is you know, really good achievement, there's there's four or five on companies that go for that each year. So the thing that always strikes me, you know, when we do it is that the feedback that comes back from the team is immense. It will and the ideas that come back from the team. So they could be very simple things like at the moment, we have a body of for spring initiative going on where people are encouraged to get together and have a cup of coffee and take a picture and post it up on our team's channel, it could be something very simple as that. It could be something to do with the new reward framework in the business. But there's there's so many ideas, and most of those ideas come from the team themselves, they don't necessarily come from management. So it's something that we take very seriously something that's been very successful for us. And something I think we will continue into the future for sure.
Dusty Rhodes 13:51
Have you been criticized by staff members for things that are just not working as efficiently as they could? And have you swallowed your pride and made a change?
John Brennan 14:01
Absolutely, all time. I mean, that's, that's lush, I think, you know, something that's a great place to work is all about is being open to, to change and listening to the people that, you know, these initiatives affect more than ever, you know, or more than more than me. So, we encourage that, you know, I just had a, I mentioned our coach, motivational coach that we use in the business, Jerry Duffy, I was talking to him last week, and we were devising a little course for for the team, some of the teams around constructive conflict, for example, to give them the skills to be able to raise things like that, if they're not comfortable to raise them instantly, you know, there's there's a lot of narrative out there these days about, you know, the different generations of of, you know, workers and engineers and one of the things that I would have, you know, read and seen a lot of in the last year or so is, you know, generations aid and the graduates that are coming out now, there's, you know, they don't tend to criticize as much they don't tend to come with those kind of problems, but that's actually not what we've seen, you know, we've seen, we wouldn't be my extreme Are you there? No, but we certainly we haven't we've seen some of that. Absolutely. But most of the time, and they were able to knock on your door or give you a call on teams and say, you know, this is something that maybe could work a little bit better. I saw him previous company, whatever. So absolutely, I mean, that's absolutely part and parcel of our leadership style on the businesses to be open to things like that. And then,
Dusty Rhodes 15:21
as you said, the world is changing. I think the biggest change that has happened is remote working. Thanks to thanks to COVID. I don't know, did you do any remote working before COVID
John Brennan 15:32
We did an internet remote. remote working is something for me. Anyone in the office will tell you, I'm passionate about us. And the reason the reason I became passionate about it was that you wanted to go into business. And in 2015 16, I decided to do an MBA, and I just felt I needed it. And you know, running the business, I very quickly learned was a lot different than running a team. So I spoke to a gentleman called Brian Kennedy, who's the MD of vision built a modular building company actually doing very well down in Galway, and he steered me towards the Hadley MBA, which is in the UK. So I did ask, and you know, you know, blurt all about everything you do in a course like that process, strategy and marketing and all that. But towards the end, you know, I needed to pick a subject for a thesis. And one of the challenges we were starting to see in the business at that point, in 2018, was remote work. So we will we will be asked about remote work. And nobody was really doing it. And I remember vividly one example, we had a draft a draft person who was very productive and efficient, and he wants to work at home, and we weren't sure. And we said we tested. So we did a pilot, and he worked four days at home. And his productivity went up by something like 40%. So we started to look at this and analyze why this was happening. And what we what we saw was that when he was in the office, at headquarters, Malankara, what would happen is because he was so good at his job, he would be asked to go into a meeting on XY or Zed project, even though he wasn't working on. And that will take an hour and a half, two hours out of his day. And in some cases, he wouldn't, he wouldn't need to contribute to the meeting. So there was a lot of distraction. So we started then to move into slowly but surely. And then I did the tests on it and did all the research on on. And so some of the research to see that we came across and that we played into the business. As a result of that. It has been fascinating. I remember again, and give you one example, I remember seeing one stat which always stuck with me back in 2018, Vodafone, carried out a very large survey of about 3000 companies. And back then I think 80% of companies were saying they were going to grow in the next three years. And they also surveyed, you know, a lot of staff and most people were saying the number one thing they wanted going forward was flexibility. When when they asked the companies if they're going to entertain that only 110 said they would. So I remember seeing that stat saying there's something coming here we can get ahead of the curve by by looking at this and and working with it. So we started to remote work before COVID. So we saw the issues that that come with it. It's not it's not simple. It's not straightforward. And that's the things you have to think about and change. So we, you know, we went into all that with that in place. And it's been working very well since,
Dusty Rhodes 18:13
of course, with huge swings, everybody who was working from home during COVID. And now there seems to be a return to the office. How are you handling office attendance?
John Brennan 18:23
Again, we've said in offices, so we have our main headquarters in Malinga with 94 staff at the moment. And we have six other hubs around the country. So the theory is that people essentially decide every day where they're most productive where they want to work. So just huge trust there. The reason we do that is again, comes back to one piece of research that we came across back in 2016 17 has to do with policy. And you will see a nozzle of companies now bringing people back for a day a week or two days. And we can the theory behind that is that obviously they need to make some there's there's an important social element. There was a there was a very famous sort of earpiece researched on things in New Agey, actually a few years back with a lady called Professor Kelleher who looked into policy and how that impacts productivity and people coming back to the office. And the theory is that if you can give people that choice, and give them that full choice, that trust gets built, they see that as a reward. And then it's reciprocated with increased productivity, essentially, what if you start putting rules around that and policies around that you say you must be in one day a week or two days a week, it then becomes an entitlement. And that's when you see productive productivity drop off. So we've had, you know, numerous hours of discussion in the company around around this and up to now we've completely resisted bringing people back in for even one day a week. So everybody decides where to work. I mean, like I said, it's not simple. There are loads of things in the background and systems that we have and, you know, committees that we have that work on bringing people together so teams get you know, get together once a month and you know that really He hopes but giving people that choice. And building that trust has been very, very beneficial for us. And we have no plans, you know, in the short term to bring people back in one or two days a week
Dusty Rhodes 20:11
or so is very good on providing a challenging environment to work in, which engages the brain. So you've always got something interesting to work on you from what you were saying. It's great that you listen to the team and you make changes good and bad based on what they're saying. And you've mentioned mentors as well. Let me ask you about continuing professional development. Why do you think just the area of continuing professional development is important, particularly for engineers.
John Brennan 20:38
But look at it, it's vital for a number of reasons. I mean, each hrs team, you know, there's nine of them, as I said, and each team has their own strategy that they work to year on year, you know, the challenges for every team to keep ahead of the curve and keep ahead of what's coming down the track. And it's quite unique to each team, actually, in some case, so be it, you know, environmental legislation coming down fire safety. So it's, it's vital to stay ahead of all of that, and then that's a team level. And then at the business level, there are there things that that come. And one thing that's in front of me all the time last few months and years ago is ESG, environmental, social corporate governance. So we had two of our team, Brian Rachel on an ESG course, de becque Yesterday, to learn more about we have our strategy for this developing all the time, but it's becoming it's becoming vitally important. And I mean, that'll count as part of CPD. But as engineers, you know, it's just it's obviously vital that we stay ahead of everything and make sure that we know what's coming downstream, particularly consultancy business like ours, our clients expect us to do that. And engineers Ireland do a fantastic job in you know, making those resources available to us to give us the opportunity to continue with that CPD so it were CPD accredited employer for that for the last number of years. And it was chosen to be accredited last year for a further three years. And with a great team, and they're led by Alan Kane at the moment who encourages everybody to keep their CPD open meet the records. I mean, CPD is every Wednesday the officers are vital. It's a vital part of what we do.
Dusty Rhodes 22:06
So can you tell me more about it? Like I mean, what's the system and how does it work?
John Brennan 22:10
So the actual the CPD accredited employer antigenemia, is something that's actually very similar to what we do with the grip place to work. It's a system and a process that's broken down into a number of different margins. And we work at them with mentoring comes into CPDs are powerful, this personal development is a big part of it. And so that's just three, but there's loads of different things. So let me just an example touch on on personal development. I mean, when I did the MBA mentioned earlier on, personal development was a major, major part of that, for me to learn to understand why I walked away, I did, why I reacted to things the way I did to understand myself. So we've brought that into the business in a variety of ways. I'm using a series of personal development tools now. So this could be Myers Briggs would be another one. We're really interesting one at the moment called the working genius, which was found by a gentleman in the States called Pat Lencioni, which essentially says that we all have various natural talent, six different areas, we, you know, some we are like working in two, we don't mind working in the other serve, and then we don't get energy from the last two. So everybody in the company had moments actually going through that within their teams. And all that's trying to do is to get them to understand more about themselves, why they work the way they do, why they're wired the way they are. And it's a very, very powerful tool, if it's used in the right way, the thing you have to watch, and be careful with instead it doesn't put people into boxes. So for example, with disc profiling, there's there's different colors involved. So you have dominant people, you have people that are more interrelationships, you have people that are, you know, steady and careful. And you have to make sure that if somebody's Rounders in a particular way, that they don't, that they don't say, Well, you know, I can't do this, because my color is this. So, you know, we're aware of are less aware of the data has to be, I suppose, you know, managed and watched and make, make sure people understand this is just a tool to help you to understand yourself better. So that that's all part of our CPD. And as I said at the start, it comes into the CPD accredited employer standard, but it also then comes into a great place to work. I remember when we were, you know, reaccredited, last year, for by engineers are on for that next three years, they did actually focused a lot on that personal development site. So I believe that, you know, I've been in any of the other businesses in that in our sector, but I believe that that approach to PD as we call it isn't this bit unusual?
Dusty Rhodes 24:34
So the course that you did in 2018, which has made a huge change to things, was that something that was inspired by engineers Ireland or kind of came through engineers, Ireland,
John Brennan 24:43
I would say, in a way yes. I mean, I mean, ever since I started as an engineer, like CPD was always there you know, and something that they I wanted to deal with have to do so learning was something that was more or less ingrained in me and engineers are certainly hope that I mean, I mentioned like the course I did, then, actually, I was noticed that way by one of the founders of the company, he felt that he, or she might actually definitely want to see him one day. And we talked about it. And, and we that we then did it. And then when I when I spoke to different colleagues in the industry and people that I knew a lot of people were taking advantage as well. So yeah, back to the mentoring point, you know, they got a nudge in the right direction felt they needed us. And certainly, you know, learning is a big part of what I do anyway. So I would say engineering a bit to build on reaching,
Dusty Rhodes 25:29
you actually makes learning sound very inspirational. I want to dive in and learn new things. After chatting to you. Tell me, I'm almost done for our podcast for today. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you'd like to talk about?
John Brennan 25:45
And well, yeah, one thing I mean, we've had a fairly major development in the business. Over the last few months, we've taken in some investments, which is the first time we've done it. And it's, it's been a big change for us. And it's, you know, something that's, you know, it has been a very good decision. And there's a lot of kind of added energy in the business now because of it. So just to give some background on that, if we can, very quickly we, back in 2019, one of our founders retired and we completed a fairly simple and straightforward MBO. And in last year, our other founder, he decided he wants to retire. So when we looked at different options, and an MBO at that point, so we just more or less got too big. So it wasn't going to be as straightforward, it could have been done just just wasn't gonna be as straightforward. So we decided to look at the private equity route. And I was attracted to that, as were our directors. And for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we, we felt that it would enable us to continue the business and continue growing the brand as we had been doing, and focusing on the culture and all that. And we felt that the model of the business, a multi disciplined was suited to further acquisitions and bought hands and things like that. So that was, that was one reason. And then the second reason was that we were getting exposure to people in funds that had a lot of experience in growing businesses, of the old non organically but growing them a lot faster. So we teamed up with Eric bags, we're an Irish bond. We do Andrew Murphy comes to the Alinker and other brands, and they're one of us experience in growing businesses faster. And once we've teamed up with them, and we did that just before Christmas, so we're very close now to our first acquisition, we hope to have complete a second one by the end of the year, all going well. And then obviously, the other teams will will grow organically as they had been before. So we're expecting a lot of growth over the next three to four years. And it's exciting, you know, and it's bringing an added energy to the business.
Dusty Rhodes 27:41
So the MBO the management buyout has been a huge success. And if you're growing, you're going to need to take on new people, any ideas on how many you look at,
John Brennan 27:48
we estimate anywhere between, you know, 200 to 50, at the moment over the last four years. So it's a it's a big number. And we focus I mean, back at the culture clients, lean recruitment and retention is the biggest challenge in our industry at the moment, laundromat deployment out there, I mean, you need as business to do something different. And that's where culture comes in. So we have a great team working background reg. D for me during working background, extracting talent, retaining talent as part of our cultural development committee. So yeah, so it's, I'd say to people listening in, if they're interested, just keep an eye on our COVID-19 website,
Dusty Rhodes 28:24
grab any particular place, where you're going to be opening new offices, and
John Brennan 28:27
we've just opened one in Cork, and we're going to we're going to call it tomorrow when the UK is, is something that will probably happen next year, I would imagine. But again, back to the module, it just depends on where the work is and where our team come from. So if we end up hiring aggressively over the next two years, and we have people in places like carry or long or short, we will very quickly open a hole but give them a location to go to so and watch the space sector.
Dusty Rhodes 28:52
While John Brennan, Managing Director of ORS, it's been an absolute pleasure to listen and learn from you. And thank you for joining us on our podcast today.
John Brennan 28:59
Thanks. It’s been a pleasure.