Chair: Conor Galvin, Office of Public Works
Background: Fran Igoe, Local Authority Waters Programme
- Integrated Catchment Management and Nature-Based Solutions, Santry Project | John Stack, Dublin City Council
- DCC Approach to Integrating SUDs into the Landscape | Peter Leonard, Dublin City Council
- Adoption of nature-based solutions in the Urban Periphery – local roads and transition zones | Seán Fitzsimons, Clandillon Civil Consulting
- Nature-based solutions to reduce surface water pressure on combined sewer networks (an example from Inchicore, Dublin) | Michael Goss, Uisce Éireann
Speaker Profiles:
Conor Galvin is a Chartered Engineer with fifteen years’ flood risk management experience. Conor is currently the head of the Office of Public Works Climate Adaptation & Strategic Assessment (CASA) Section. The role of the CASA Section includes the implementation of the EU 'Floods' Directive, the provision of technical advisory service on the consideration of flood risk in spatial planning and development management, the implementation of the Climate Change Sectoral Adaptation Plan for Flood Risk Management, and the promotion of nature-based solutions in flood risk management.
Peter Leonard graduated in the early 2000’s from Kingston University London, BA Landscape Architecture and later UCD MA Landscape Architecture and Trinity College Dublin Project Management hDip. Peter has worked in both the public and private sector and is currently Acting Senior Landscape Officer with the Parks, Biodiversity and Landscape Services, Dublin City Council, where he leads the design team. The focus of his work through the last decade is developing and implementing ‘Greening Strategies’ for Dublin City to enhance urban resilience to climate change.
Seán Fitzsimons is a Chartered Civil Engineer and Fellow of Engineer’s Ireland with over 17 years’ experience in the planning, design, construction, and administration of major construction works. He has worked on national and international infrastructure projects, which have included D&B, PPP and traditional re-measurable contract projects in Ireland, the UK, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. As well as being a Chartered Engineer for over 12 years, Seán is a qualified and experienced Project Manager (PMP) for projects ranging from greenways, active travel schemes, local and regional roads through to national road and motorway projects (up to €800 million), with particular expertise in stakeholder coordination, drainage, earthworks design and optimisation. He has developed schemes to be brought forward for planning permission, acted in Employer’s Representative teams, managed design teams as a contractor’s designer and supervised works during construction.
Chair: Finola O’Driscoll, National Transport Authority
- Integrating nature-based solutions into Social housing | Padraig O'Gorman, Carlow County Council
- Moving from hard engineers solutions to a nature based approach (bioretention) to managing surface water on a primary road in a rural town - N74 TII Project | Alan Costello and Aidan O'Connell, Mott MacDonald
- Building nature-based solutions into an active travel project in Glenageary | Conor Geraghty, DLRCC
Speaker profiles:
Pádraig O’Gorman graduated in the early 1990’s from Dublin City University BBS Business Studies and later UCD MBS Business Studies. He has over 25 years local authority experience working in a variety of service delivery roles. He is currently Director of Services with Carlow County Council which includes responsibility for the delivery of infrastructural projects/programmes such as roads, active travel, URDF and special capital projects. He also has responsibility for the Environment and Climate Action brief for the Council and has been
promoting the assessment, development and implementation of Nature Based Solutions into the capital works projects of the Council.
Conor Geraghty is a Senior Engineer for Active Travel in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. Conor joined DLR in 2008 and has worked across a number of departments on the delivery of public infrastructure. He is responsible for the delivery of many of the interventions rolled out in DLR over the last year including the Coastal Mobility Route but was also responsible for award winning public realm schemes like the Monkstown Village Improvement Scheme.
Aidan O’ Connell is a Civil Engineer with 10 years’ experience working with Mott MacDonald Ireland on civil infrastructure and transportation projects ranging from water/wastewater infrastructure schemes, major national road schemes and urban road improvement schemes. During his experience he has developed technical expertise in drainage design which he utilises in his current roles with Mott MacDonald Ireland as designer and Project Manager on a variety of projects.
Alan Costello is a Chartered Engineer with 17 years’ experience in the delivery of civil infrastructure and transportation projects. These include major national road schemes, urban road improvements and sustainable mobility projects including active travel infrastructure. Alan has experience of delivering projects from planning stage through to project handover utilising various forms of contracts such as D&B, PPP and traditional Employer Design. He has developed technical expertise in drainage and road pavement design. His current responsibilities at Mott MacDonald Ireland include delivering projects to a variety of public sector clients as a Project Manager and contributing to overall business strategy as Ireland Development Manager.
Chair: Stephen O'Malley, Civic Engineers
- Rainscapes | Anthony McCloy, McCloy Consulting and Kevin Barton, Robert Bray Associates
- In practice - learnings from the UK. Meristem Design | Habib Khan
- Detail landscape and planting considerations with examples from the inner city | Gareth Toolan, Dublin City Council
- Moving from an eye-sore with surface water management issues using nature-based solutions – a simple example for Local Authorities | Padraig O'Gorman, Carlow County Council
Speaker Profiles:
Stephen O'Malley is Chief Executive of Civic Engineers, he is passionate about urban infrastructure and sets about his work aiming to engineer less; this is about clustering and proximity, reaching first for nature-based solutions and applying these principles with a high degree of emotional intelligence.
The skills Stephen has developed to engineer healthy, active and attractive urban neighbourhoods are broad – civil, transport, highways, flood risk, drainage, utilities, structures, ground remediation engineering – to name some. Stephen’s fusion and practice of these engineering skills enables the creation of inspirational public spaces that have a positive impact on the environment and enable people to lead healthier and happier lives. This broader, more creative and collaborative approach sets Civic Engineers practice apart and has seen Stephen recognised as an industry expert in his field. With a role as an Architecture & Design Scotland Panellist, Membership of the Academy of Urbanism, a Design Council Associate and a New London Architecture Expert Panel Member for Wellbeing.Climate sensitivity and its protection has been a founding feature of our Practice since its inception and it is embedded in our vision, our values and our designs. Stephen advocates for this agenda through his roles as the Chair of the Manchester Climate Change Partnership (MCCP) Net Zero New Build Task Force, Ministry of Housing and Local Government (MHCLG) High Streets Task Force Expert and as the Chair of the ICE North West.
Anthony McCloy took up the Managing Director role of McCloy Consulting in 2008. With a passion for water and the environment, the company has been grown over the last decade into an industry leader providing consultancy services to both public and private clients.
As a Chartered Civil Engineer and a Fellow of Engineers Ireland, he retains a technical ‘hands on’ role within the company and is nationally recognised for his contributions in the field of Sustainable Drainage. Anthony regularly speaks at conferences and seminars, provides University lectures, delivers National SuDS training workshops and has contributed to National and Local Guidance.
Pádraig O’Gorman graduated in the early 1990’s from Dublin City University BBS Business Studies and later UCD MBS Business Studies. He has over 25 years local authority experience working in a variety of service delivery roles. He is currently Director of Services with Carlow County Council which includes responsibility for the delivery of infrastructureal projects/programmes such as roads, active travel, URDF and special capital projects. He also has responsibility for the Environment and Climate Action brief for the Council and has been promoting the assessment, development and implementation of Nature Based Solutions into the capital works projects of the Council.
Habib Khan spent the first part of his life, after graduating, as a surveyor for two of the UK's largest surveying practices, Countrywide Surveyors and GVA Grimley. He then decided to move into the sustainability sector and has been instrumental in some of London's landmark schemes. He spent over 10 years managing the UK's biggest car sharing company at the time City Car Club and the UK's first Bike Sharing scheme back in 2005. His next big challenge is to help tackle London's poor air quality by the power of plants.
Ciarán Brennan, Executive Technician, has worked for approx. 27 years in the civil engineering sector. He worked with Bowen Construction and MC O Sullivan Consultant Engineers before moving to the Local Authority sector commencing with Laois County Council and now Carlow County Council for the past 17 years in Carlow Town.
Kevin Barton is a landscape architect specialising in climate resilient and rainwater management landscapes. His studio is driven by a strong people/planet ethos that is reflected in their award-winning and pioneering community, biodiversity and environment-focussed projects. Their projects seamlessly and inventively fuse water, people, place and wildlife to create exciting and dynamic landscapes that come alive when it rains.
Gareth Toolan graduated from University College Dublin in the 2000’s with a BA in Landscape Architecture, where he gained a deep understanding of the principles of design, ecology, and sustainability. Gareth has worked both in private and public sectors. Serving as Director of a private landscape architectural consultancy practice for 10 years. Gareth’s current role is as A/Senior Executive Landscape Architect in Dublin City Council, and works primarily in the delivery of new parks and public realm projects. Gareth’s main areas of responsibilities include the delivery and implementation of Greening Strategies and nature based solutions, retrofitting the core city centre area with the aim of establishing a climate resilient city.
Chair: Adrian Conway
- Adoption of NBS in the Urban Periphery (Roscommon) | Sean Fitzsimons, Clandillon Civil Consulting
- Maintenance considerations from the Cardiff experience. Some top tips! | Ian Titherington, Senior Policy Adviser – Sustainable Drainage, Welsh Government
- Plants and landscaping. What, where and when | Isla Jackson, Civic Engineers
- Next steps: Averil Gannon, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Speaker Profiles
Adrian Conway, Chartered Engineer and M.Sc. in Spatial Planning, worked with DHLGH on preparations for a National Strategy to implement nature based systems in urban areas to manage rainwater runoff as part of the third cycle of the River Basin Management Plan 2022 to 2027. Formerly Executive Manager (Engineering) Dublin City Council responsible for urban drainage, surface water, flood risk management and related matters.
Seán Fitzsimons is a Chartered Civil Engineer and Fellow of Engineer’s Ireland with over 17 years’ experience in the planning, design, construction, and administration of major construction works. He has worked on national and international infrastructure projects, which have included D&B, PPP and traditional re-measurable contract projects in Ireland, the UK, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. As well as being a Chartered Engineer for over 12 years, Seán is a qualified and experienced Project Manager (PMP) for projects ranging from greenways, active travel schemes, local and regional roads through to national road and motorway projects (up to €800 million), with particular expertise in stakeholder coordination, drainage, earthworks design and optimisation. He has developed schemes to be brought forward for planning permission, acted in Employer’s Representative teams, managed design teams as a contractor’s designer and supervised works during construction.
Isla Jackson is a Director of Civic Engineers and leads the Scottish studios. She is passionate about buildings and the spaces in between them. As a chartered engineer, she aims to create inspirational structures and places that have a positive impact on the environment and enable people to lead happier and healthier lives.
The skills Isla has developed coupled with the active role engineers are playing in addressing the climate emergency have found her looking at five key principles when designing projects: Exploring not exploiting; Building not destroying; Re-using not just using; listening and learning; and climate resilience. Her work includes leading on all structural, civil and transport engineering projects for the practice in Scotland and Ireland which include Block A of the transformative Glasgow Avenues scheme which will dramatically improve the quality of city centre Glasgow, putting people at its heart; A selection of other projects which she has been involved in are: Glasgow - Woodside Making Places, Edinburgh – NorthGrove , Inverness Heritage Trail and South Dublin District Centres. Isla is also an approved SER certifier of design (Building structures) and a trained Principal Designer under CDM 2015.
After a short spell as a student engineer in the former Neath Borough Council, Ian Titherington was a Civil Engineer in Cardiff Council for over 32 years specialising in all forms of drainage design, rehabilitation & maintenance, along with other areas of Municipal engineering - including Waste Management. For the last 10 years in that post, he concentrated on drainage elements of new development and specifically SuDS and the development of retrofit SuDS. This included devising (along with Jeremy Jones now with Atkins) & leading on the Greener Grangetown project, after which he was made UK Susdrain SuDS champion. He was a SAB Officer (SuDS Approval Board) in Cardiff for the first 4 years of Welsh statutory SuDS legislation, helping to deliver statutory SuDS for the Capital. He is also currently invited onto advisory groups from CIWEM & the ICE, helping to inform on flood risk & all things SuDS. Ian’s new role is as senior advisor on sustainable drainage for the Welsh Government.