As our population grows and our world gets busier, there is significant pressure put on our infrastructure and there is an increasing demand for innovative solutions.
Today we’re meeting an engineer who is leading a team of over 400 people working on Ireland’s infrastructure and transport systems to develop a more sustainable future. We hear how important building a strong network is for learning and advancing projects, and about the technical challenges of working with public transport and gas lines.
Our guest today has transitioned from civil engineer to management in his almost 30 years with Arup and is Ireland Group Leader in Advisory, Planning, Digital, Infrastructure Design and Technical Services, Donal McDaid.
THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
● Building a solid network through project work
● Transitioning to sustainable solutions in infrastructure
● Impact of planning and regulation on projects
● The journey to leadership and management
● Innovations in materials and digital
GUEST DETAILS
Donal McDaid manages Arup’s Transport and resources Group in Ireland, which is primarily focused on our Roads and Urban Streets, Rail, Aviation, Maritime, Energy and Water Businesses. There, he leads a diverse, highly motivated team of 300 professional planners, engineers and management consultants.
Since joining Arup in 1997, Donal has worked on and led multi-disciplinary teams on transport planning and environmental studies, and large scale transport infrastructure project planning, design and implementation, both in Ireland and overseas.
Connect with Donal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donalmcdaid/
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
"I got to know every single local authority engineer, I got to know every single architect, I got to know every single planner, every single developer. So the project afforded me the opportunity to build a network." - Donal McDaid
"We've come through a decade of what I would call planning and designing. The next decade is going to be about delivery. So I can't think of a more exciting time to be coming into the engineering profession." - Donal McDaid
"You really need to think about the existential crisis, which is climate change. And what that does for engineers is that we need to think about our adaptation, resilience when it comes to infrastructure." - Donal McDaid
"You actually have to think about the communities you're serving. And if I think about transport, it's always been about access to opportunity." - Donal McDaid
"Don't run before you can walk. Be content and learn your trade. Seize the opportunities." - Donal McDaid
KEYWORDS
#infrastructure #sustainability #future #civilengineering #career #transport
TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription.
Dusty Rhodes 00:02
Right now on AMPLIFIED a senior engineer who's leading the way in some of Ireland's biggest infrastructure projects.
Donal McDaid 00:08
We've come through a decade of what I would call planning and designing. The next decade is going to be about delivery. So I can't think of a more exciting time to come into the engineering profession.
Dusty Rhodes 00:21
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes, and welcome to AMPLIFIED the Engineers Journal podcast. As our population grows and our world gets busier, there is significant pressure put on our infrastructure. Today, we're meeting an engineer who's leading a team of over 400 people working on infrastructure to develop a sustainable future. We're going to hear about his projects in public transport and gas lines, along with how he's transitioned from civil engineer to management with Arup in Galway. I'm delighted to welcome Director of Arup. Donald McDaid. Donal, how are you?
Donal McDaid 00:51
I'm very good. Dusty. I'm not I'm not from Galway. I'm based in Dublin, but I'm in our Galway office today.
Dusty Rhodes 00:59
Very good. So the company is kind of based between the two cities, yeah,
Donal McDaid 01:02
well, on the island of Ireland, we've offices in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Belfast,
Dusty Rhodes 01:08
ah. And are you originally from Galway? Yourself?
Donal McDaid 01:11
No, I'm from Donegal. I've lost I've lost the accent. When I went to college, I went to college in Galloway, and I can chat to you about that. So I have a huge affinity for Galway, and I've done quite a lot of work in Galway.
Dusty Rhodes 01:24
Tell me what, speaking of college, what attracted you to engineering in the first place? Can you, can you remember that first little spark where you went? Ah, that looks interesting.
Donal McDaid 01:34
So I grew up in rural South Donegal, and I went to school in the amplification school in Donegal town and Dusty, I was probably quite good at maths and physics and subjects like that. I was probably particularly good at technical drawing, as I remember it. So I was either going to be an architect or an engineer, but the other thing I really wanted to do was go to Galway, so they didn't do architecture and Galway. So I'll be perfectly honest with my engineering colleagues on the podcast here, the fact that they only did engineering in Galway is the reason I'm an engineer.
Dusty Rhodes 02:06
Ah right. So you kind of like fell into it, just out of a practical reason. Have you fallen in love with engineering since?
Donal McDaid 02:14
Well yeah, I'm nearly 30 years at it, so I most definitely have fallen in love with it. I mean, the degree in Galway was a super degree, an engineering an engineering degree is tough. Well, if you go to all the lectures, it's extremely tough, just in terms of long days. But I it's hard to think of a more flexible degree that prepares you for life as well as a career in engineering. And bearing in mind, I finished my degree in 1983 and the world was a very different place. Here in Ireland, there actually was no work right, apart from half of my class going to London to work on the sites, there was literally no work in Ireland at that time. So I ended up then doing a master's in civil engineering in Trinity, before again realising there was no work. And I ended up going to England as well. Well,
Dusty Rhodes 03:04
give us a brief idea then, of your career progression. You went off to the UK. How did you end up back here?
Donal McDaid 03:10
I went off to the UK in end of 94 and I spent two years working in a small environmental engineering consultancy in the south of England, in Kent, nice part of the world to live for two years. I probably came back to Ireland because I met my then with my now wife back then, and I was afforded an opportunity to interview with Arup. So when I was growing up and in college, Arup would have been the preeminent engineering firm in Ireland, in my view, but they would have had a specialism in structural engineering in particular. So I joined at a time when civil engineering was the shiny new thing, believe it or not, within Arup, and we've come a long way since then.
Dusty Rhodes 03:57
Now you stayed with Arup for, as you say, nearly 30 years. I I'm interested in this because a lot of people now get into a firm, and they stay two or three years, and then they're gone because they want to move up the ladder, and it's easier to do it by jumping to another company, and usually for better money. On the flip side of that, you've been with 30 years with Arup, how would you say it is staying with the same company.
Donal McDaid 04:23
You're right on what you say. I mean, I spend a lot of time thinking about this in my role now. And you know, engineers want experiences, and if you can get a company that offers experiences to engineers as well as a career, that's a USP, in my view. So I don't know how much you know about our but we are actually effectively an employee owned company globally. So we have an independence that allows us to set our own direction. So we don't, we don't have, we don't have paid evidence to shareholders externally, it's entirely about us, and I'd like to say we are very much a purpose. Driven firm. Our mission has always been to shape a better world, and we have a global strategy now which is entirely focused on a sustainable future. So everything we do must advance a sustainable future. That's exciting because it actually attracts an awful lot of young people into the firm now who have a burning platform to actually do something about the existential crisis of our time, climate change.
Dusty Rhodes 05:21
Can I move on and ask you, Donald, about your kind of stuff that you've done in your career, kind of looking back, do you have an example of a project that you're particularly proud of?
Donal McDaid 05:33
Well, given what I just said, one of my, one of my most favorite projects, in fact, maybe the project I'm most proud of is actually a gas pipeline project, believe it or not, it was in my, my very early days in Arab and the reason it has a long, lasting memory with me is the level of responsibility I was given at such an early stage on that project. How old were you? I would have been a young engineer, dusty. I would have been 2526 Wow. And I, for the most part, I was project manager for that project at the time. It was the largest ever gas pipeline in terms of size. It was 70 bar, just under a meter diameter, gas transmission pipeline that at the time, there was an urgency in terms of it being delivered to actually secure Ireland's energy supply and electricity generation in the greater Dublin area. So it was an incredibly complex project because it was routed through urban Dublin. So when I look back, we went under four rivers, including the River Liffey and strawberry beds, under the two canals, under four motorways, and intricately routing that pipeline through many, many developments. So the reason it left a lasting impression me wasn't just about the technical detail of the project. It was by the end of it, I got to know every single local authority engineer, I got to know every single architect, I got to know every single planner, every single developer. So the project afforded me the opportunity to build a network, delighted I still have that network in place from that project, and maybe to, maybe to bookend it to engineers Ireland. It was on the basis of that project that I was shortlisted for charters Engineer of the Year. I think it was 2004 I didn't win. Somebody else won, but I've had the privilege over recent years to actually give the award to the young Chartered Engineer of the Year every year as part of the Arab trust. So it's always held in fond memory for me.
Dusty Rhodes 07:34
Tell me about the project and dealing with all of the local authorities and people, because you're 25 years of age, and when you're 25 the great thing is you know everything, and you're right about everything, and then you come up against other people who've got other opinions and stuff. What did you learn about yourself and what did you learn about dealing with people on that project?
Donal McDaid 07:54
I guess the biggest thing I learned is that, at the end of the day, we're a people business, right? So you actually need to be able to engage with people, with stakeholders. You need to be able to bring people on a journey with you, you know. So this is a, this is a project from national significance, and that was recognised, so people were willing to work with you. You know, it wasn't just the local authorities. I remember going to developers and talking to them about the fact that we have to route this pipeline through housing development. You're actually in the middle of trying to get planning for or or get off the ground. So it took a lot of delicate negotiating skills and effectively been a bit of a diplomat, dusty from my memory.
Dusty Rhodes 08:35
Tell me about the more technical side of it, because you said you had to go through under housing estates and major roads and rivers, and how does that all work, trying to get that gas on underneath those land objects.
Donal McDaid 08:50
A huge amount of the technical difficulty ended up being in geology, in you know, because we some some of the crossings, particularly when you think of Liffey. And I think in particular as well. God has gone back dusty. It's 2025, years ago. I'm thinking the Royal Canal in particular was particularly deep at the point we crossed. And I probably have some old photographs of how deep the actual launch pit was for the directional drill under the under the Royal Canal. So even before you actually started the drilling under the canal to get down deep enough was was a challenge in itself.
Dusty Rhodes 09:25
And has the technology changed much since then to now?
Donal McDaid 09:30
I wouldn't think so. It's not an area I do very much work in myself personally now. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't have thought it has changed significantly. Interestingly, after cop 26 Arab made a global commitment not to do any more work in fossil fuel extraction or transmission or distribution aligned to our sustainable strategy, and that wasn't for any reason, by means of not understanding the need for continued use of. Fuels as part of a transition phase, but we have a limited resource globally, so we focus our entire effort on renewables now, and that led to really interesting conversations with gas networks Ireland, who are a huge client of ours in terms of what we could and couldn't do for them going forward. And you know, they're great conversations that we've been able to have, because right now, we are still working with gas networks Ireland, and we're helping them think about the future, which is hydrogen and biomethane. So I had the I was delighted to be able to go along to gas networks Ireland's launch after Net Zero strategy 2045 a couple of weeks ago, where, by 2020, 45 they have a really ambitious and it's great to see the ambitious and really ambitious plan to be fully ready for hydrogen and biomethane, as opposed to natural gas.
Dusty Rhodes 10:47
Well, listen, bring us up to the present day as we're talking about. I wanted to ask you as well about the bus Connect system, which you're kind of looking at from a more senior position. How has that been different from the gas project?
Donal McDaid 11:00
I'd say dusty. Most of my work, most of my professional work at a project level has actually been in transport planning and as a project manager, project director for major transport infrastructure projects. So I've had a long history of work in the quality bus network in Dublin over the years, and I've been part of a team with industry partners that have not only been looking at the planning and design of bus connects, but also bringing the projects through the statutory planning process. So when you think about cities in Ireland, like Dublin, they're low density cities at the end of the day still. So the workhorse is always going to be the bus and the bus connects program, which again, is an ambitious program by the National Transport Authority. I think is going to be transformative, because it's not just about the bus network. There's been a huge focus on walking and cycling and place making along those corridors as well. And maybe because I'm in in the Galway office today, a project that's been very close to my heart. I was heavily involved, and I led the development of the Galway transport strategy. One of the projects in that strategy, which is part of the bus connects program here in Galway, which is a project I've led, is the cross City Link project, which the abort Plano finally get from permission to last week, and again, dusty, that's going to be a project that I really believe is going to be transformative for Galway, because maybe not everybody in Galway realises what it's going to do, but it's going to take traffic out of the core city centre area in Galway, the try it'll be to take traffic out of our square it'll create this corridor through the core city centre area for busses. But for me, it was always about letting the city breathe, because when you when you afford the opportunity that taking traffic out of the core city centre does. There's a huge component of that project which is really about new urban spaces, and actually connecting those urban spaces and the necklace across the city, east, west. So a project I'm very proud of here in Galway.
Dusty Rhodes 12:56
Is there a little bit of that project that includes an idea that you had, where you went. Well, I think it'd be good that if we did, ba, boom, and it's there still in the plan.
Donal McDaid 13:08
It's funny you asked me that, because I am not going to take all of the claim to fame for it, but I do remember where the idea of the cross city leg came from, and it came from a doodle I had on a napkin in a meeting with Galway city council about seven or eight years ago, when I drew this doodle off of a concept sketch for what the cross City Link might be. So I got to take a little bit of fame for that. I've lost a napkin. Not quite sure where it went. If somebody in Galway has it, please send it back to me for posterity.
Dusty Rhodes 13:36
Many great ideas started off on a napkin. But listen, you you were talking about, you know, kind of planning and regulation there. How was that particular project impacted by planning and regulation? I mean, is, is is it getting harder and harder with the planning and regulation compared to when you were kicking off in the 80s? Or is it kind of the same amount of muck that you have to get through? Because there's a huge issue for engineering
Donal McDaid 14:00
planning, it's there's no state secret here when I say planning has been a real challenge for us in Ireland over the last decade, it really has. We have had a lack of planners. We have an under resourced Planning Board, and under resourced in many ways, local authorities when it comes to planners as well. That is changing, and I hope the new planning bill going through the at the moment will make a difference. So cross City Link probably, in fact, it is actually two years in the planning system since we made the planning application, almost to the week to end. The board granted it permission. It's too long, and it creates, just creates uncertainty around everything. You know I think about the engineering profession now, the great thing is, we've come through a decade of what I would call planning and designing. The next decade is going to be about delivery. So I can't think of a more exciting time to be coming into the engineering profession in terms of the opportunity to see things being delivered. Go back to what. I was saying earlier about the responsibility I was given at such an early stage, because back in those days, as well, Ireland was delivering things, be it the motorway network or whatever. So while the planning has been challenging, things like the bus connects program are coming through the planning system now, as is the Dart program in Dublin, as is the cross City Link project in Galway, similar projects in Cork. So we're fortunate to be to have a little bit of money in the back pocket at the moment as a country, as long as we don't overheat the kind of the economy entirely, I'd love us to get to that nirvana for for the country, which is steady state spend on infrastructure.
Dusty Rhodes 15:40
Let's chat about sustainability a little bit more, because that is very much a key core of Arup. Do you have an example outside of Galway now, right of a pioneering solution that has been developed by you guys?
Donal McDaid 15:54
Oh god, I could go, probably go to global examples, but I well, I was probably going to go to go to transport infrastructure Ireland, who I see is an incredibly progressive organisation, not just in terms of their ability to GSD, can I say, get shit done? Is that? Is that possible in the podcast? But they're good. They're very good as a delivery organisation. And you know, we've we spent quite a lot of time. It's been great. We've been afforded the opportunity to develop a sustainability plan with them, which they're now permeating down into every, every, every facet of the organisation, you know, and for me and for engineers. And if you think about sustainability, it really, you really need to think about how you're designing the materials you're using, and you really need to think about the existential crisis, which is climate change. And what that does for engineers is that we need to think about our adaptation, resilience when it comes to infrastructure. Because, you know, the way we design is completely changed. Those, those one in 1000 year events when it comes to flooding, etc. Well, unfortunately, they're not one in the 1000 year events anymore, as we've seen again in Cork recently and and again. Cork last year in particular got a really bad doing from flooding. So, so, so engineers, engineers are at the heart of all of that. It's interesting. We had a brief chat about something before we went we started recording. You know, what I see in society right now is cost of living, etc, has moved the climate change down the priority when it comes to people's thinking, and I can understand that right in the context of there are more important things in people's day to day lives, but we as engineers are the people that Really focus on society now and building communities and society for the future. So it really is our number one priority, and everything we do has to be.
Dusty Rhodes 17:48
So when you're thinking about that as a priority, how can the design of sustainable infrastructure help us through all of this? When you're thinking big and you're thinking long term,
Donal McDaid 18:02
I've always had an approach of thinking about design in terms of people. Of course, it sounds like a no brainer, but, but you know, you can't just be interested in the the rail track and the choo choo trains. You actually have to think about the communities you're serving. And if I think about transport, it's always been about access to opportunity. So in a world of consumption right now, we all need to realise the future really is about degrowth to a large extent, not necessarily growth, okay, because we can't keep consuming. So when we start, for example, we've been doing an awful lot of work across the national I'm going to say road project, Road program, to start off. But we've taken an approach, as indeed has our colleagues within the industry, of actually starting with, well, why do we need to build a road so there are very few of our national road projects that have remained road projects. They have all transformed into transport projects, and thinking more about the communities we're serving, and thinking about active travel, walking, cycling and public transport, and then what role if any, the road has in that context. We
Dusty Rhodes 19:08
had a really interesting experience recently, because we're not living in Dublin, but we've took a trip to Paris, so big city, all right, we arrived and there we literally just missed a metro and was, oh, we wait for the next one. And no sooner had the train left, the station went another one came in, and the parents are going, that can't be us. They were literally every minute or every two minutes. And you're right when you think about sustainable and structure and you know, kind of using shared resources across the country, but everybody still wants, as you say, close to home. We want to walk out the door. We want to walk down to the bus stop or train station, and we want to train to be there in the next five minutes. Now, maybe in a city, you can do that. And so much of Irish Life is concentrated around Dublin, because it's by far the biggest city. How. Do you see the infrastructure and the transport infrastructure for the rest of the country? Is it possible to bring in that kind of frequency? Do you think,
Donal McDaid 20:10
Oh, that's a big question. Dusty, and actually one. So one of the things I'm very passionate about is rural Ireland and sustainable rural Ireland. And we're doing some work with the department at the moment on the national demand management strategy, and we're doing a much more focused scheme with the National Transport Authority, at the moment, a demand management strategy for the greater Dublin area. So there, there will be societal changes in terms of how people think about their lives and how they move around, including not not moving around all of the time. You could only, I mean, you mentioned Paris and Metro, which is a wonderful system. I've been on it several times. But you know, Paris has a density that, Oh, absolutely, yeah, it's huge. And Dublin isn't high density city either. It's becoming more dense. So you have to tailor your transport solution to to the demographic and to density. So in rural Ireland, it is incredibly difficult to actually deliver mass transit. But one of the things, one of the unsung heroes of this country, I think, is the local Link bus service in rural Ireland. And you know, I've, I've a mother who lives in Donegal, and you know, for the last 10 years, the local link service has been her her lifeline, just in terms of connecting in into the local town. And that's that's the case for so many people living in rural Ireland. The the move to decarbonise the private car fleet i electric vehicles, there's no point in replacing all of the cars in Dublin that are petrol and diesel with electric cars, because you're still going to just end up with congestion where you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to the impact on climate change. That decarbonisation of the private car fleet that it can have, it is in rural Ireland actually, because, you know, I, like I said, having grown up in Donegal, I understand the need of a car when you live in rural Ireland. But actually, as we get over range anxiety, and we actually deliver the infrastructure, the charging infrastructure, and ARB is in the middle of supporting the department and tii on the rollout of the Zevi program, and which is the the delivery of the charging infrastructure across the country, as all of that comes into into being, over the next five or six years, you're you're gonna see, I think, a change in in people's approach and attitude to electric vehicles. There needs to be a little bit of support from the government in terms of subsidisation as well. There are costly at the moment, but that's changing.
Dusty Rhodes 22:40
We are getting public support, and particularly when it gets to electric cars, but a lot of those subsidies are kind of dying off now, at this stage, and it hasn't been like there's been a rush for people to go out and buy electric cars. A lot of people are getting kind of hybrid cars, but I don't, I don't know if they're any good. Anytime I speak to a taxi driver who's going hybrid, it's not worth it. But do you think electric cars? I think there is a goal. It's 2030 or 2035 where they want to have all petrol cars and diesel cars banned from sale, and the only thing you will be able to buy is an electric car. Do you think we will have hit that kind of key point where everybody just goes, as your cars are electric, I'll just get one the
Donal McDaid 23:25
the biggest transformer of people's attitudes a lot of the time, is regulate. Regulation, right? Yeah, absolutely. And when you have industry, and you give certainty to industry in terms of what what the regulation is going to be, that's when you see a shift. Yeah, that's really interesting. And if you if you look at what's going on globally, God, how do we get to here? But if you look at what's going on globally, at the moment, you know there's America are putting tariffs on China, and the EU's is extremely fearful of China. But actually, you have to pay attention to what's happening in China. The concern is that there's a lot of government subsidy for what they're doing in China, but, but the Chinese EV market has exploded, and they can actually flood the entire globe with with their manufacturing capability. So the problem with the problem we have in Europe is that we have really old car companies that are very, very concerned about their future, and they have a big part to play in the European economy. You set that aside if we're really serious about what we need to do, the means is there to allow us to do it.
Dusty Rhodes 24:30
Isn't it funny? It's like you say engineering is all a human business, because the solutions are there with electric vehicles, but it's the humans who are creating the problems. It's just funny how it goes. Let's get on to leadership and management. Because you started off as civil engineer, and now you're you're in management. How does that I mean, how did you get from from A to B? Because management is a completely different thing to actually get hands on engineering. I.
Donal McDaid 24:59
Yeah, it is. You know, I one of the things I really do suffer from is project envy. Envy. I sometimes struggle with my lack of time to be able to work on projects, but I actually comfort myself, but like all the great stuff that the team and Arup is doing in Ireland at the moment, so that's where I got my satisfaction, along with developing others coming through probably a little bit of timing, I'd say, just when I come back from from the UK, the Irish economy had taken off, and it's a bit like, it's what we're going to see. Like I said, the next 10 years is really exciting to be in engineering, in my view. So I was afforded opportunity, and I grabbed it really young. I was afforded the opportunity, through that gas pipeline project and others to have exposure to clients very, very quickly in my career, I built a network. It's not about networking. It's a building a network. And, you know, it's a small industry, so once you get to know the industry, you rely on that network quite a lot. So So that allowed me to to timing in the sense that things were going really well in the early noughties. In particular, I was afforded the opportunity to to manage teams. I think I I took over as head of transport planning in Arup When did I do that? It was probably in 1990 in early 2001 and I actually became a director in our I was actually quite young. I was still 34 when I was made a director in our God only knows what they were doing, but I was 34 so I was made a director in 2006 and I've held different roles since I moved on from being head of transport planning to lead in our overall consultancy service in Ireland from 2013 and then we split into two operational groups in Ireland in 2018 and I became group leader for one of the two groups. And that team, I have about 400 people, and I've been there since
Dusty Rhodes 26:57
a lot of those opportunities presented themselves to you, and you kind of, yeah, okay, I'll lead that team, or I'll go up and all that kind of stuff. But you know, is it a case of you were able to just grab those opportunities and learn from experience, or did you have to do, you know, kind of a certain amount of studying, or, you know, kind of extra education in order to make you a leader of people?
Donal McDaid 27:21
No, I would life experience, I think, more than any anything in particular, I'm doing a really interesting leadership course at the moment globally, and it's with cross sectoral leadership I've been doing, I've been over and back to the UK. I find that really fascinating, because I've been, you know, I've been on a course with NGOs. Have been on a course people like the AA in the UK, etc. And it's been really interesting to learn from leaders in other sectors, to realize that a lot of the challenges we have are actually the same, and to be able to get different perspectives. So perspectives are really, really important, I think, in leadership, to actually, you know, lean in on people in your network to get perspectives on things. I think in today's world, you well, it's always been the case, but I think good leaders need to have empathy. You actually need to be personable. You actually need to understand what's going on, not just technically, but what's going on in terms of dynamic and of course, we have lots of different dynamics now within teams, because the generations are quite different, and the expectations and needs are very different cross generationally within an organisation. So it's a it's a melting pot, in that regard, of things that you have to think about all of the time, if
Dusty Rhodes 28:37
you're looking at a new generation coming up, what advice would you have for one of those engineers who's looking to pursue a similar path to yourself, right? Don't do it
Donal McDaid 28:51
well, no, yeah, yeah. Most definitely do it. Most definitely pursue a career in engineering. Don't run before you could walk. Be content. You know, contentment is a word I use sometimes I see an impatience now, all of the time, and I think, I think people need to be content and learn, learn your trade. I think that's really, really important, and seize the opportunities. The future is there. It's not ours, and we're all working towards that.
Dusty Rhodes 29:21
All right, let's wrap up kind of looking at the future just a little bit. How do you see engineering evolving over the next 10 years? Is it all going to be delivery, or will we have more exciting, new ideas that will go through the planning process? So
Donal McDaid 29:35
we pose ourselves a question, right? When I think about the future, to think about digital transformation in particular. So we posed ourselves a question as to whether we will be the designers of the built environment of the futures or the designers of the AI that designs the built environment in the future. And the latter is kind of scary. You're not quite sure that's quite right either, just in terms of my thoughts around you know that we're still a people centric business, but the rate of change when it comes to digital innovation is, is scary ai, ai is scary in the sense of how quickly it is actually being taken off. And I don't, I don't mean the big language models like chat, GPT, it's more about the ability to do the things that we can do with data. And if you see what's you know, if you think about another branch of engineering, if you think if you see what's happening in the medical space just right now as a result of AI, and the ability to actually predict disease or predict issues from the lake of information, if you have the Lake of information. And I think the same applies to design process when it comes to infrastructure buildings as well. So that is something we're actually thinking about really, really deeply in Arup at the moment, just in terms of how we utilize data and digital to develop better design solutions and to allow us more time to be creative and think,
Dusty Rhodes 31:09
do you think AI is going to help with digital twins?
Donal McDaid 31:12
Oh, very much. So, I mean, digital twins have been around for a long time, but, but, but, like everything else, AI particularly in the last year, because it's been more like AI has been around for a long time in terms of what it is, but it's, it's really come out into the public psyche in the last year. I think it's more because of the language models, but actually the computational power behind it is phenomenal. Yeah.
Dusty Rhodes 31:35
Are you using any of it at all in your own day to day work at the moment? Are you just, I mean, dipping your toe in the water, I should say,
Donal McDaid 31:43
I'd say we're trying to jump in as quickly as we can. We've dipped our toe and we're trying to jump in. Yeah. What
Dusty Rhodes 31:50
about new materials? Are there new materials coming along the line that you're keeping your eye on
Donal McDaid 31:56
all of the time? I think the industry is thinking hard about some of the nutty challenges. And, you know, funnily enough, you know, as we move away from oil, the oil industry is still focused on things like polybir and things like that. So they're hanging on. But, you know, we've been developing expertise, in particular in timber design in Arup, I think, as a renewable material source. So engineers, all of the time need to be thinking about the materials and the embodied carbon that goes into actually building anything is so important.
Dusty Rhodes 32:30
Well, Donal, I'm gonna leave it there for now it's been absolutely fascinating chatting with you. If you'd like to find out more about Donal and some of the topics that we did chat about on the podcast today, you'll find notes and link details in the description area of this podcast. But for now, Donald McDaid of Arup, thank you very much for joining us.
Donal McDaid 32:48
Thank you, Dusty, pleasure.
Dusty Rhodes 32:50
If you enjoyed our podcast today, please 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, more information on engineering in Ireland or 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.