Sustainability has been at the core of operations at Varming for decades.

CEO James Kavanagh is a huge believer in engineer’s capability to change the world.  He says “Engineers are natural ambassadors for change. The engineering community, coming together with politicians and goodwill, will make real transformation happen.”

During our podcast we hear about their design ethos and how they make the most of nature to create efficient buildings. We also discover the most important yet invisible resource at medical and industrial facilities, how they made a century old building carbon neutral and how to keep your engineering creativity strong.

Listen below or on your podcast player!

Topics we discussed include

• The importance of a building's skin
• When MEP is not MEP
• The smartest elements of design today
• Net Zero solution at Donegal Garda Station
• Challenges unique to medical facilities
• Building design in 2030
• Attracting new talent into Engineering
   

Quotes

Engineers are natural ambassadors for change. The engineering community, coming together with politicians and goodwill, will make real transformation happen.

Guest details

James Kavanagh joined Varming Consulting Engineers in 1990. In 2000 he joined the management team as Associate responsible for the management of a portfolio of projects primarily in the Educational and Industrial Sectors. In 2007 James became a Director of Varming Consulting Engineers and is currently Chief Executive.He is a fully qualified Chartered Engineer, Registered Consultant Engineer, Registered European Engineer and a member of the Institute of Directors.

Contact details

+353 1 487 2300
https://www.varming.ie
https://www.linkedin.com/company/varming-consulting-engineers/

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/

Transcription text

For your convenience, here is a 90% accurate automated transcript of the podcast.

Dusty Rhodes  0:03 

Right now on amplified the engineers journal podcast, we're about to meet the top man at farming Consulting Engineers, James Kavanagh.

James Kavanagh  0:11 

An engineer is innately curious and has aspirations to better tanks, to change things and to change things for the good. One of the challenges at the minute is sort of climate change and how that's tackled. Engineers have been designing sustainably for a long, long time. Sometimes maybe going into the profession they don't see that but looking back on it, they actually appreciate how valuable if you like engineers are to society.

Dusty Rhodes  1:01 

Hello, my name is Dusty Rhodes and you welcome to amplified the engineers journal podcast where we speak with leading members of our community about how engineers are delivering interesting and sustainable solutions for society. Joining us today is a man with a huge experience as a fully qualified Chartered Engineer, registered consultant engineer, registered European engineer and a member of the Institute of directors. Over the next half hour or so he'll be sharing with us some of his 30 years experience of the forefront of award winning design projects, CEO of vomitting, consultant engineers, James cabinet, you're very welcome. Morning, they'll

James Kavanagh  1:38 

see. For those who

Dusty Rhodes  1:41 

don't know, can you tell us a little bit about vacuuming and the work that the firm concentrates on?

James Kavanagh  1:48 

So Brahman consulting engineers have been in existence, it's now our 76th year in terms of engineering, we operate within the builds what's known as the built environment. So our appointments are based mainly around buildings. And within those, the engineering system supports that supports buildings. So what we're talking about is mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and passive engineering, within buildings and to support buildings. So the heating, the lighting, the ventilation, the air conditioning, but more importantly, to support those systems. We're involved in the engineering of the skin, if you like, of the building, which controls the environment to a large extent within the buildings. Overall, I suppose we're responsible for the safe, comfortable and efficient design of buildings, Mother buildings and their operation. And how big is the firm? At the moment, the firm is approximately 55 employees full time employees. We have offices in Dublin, but we also have offices in Cork, and we have offices in Roscommon

Dusty Rhodes  2:54 

Now you mentioned MEP, and a lot of people when you say MEP, the guy Yeah, mechanical engineering, plumbing. You didn't say plumbing?

James Kavanagh  3:02 

No. Me MEP is generic term, which a lot of people will understand as mechanical, electrical and plumbing. But the P in our case also means passive passive engineering. So in the let's say, the built environment in a building, you have the internal systems, which is the heating, the lighting the ventilation, but in terms of passive systems, you have the skin of the building, which is actually controlling the heating. So things like insulation, things like facade, design, energy efficient fabric, that type of thing, basically, anything that's not actively working is passive. So sunlight, natural ventilation, for example, will be will be quite a prominent system in terms of passive design used a lot in schools, for example, schools, classrooms, general classrooms, are designed to operate passively through natural ventilation to openable windows. So initially, the design would be passive first and then active.

Dusty Rhodes  4:01 

So when you're coming to a project, you're kind of you're looking grant, how can we get the skin rise? Yeah. And then underneath the skin, then develop it from there that ties in in my head with climate change and sustainability, because you're trying to make the most of nature in order to make a more efficient building. Is that a fair comment?

James Kavanagh  4:22 

Yeah, it does. It's a fair. It's a fair comment, I suppose. Like, I mean, one of the challenges at the minute, is sort of climate change and how and how that's tackled, like I mean, in terms of where we operate, let's say in the in the built environment. Like we're building buildings, if you like, at a rate faster than we done we ever have. I read some statistics on where we're building the equivalent floor area of the state of New York every 24 days. That's a huge challenge. And within that, buildings themselves are responsible for 40% of the world's carbon emissions 40% of that 40 percent is in relation to the operation of those buildings, and 10%, which makes up to 40% round figures is associated with what's called embodied carbon, which is the carbon associated with new buildings and building materials. So if you can get in and and and influence that element have lived through our design, that's a key challenge. But it's also a key opportunity if you'd like to change things and change things for the good.

Dusty Rhodes  5:26 

And what do you think are some of the smartest elements of design today?

James Kavanagh  5:30 

I think the issue is, is that is to get to a situation where the engineering, let's say community, initially, like engineers are natural ambassadors for change. The natural ambassadors for climate change, engineers have been designing sustainably for a long, long time. I think I think the key issues is actually to get to a point where the engineering community actively combat if you like, climate change, but they can only they can't do that on their own, they can only do it in terms of their design. So we have a dedicated and have had for a long time, a dedicated sustainable design team, who works directly with architects advising them in energy efficient design. In our own operations were accredited to ISO 14,001, which has an environmental sustainability plan. So it's the answer your question, though, see, it's not actually one actual thing. So it's not electric cars. It's not photovoltaics? In my mind, what it is, is it's actually an engineering community force of all coming together with sort of politicians and goodwill, and making that transformation.

Dusty Rhodes  6:40 

Why do you feel it's important for engineers to lead the way instead of client demand?

James Kavanagh  6:45 

Well, what we're finding more and more is that the days of, let's say, force costs, best cost at any cost is starting to go. And in a lot of cases, what we are finding with our clients is that we're actually pushing open doors, all they actually really need to be aware of, is to be made aware of the of the technology, and we're finding that a lot of them are, most of them are actually embracing it. There are, let's say, requirements, legal requirements, which all of our clients need to embrace in terms of climate change and the requirements. So you know, we are pushing open doors, things have changed, I'd say. I would say that, in comparison to when I initially came into the business thing, it's like chalk and cheese in terms of client awareness. And that's,

Dusty Rhodes  7:36 

yeah, I was thinking about that. Because you know, the key words today in building design, and while I hear over and over his sustainability and renewable energy in low carbon tech and smart energy management, all the things we're talking about, and this is all leaps of head of what we had in the year 2000. Yep, yep. What do you what do you see coming down the line? What standards do you think may be common in 2050?

James Kavanagh  8:02 

Well, where we are at the minute in terms of lots more standards coming down the line, but targets to be matched by 2050. And indeed, in some cases by 2030, is in terms of net zero or near or near zero energy buildings. And that's, that's one of our keen, keen interest. And at the moment, there are buildings which are achieving that standard. And we've been involved in some of them. One major issue in terms of commitment, and our commitment is our design service, sustainable design service that we that we provide both to in house and external consultants as well. Change starts from within like, I mean, so at the moment, we were the first dedicated consultancy in Ireland to be signatories to the World Green Building Council and that zero carbon building commitment. were signatories to the ACI pledge to net zero. And we support the Irish Green Building Council and building a net zero net zero Orland. What does that all mean? Well, what it actually means is that there's sort of three or four key strands on any of those commitments, which is commit. So as far as we're concerned, we've committed the only occupied buildings which are net zero in operation by 2020. So there's your 22 already, but we're committing to it as bribing Consulting Engineers. As part of those commitments, we need to disclose and measure and disclose our own emissions. We need to act to develop a decarbonisation roadmap or head office at the moment is a multitalented building, and we have representation there of what they call that green team. If you like where all of the tenants and the landlord come together, it would have you to how you say upgrading the building from a practical point of view, then we need to verify and then we need to advocate and where are we advocating we're advocating to our clients. Put in practice what we're doing is we're advocating through our consultancy and our consultancy advice. It's that's the way we're advocating. So change is happening. It's Train we just need to get there and, and and keep the foot on the pedal. I think

Dusty Rhodes  10:05 

a lot of what you're saying sounds great. With always the proof of the pudding is when you're actually getting out and doing and you're involved in in a really interesting project recently, which you won an award for the netzero award for technical Garda station. Can you tell me about that?

James Kavanagh  10:22 

So don't go on guard to say we've, as Robin Consulting Engineers, we've won quite a lot of, let's say industry awards over over the years, the most recent one being Donegall 20, gold Guard Station, Donegall guard station was built, it's in the early 20th century. So it was around this time. This time last century. Yeah. When you think about that has been acting as a as a guard station for obviously, since then. So in terms of what we brought to the party, our in house team carried out some dynamic simulation modeling, which validated the environmental sustainability of the project. So basically, desktop studies tested out our, our ideas before they were costed before they were tendered. And they were proven, proven to be correct, to be correct.

Dusty Rhodes  11:10 

How did you test them and be able to prove them to be correct?

James Kavanagh  11:14 

Okay, so our in house team, as I said, carry out dynamic simulation modeling. So we can actually model a building in terms of as I talk to you about about the skin and the energy performance, we can actually model that in real time, it's not steady state, what would be known as steady state conditions, it's dynamic. So to move and you can see this, you can see this happening. And in terms of, let's say, the insulation, the facade design, we can we can model how that performs and have different how you say, options, design options, what walk will not walk, and we're working very, very closely now on all of this, I must say, the key to this is actually working very, very closely with the with the architect and the client in particular, to explain the systems we're using, and for them to understand and buy into into those designs. So what we had ultimately what it all came down to, was it was a both a refurbishment and an extension project to Donegal Guard Station. It consisted of the installation of air source heat pumps, with an enhanced insulation, the buildings when they operated, naturally, they leak. And if you can control that, you can actually control the level of heating. That's, that's that's required.

Dusty Rhodes  12:29 

Can I ask a quick question then about that building? It's 100 year old building? Did you have to keep the original building? Or were you able to just, you know, kind of razed to the ground and start afresh.

James Kavanagh  12:40 

There was an element, there was a small element of damage demolition, but that was purely as a function of the building itself. But primarily the building was retained and it was extended. So it was an extension on a refurbishment project. It was actually quite interesting and unusual. But as we said, and as far as, let's say, a building, which has been refurbished. You asked what I what I taught, was going to change, particularly over the over the next, you know, 1020 years, or whatever, I think, I think what we're going to see, and we know it's it's going to happen is the, let's say the refurbishment the repurpose repurposing of buildings as opposed to the demolition, and new builds, if you remember, we talked about that the embodied carbon and 10% of that 40% being associated with new with new projects. Do I think we really need to ask ourselves, do we really need to demolish what we're demolishing? Or can we repurposing?

Dusty Rhodes  13:44 

Or what is the challenge then of taking an existing building and an island? We've got a lot of very, very old existing buildings, and then bringing them up to a modern standard.

James Kavanagh  13:55  

It depends it depends, mostly it depends a lot on the depends a lot on the type of building we're talking about. Like, if you take an office building for example, okay, the focus of the building is actually from an occupants point of view and so far as the cell say safe, comfortable environment for office work, okay. If you if you on the other hand, look at any industrial building or process or whatever the focus of the systems are actually either on the safe or operational aspects of the product or the process. So if you talk for example, operating theatres, the key issue there is actually safe and sterile environment for operating. Now, it would not necessarily be practical. If you like to repurpose every building for an operating tear, some things have to be built from scratch. If you took a bio containment lab, for example, it would not necessarily be practical analysis to repurpose another building. If you took a residential building and an office building, there are synergies there between both of them. Bear with me. So it's repurpose, if you like, where, where practical and safe.

Dusty Rhodes  15:07 

James, let's let's dig into hospital systems kind of a little bit. Because you're saying like operating theatres, obviously, they have to be safe and sterile, you know, and you really need to make them modern. But when it comes to hospital systems, I mean, what are the kinds of challenges that are unique to medical facilities,

James Kavanagh  15:25 

healthcare facilities are basically broken into acute and non acute, acute hospital, for example, would have an operating period of Radiology, all of those, let's say specialist departments and non acute. Basically, Ward block element type is sort of not immediate, if you like more long term treatment. One thing that's really important in a hospital environment, and indeed a lot of industrial environments is the ability to keep the system running, there is a situation for example, where they just cannot accommodate a shutdown. So for example, in operating theatres, operating theaters normally come as a suite of operating theaters, you may have four, you may have six, you might have word up, you will very rarely have one operating suite. And systems are broken soza are broken down when they're designed. So as one system can sit down, let's say for maintenance, or whatever was wanting, so does the whole standby. And what's actually called resilience in terms of sizing, plant sizing, electrical plant sizing, Mechanical Plant, HVAC is heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. And then there's the electrical systems, such as generator, like safety systems and everything, which which, which would support those and supports the system. So one of the major challenges is the need, if you'd like to keep things going, the need to anticipate what next, the need to ensure that the systems are cleanable. And we do a lot of interaction, let's say, with infection, infection control people within hospitals. And operating theater, people will think of an operating theory, though, but it's actually an operating suite. And there's two or three different sort of standard, let's say layout suites. But a general suite, let's say would consist of the operating room itself, but also the lay of prep room, the scrub room, the anaesthetic room, and then the let's say, the dark utility, if that was in the design, so this is a suite does a suite of rooms. And one of the key challenges there from a ventilation point of view, is that the air systems, they actually control the the flow, let's say, of air from clean areas to less clean areas. And that may sound very simplistic, but it's actually quite challenging sometimes actually get right. So that's in terms of, let's say, infection, and infection control. And that's fundamental. In terms of the design of the design of operating theatres. It's actually very similar to the design of clean rooms, or boiler containment suites where it's slightly the other way around. So one of the key challenges in terms of HVAC systems across you know, a number of types of systems and facilities is actually the flow and the pressure profiling and achieving between between areas. So that's challenging.

Dusty Rhodes  18:19 

Is it the challenge of to clean the air? Or is that the challenge of routing the air to get it from A to B?

James Kavanagh  18:27 

It's actually both. As I said, either, there's a small number of standard layouts for, let's say, operating territories, one type of operating territories called the UCV, ultra clean ventilation system, that is primarily for bone surgery, which seems to be quite susceptible to infections, you open up your knee, and it's you know, so orthopedic surgery. So the challenge there. And then the challenge, likewise, is actually number one, as you say, cleaning the air, which is simple enough, right? There's, there's enough, let's say systems, technology filtration systems out there to clean it. But the real challenges when it's clean, okay, is to make sure that it's actually flowing where it should be. So it doesn't interfere either with product, let's say our personnel contamination and talking about product contamination, for example, is very similar, although much higher grades of filtration, if you're talking about let's say, chip manufacturer, semiconductor manufacturer,

Dusty Rhodes  19:30 

and where do you find the solutions is the solution in the piping is the solution in the filters that he use?

James Kavanagh  19:36 

The technology is out there, but the the actual solution is in the engineer who's designing the system, that's where the solution is. And the solution is in relation to the interaction. For example, if we're talking about, you know, for example, you know, theater Suites is is the close sort of interaction and collaboration for example, for the architect, okay, because you You can you can have systems, let's say which, you know, that does very small error differentials, which make a difference on maybe a sort of a loose fitting door or whatever. You know, what may have an effect will have an effect on the on the on the building, and it's everybody, everybody in the design team being aware, let's say the design parameters on what's on what's required. It's challenging what I would say those things, it's challenging. But for people in the business, it's more unique than challenging, you know, you would look back on a number of projects where they would be sort of unique, they would give you a sort of a being in the engineering profession would give you a sort of an insight into things you wouldn't not, let's say normally see, as I said, I mean, operating theatres, industrial ventilation, cleanroom design, it's a little bit of a sort of a gives you an opportunity, that little sort of peek behind the curtain, how does it actually walk? How are you? I think that, as I said to you, whatever, engineer has been sort of natural ambassadors for change, like innately, they're, they're curious people, you know, they want to know how things work. And career in engineering will give them the opportunity to see that, but it also gives them an opportunity to, to be involved in the design of either the systems themselves, or indeed, the systems that support them, which is what I found particularly beneficial, if you like, from the career in engineering, particularly building engineering.

Dusty Rhodes  21:28 

Let's talk a little bit more about keeping that spark in your brain and the curiosity going and always looking for new and interesting solutions to problems. Farming is known for a very strong spirit of creativity and innovation, and you're the CEO of a company, how do you keep that spirit alive with the staff?

James Kavanagh  21:49 

I qualified from what was Bolton street now at the College of Technology and what what is now to Dublin, I qualified as a building what was known as a building services engineer. We've maintained links with the college, particularly with the stream of building engineers coming from that course, the spark isn't actually there when they go in to answer your question. Right. So one of the sources is actually to get people who are let's say adaptable, ambitious, and aspirational. And we found people, generally engineers, that's what they are. They are adaptable. They're ambitious, and they're aspirational. They want to change things. And we found that course in particular, particularly goods, good source. Now, some people may say, Well, you would say that James, because you're from that course. But it is actually the truth. When we get them when when we got them when they come into our organization. They have the support of our cue HSE system, which is our quality health safety and environmental system. And that we have a mentoring program, and engineers Orland we have for many years, been part of their accredited, CPD program. We we know, and I know directly from talking to our younger staff that that is a huge a huge support, huge support for,

Dusty Rhodes  23:07 

as you say, getting people into the company, and if they're naturally curious, and they're great engineers, but finding those people in the first place seems to be getting harder and harder. Do you feel that the system is succeeding and getting new engineers into the business?

James Kavanagh  23:22 

It depends on which system I suppose mostly we're talking about, like, I mean,

Dusty Rhodes  23:26 

I think the education system from you know, secondary school through university and Technical College.

James Kavanagh  23:32 

Yeah, I think from what I've found, personally with my my experience of of that is in terms of drivers and what actually influences people to go into any profession. One of the curious things we may think of has changed but it hasn't changed is one of the main drivers for for people when they're choosing a career or profession is their parents and his peers and that is that that's actually been sort of proven scientific fact, you know, to into some of the the work that we do, you know, blown up don't that's a fact. They're one of the key drivers and what but also what's one of the one of the key drivers is that when and when that happens, that happens effectively in fourth level in primary school people not a lot of people make up their mind appropriate primary level, what they're actually going to do for the rest of their for the rest of their career initially anyway.

Dusty Rhodes  24:23 

While then does engineering sell itself to primary school students or does it Yeah. When I was a kid, right, I wanted to be a farmer. I wanted to be a bus driver. I wanted to be a spaceman there were all these kinds of things that I could see around the engineering like I don't walk past a building going I don't be able to design a building like that one day Yeah. How do we get these kids like

James Kavanagh  24:47 

engaged? We environments. We have actually gone into as I said, we maintain our we maintain our links with with the colleges and with second levels. rules as well. But a big help with that is that we've also been involved in the engineers origin Steps program, engineers Orland Steps program is a program where they actually target what I would call fourth level, which is primary level and secondary level students. And that's the open the ROIs, in relation to engineering and the different facets of engineering. And I think there's a requirement, let's say are on the particular industry, to then go and highlight if you like, the aspects of that particular industry, what so what I'm saying is I'm where I'm coming from, I'm highlighting the aspects in terms of what's called Building engineering, because I have particular interest in that. But the Steps program in terms of getting people interested in, in the engineering and the STEM subjects is really, really, really a good program and a support really for the industry as well as as well as the students.

Dusty Rhodes  25:56 

Tell me just to kind of wrap up our chat today, what challenges are you facing yourself over the next two, three years,

James Kavanagh  26:03 

the challenges that we're going to face over the next two or three years are no real different to the challenges we would have faced over the last two or three years, it's just that some of them will come to the come to the fore, our step back, depending on where we are in economic, let's say cycle, so one of the big, the big ones, when we start to hit on it, as well as the general sort of skill shortage in the profession. That's not only Ireland. That's that's, that's throughout the world. And we know that the summer for every sort of challenge, I suppose there's opportunity. So the opportunities isn't there, there's a sealed shortages, insofar as that we started, tends to create diversity within the workforce, which is needed. And as well as that I can go to address, let's say the gender balance that that's it that needs to be addressed with particularly the within the building, the building industry, the inflationary pressure brought up brought upon by the global pandemic, but also the now the war in Ukraine, we don't know when that's going to finish, but that's having a huge knock on effect in terms of building confidence. So that's a challenge, an immediate challenge. But again, there's an opportunity, as we said, in relation to lean design, that can address that go some way to address that, because there's, there's opportunity there, in terms of the adoption of modern methods of construction, and modern simulation techniques, which is bam. So there's, for every sort of challenge there is there and there are opportunities, there's a constant need, if you'd like to keep up with technology, but that's also how you say, an opportunity for engineers who want to progress their career through increased learning, you know, to be in a lot of engineers, they qualify as engineers, so actually, you know, diverse into into into older an older professions. So, in terms of sort of challenges, there's always sort of opportunities that's brought to the brought to the table, if you look at it that way, on the more or less at a local level in relation to to Orland one of the big challenges is actually delivering I suppose, on the national development plan. And as far as 2021, I think, yeah, 21 to 22. You're talking about 22 Earlier on, there's a huge investment there planned 160 5 billion in relation to public funding, and engineers in general will be required to deliver on that so that's the challenge is actually delivering on the national development plan on a on a countrywide level, as well as bigger issues on the on the global on the global fair.

Dusty Rhodes  28:36 

James Kevin as CEO of Armand Consulting Engineers, thank you very much.

James Kavanagh  28:40 

Thank you, they'll sleep.

Dusty Rhodes  28:43 

If you'd like to find out more about what we spoke about on the podcast today, you'll find show notes and link details in the description area of your podcast player right now. Our amplified podcast was produced by dustpod.io for engineers journal, you'll find advanced episodes at our website engineers Ireland dot A, or just press the Follow button on your podcast player right now to get our next episode automatically on Apple, Spotify or whatever podcast player you're using. Until next time for myself to steroids. Thank you for listening

Discover how digitalisation has been woven into the fabrics of business and society, and how Irish engineers have risen to the challenge.

In the first of a three part series, three engineers at the forefront of their fields explore the acceleration in digital solutions, and how in a world changed by a global pandemic, digitalisation has  redefined the way we work forever.

To discuss this we are joined by Jeffrey Roe, Telclic Head of Engineering, Suzanne Roe Managing Director, Consultant Medical Devices at Triskele Consulting Limited and Veronica Mariti Sesoko, previous with Dublin City Council and currently Operations Senior Analyst Accenture.

Listen below or on your podcast player!

Topics we discussed include:

• How digitalisation has shaped industry over the past twenty years
• How digitalisation has shaped patients experience within the health service (02.43)
• How 3D Models have rapidly speed up the planning process (05.49)
• The process of changing from a paper system to a fully digitalised system (09.38)
• The digital twin programme which has been developed by Dublin City Council (15.44)

Guest details:

Jeffrey Roe, Telclic Head of Engineering, who has gained a wealth of experience in building public transport systems from bike-share schemes, to parking and port traffic access management systems.

Suzanne O’Rourke, an engineer working in the medical device industry for almost 30 years - across research and development, process development, new products, quality and regulatory. Suzanne is the owner and managing director of Triskele Consulting, focussing on supporting start-up companies navigate the technical and regulatory requirements to bring novel medical devices to market.

Veronica Mariti Sesok, who recently started working for Accenture The Dock as an Operations Senior Analyst, having previously worked for Dublin City Council as an Engineer in the Smart City Team running Innovative Projects for the Public Sector.

Contact details: 

Veronica Mariti Sesoko

https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-sesoko/

@SesokoVe

Suzanne O’Rourke:

https://www.triskele-consult.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanne-o-rourke-msc-phd-515a00a/

Jeffery Roe:

jeffrey@telclic.net

https://telclic.net/

https://twitter.com/Jeffrey_Roe

https://www.linkedin.com/in/roejeffrey/

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:

Many different tools and technologies are coming up to improve our city. They help with how we can run more efficiently, how we can better engage with our citizens, how to have better decision making based on data and being transparent with people.
Veronica Sesoko

We only had a small team on the ground so we leveraged a lot of digital technologies. That allowed our engineers to remotely monitor the equipment and set up all the processes. Video calling was another tool that allowed us to do a project that's so far away.
Jeffrey Roe

If they'd had some kind of a heart arrhythmia, and the device had to kick in and treat it, that action could get uploaded to their doctor's clinic and the doctor could actually review the event remotely.
Suzanne O’Rourke

Transcription text

For your convenience, here is a 90% accurate automated transcript of the podcast.

Suzanne O’Rourke  0:02 

You know, the great thing about engineering is is that engineers are all kinds of people. And you know, I think the thing that's most common to all engineers is just that they solve problems.

Jeffrey Roe  0:11 

It's not just about a business problem, a technical problem, a processes problem. It's about coming up with creative ways to solve these problems.

Veronica Sesoko  0:21 

One of the great skills of engineers, we're just curious, we just want to learn, ask questions and take measures to really take action.

Jeffrey Roe  0:31 

The part isn't always direct, sometimes it needs a substitution. But in the end, you have to solve the problem and use creativity a lot together.

Suzanne O’Rourke  0:41 

I always describe it a little bit like the Madonna of careers, you just keep recreating yourself throughout your own career. You can be whatever you want to be able to do.

Dusty Rhodes  0:55 

Hello, my name is Dusty Rhodes and you welcome to our engineers journal amplified podcast. This is the first in a three part special on digitalization in engineering, where experts at the forefront of their engineering fields will explore how digitalization has been woven into the fabric of business and society, and how Irish engineers are rising to the challenge. Today we have three amazing guests for you. Jeffrey row is a Celtic head of engineering, who has gained a wealth of experience in building public transport systems from bike share schemes to parking and porch traffic access management systems. Suzanna Rocca is an engineer and Managing Director of Trisquel consulting, who helps startup companies navigate the technical and regulatory requirements for new medical devices. And finally, we have Veronica emeriti. Sissoko who is working with the center of the dock as an operations Senior Analyst, but previously worked as an engineer in the smart city team at Dublin City Council and had some of her experience there, she'll be sharing with us. You're all very welcome to the podcast. Before we dig down into some specific projects, which I know you're going to talk about, can I ask each of you to give us just a bit of an overview of how technology plays a part in your day to day work? We'll start with Jeffrey

Jeffrey Roe  2:21 

I guess digitalization has allowed us to bring a lot of admin staff. And we're able to bring those kinds of efficiencies by leveraging different technologies around that digitalization and enable those companies to scale in a way that it wouldn't be just possible if they're doing it all by by hand, or having people do all the data entry and the processes.

Dusty Rhodes  2:43 

Suzanne, you're in the medical field, how has digitization shaped patient experiences over the last 20 years.

Suzanne O’Rourke  2:50 

So you know, I think it's really interesting, because when I think of digitization, and a lot of the time, I immediately go, or it doesn't really apply to medical devices. But you know, when I was thinking back on my own career, I spent quite a number of years working with active implantable devices. So those are devices like your pacemakers, your cardiac defibrillators and your heart failure devices. All of those devices inherently work with embedded firmware on software to control how they listen to the heart and how they respond with therapy. But a huge impact with our technology that's been around for so long, actually, is remote monitoring, where a lot of these patients would have what used to be a bedside monitor, that wirelessly would pick up information from the device. So if they'd had, for instance, some kind of a heart arrhythmia, and the device had to kick in and treat it that could get uploaded to their doctor's clinic. And the doctor could actually review that event remotely. And you know, particularly with heart failure patients, their weight sometimes will go up and down because you know, they have an increase in fluid in the body if their heart is not working. And again, with remote monitoring, it stops patients having to potentially travel a really long distance to go to a clinic for you know, what, what could be fairly routine treatment or modification of medication for that for those patients. And you know, the other hidden benefits is it gives patients a sense of, of reassurance you know, that there's something watching. So you know, kind of that's my first experience off of sports. You know, today when you look at how digitisation is affecting, you know, devices, you can see it, you know, from the Fitbit that we wear on our wrists, Apple Watches, that not all aspects of those wearables are considered medical devices, but certainly the AFib app that's on those is FDA approved and is CE marked as a medical device. And you know, then other things like patient tracking and hospitals. Hopefully we'll all have electronic patient files that when you travel, your information can travel much more easily with you. So if you're On holidays, your treating doctor potentially on holidays can access your files from from far away.

Dusty Rhodes  5:05 

Just on that point is and I was going to ask is this digitization really kind of getting that joined up approach to people's medical records.

Suzanne O’Rourke  5:13 

So I think the technology is well and truly there, and there's no doubt about that part. But there are challenges around things like GDPR information crossing geographic boundaries, and some of the the legislation that's there to protect people's health privacy. And you know, when some some of that can, can slow things down. So you know, so there is still a lot of work, I think, to match up what is technically capable with, you know, what we can do within the realms of protecting people's privacy, but also making sure that they can get health care at the point that they needed much more quickly and more efficiently.

Dusty Rhodes  5:49 

Veronica, your area is in planning for cities, that's a fairly big thing to get get into your head, how is digitization changed the way we approach city planning?

Veronica Sesoko  6:00 

Yeah, so I think it's very interesting because where I work is innovation. So it's smart cities is really how we can use that digitalization. And many different tools and technologies are coming up to actually improve our city, how we can run more efficiently, how we can better engage with our citizens, how we can also make better decision making are based on data and being transparent with people. So I'm going to be talking a little bit about digital drawings. And basically, it's, it's how we can start populating and visualizing the city or the proposal in your city, waving the context and overlaying loads of different data sets, being able to visualize in a more friendly way. So using 3d models, and then how we can engage and explain all those visualizations to people in a way that they can interact with the model. So we are adding transparency, we are being able to do that in web browsers. So people can just go to our website, interact, give us some feedback, we can capture all of those, analyze this feedback. And then based on those make our decisions and always like comforts of your home, being very like two ways kind of like channel to engage with our citizens. So I think it's a win win for everyone.

Dusty Rhodes  7:25 

You're all working in vastly different sectors of engineering. And it's clear to see that digital systems do help speed, they do help efficiency and accuracy. I want to start getting into some specific projects that you've been working with. Jeff, you'd like to start with yourself. You've worked on a big project, we're around traffic flow, which you did in Senegal, can you give us an overview of that project?

Jeffrey Roe  7:49 

Yeah, so it's based down in Dakar, the capital city of Senegal, which kind of acts like a gateway for the for the neighboring countries, it's a very, it's a very busy port. So before we got involved, it was all a bit of an archaic paper system, trucks would line up queue for days, and to get access to the port, there wasn't much efficiency or true plus. And so we got involved to really bring it a level of digitalization and business processes to the project. So we're involved in putting in lots of equipment like cameras barriers, and holding areas in the port itself, and then 100 kilometers away from the port. So we could manage them better, give people reliability and set expectations that if you have a booking to go and collect a shipment from the port, that you would be there at three o'clock, there would be space and traffic available. So we saw some some great successes in terms of the true ports of trucks, and then the reliability in terms of people having that guaranteed visit time. And that kind of reassurance to a lot of the transport and logistics companies, and enables the Port Authority to really increase the amount of boats and shipping that they have into their port. And we could really do that because of the digitalization because we're remoting here, here in Ireland, and we only have a small team on the ground. We leverage a lot of that kind of digital technologies that allowed our engineers to remotely monitored the equipment's and set up all the processes, video calling all the kinds of tools that we're used to, and allowed us to do a project that's so far away.

Dusty Rhodes  9:38 

When you first came to the project, how paper based was it was an entirely paper based or have they dip their toe in digitization at all,

Jeffrey Roe  9:46 

was entirely paper based. You had to go to work to go to one office, get a piece of paper, then go to the customs office, get another piece of paper for a different time, and then you will be good Given an approximate time, based on when the ship would arrive, maybe in two or three days, depending on whether it had no systems in place to deal with weather traffic flow, the right that you would unload ships, there was all these variables, so they couldn't give you an accurate time, or they couldn't even let you know that the ship was delayed in a meaningful way. So we brought those systems in place like driver app alerts, you know, where we monitor the traffic flow on the street. And we can tell, oh, we modeled that this street is able to take 50 trucks an hour. And if we notice it's reaching capacity, we have algorithms to automatically alert people that that are updated their time for collection will be slightly in the future. So we brought all those kinds of smarts and those tools on place to pretty much transform an archaic system of paper from multiple people, to an all online digital system, where you have the tools to statistics, where people can make predictions, they can make plans for future growth and capacity building.

Dusty Rhodes  11:03 

Now, people don't like change. And when you have people who are used to dealing with paper, and you know, that's the way it is, why can I do that there's a three day delay, and all of a sudden, everything is efficient, and they have to do stuff on smartphones and apps, they can actually be quite hesitant about getting involved, what was the reaction of people at the port in Senegal.

Jeffrey Roe  11:22 

So we're dealing with lots of different stakeholders, for, for example, the truck drivers, there was no place for them to queue, although there was some upset about switching to a digital system. But then when we told them, you can park in this lovely holding area, we'll put in facilities like toilets, restaurants, a prayer room. So all these extra facilities that you can use, while you wait was the kind of the carers that we got them to come on board. And then the local community were really happy about the project because of the air quality. Like we went from idling trucks in the street, you know, with problems with, with air quality to being trucks nicely parked in a in a car park, there's no hiney around, there's no engines running. So I think all the stakeholders became we're happy with the project. But it came a lot down to education funding at local champions, we were very much concerned about us being an outside Irish company coming in. We found local champions, local leaders to help us get the message across that it's a win win for everybody, if we help you adopt to this digitalized system.

Dusty Rhodes  12:35 

And what was the biggest challenge on that project that was racking your head that you had to fix?

Jeffrey Roe  12:41 

I guess the biggest challenge would be, it's definitely the language barrier. And dealing with the level of education, you know, you have lots of local tribal languages. And of course, we can't, we couldn't translate into into every language. So it's about commuting and making the processes as simple and streamlines. For example, your first language is majority of people down there, the first language is French, but a lot of the truck drivers, the first language isn't French, or if they're coming from Mali, or something that might speak more local dialect is the big challenge was making the system simple enough that anyone with basic language skills in the languages that we could provide that they could understand it and process to the process.

Dusty Rhodes  13:30 

So you're simplifying everything as much as possible, where you're using iconography as well, so that you will be communicating through pictures for what people had to do.

Jeffrey Roe  13:38 

Exactly. So a lot of it was pictures and signage at all the ports having enough air training and onboarding processes. So we decided that we wouldn't do like a big bank switchover, that would be a gradual process, we wouldn't just, you know, leave everybody out to dry or a field that they're left and avoid or are missing out on the change in systems, it was much a gentle process to bring everyone along with us. Because these people have been driving or the drivers for their whole careers. We didn't want to just end their career and make them you know, irrelevant anymore. We wanted to bring them all with us. So a lot of local education, local meetings, and to get people on board the new system.

Dusty Rhodes  14:24 

Now, it sounds amazing that, you know, kind of you're based in Ireland, the project is based in Senegal. How did that work? Were you doing a lot of remote working, were you?

Jeffrey Roe  14:34 

Well, we had to, we found a great local partner and at down there, the majority of the of the software and systems would be designed here in Dublin. And then we had to staff base down there and during the initial construction of the project, so installing all the equipment, setting up the cameras, the servers, that sort of stuff, a lot of that we would send down and In yours for about a five to six week period, but a lot of it can be managed remotely. And one of the big challenges that we kind of have to overcome because of this distance is we have to remember that in that city, we have a unreliable power grid, and an unreliable internet connection. So we have to build a lot of fault tolerances into the system that that would still work without internet. That would be local copies. And when the internet would return, we'd have this cross syncing system, where information that would be just stored locally would then be synced into the cloud. So we had all that processes, that extra extra resilience that we built into the system for this reason, because we were so remote.

Dusty Rhodes  15:44 

Veronica, let me ask you about a project you were involved in. And this is the digital twin program, which has been developed by Dublin City Council, what what is the program? Yes, so

Veronica Sesoko  15:55 

it's very nice to hear from Jeffrey, because we have a lot of crossovers as well. So pretty much in Dublin City Council, we are developing a digital twin program, and that's composed by five pillars. And one of them is actually looking at climate change and sustainability. And it's pretty much how we can replicate what's happening, the city, collecting all those data about traffic about air quality, and how we can visualize all of those in the same layer, we can include the 3d model of the city, and then we can start doing like studies to better understand how things work. And then after, when we can explain easier to people how those things correlate. And you can prove those, we can also start like running simulations and a little bit of those predictions that Jeffrey was like talking about, we had another four pillars. So one of them is about emergent service. So we were doing with Dublin fire brigades. And that one was really looking at building 3d models of high risk buildings in relation to fire, and how we could overlay loads of information about what are the hydrant locations, the the alarm panel, or the hydrants or the contact points. So in case of a fire, they have all those pre instant plans already and on the way they can go study. So it can save time for them, especially because they are not their day to day in that building. So they also told me, Oh, it's very hard, because we don't know the building, and it's full of smokes. So you actually don't know where you're getting. So they could do surveys internally as well, and start doing like route escapes. And taking pictures of like areas that could be a very high risk for them or areas that could be prioritized. For example. The third pillar that we're doing, it's a little bit more like soft, light touch. It's about tourism, and economy. So we are building augmented reality or AR applications to try to do like storytelling. So we are building for Docklands area, Heritage Trail, so tourists can come and points, see how it looked like years ago, and then it has a full narrative. So just get to talk a little bit about our heritage and how was before and you can just visualize how it's now at same time. The fourth one, it's really looking at first parts that I was talking on the planning side of the city. So how we can start building 3d models of the city, when we have new proposed buildings, we could insert those that the architects and developers are already building in 3d. And then we see all of those in contexts. And then we can engage better with our citizens in an interactive way using our web browser platform. So people can just go play, have a look loads of questions that they have, it's about oh, but how to oh, that's going to be is that going to be covering shadows or my apartments or what I leave. So you can start seeing all of those just in an interactive way, and all the comfort of your house. And because it's interactive, they can also give us like much better feedback. And then we can go back and do all the study analysis. And the last one is a partnership between smart doubling and TCO campus. And we're using their expertise of the researchers to be looking more at a campus level, how it's how people move around, are the rooms being booked. And maybe there is nobody inside those buildings but the lights are on. So how you can be like better managing all these states and facilities and maybe start doing like some cost savings as well. So that is all those perspectives.

Dusty Rhodes  19:54 

That's a lot. That's a lot of stuff. I'm fascinated by what you say about Having a 3d model of Dublin City, because having a 3d model for now, I mean, we've seen some examples with Google Maps. That's amazing. But you're talking about also being able to project what the 3d model would look like in the future. That's just mind blowing. How did you go about building that 3d model? Because that's an enormous job. Yeah. So

Veronica Sesoko  20:22 

we those are actually some of the questions that we have. Because building 3d models of a very big area of the city, it's very costly. And not just costly to acquire the data, but also to process to build two holes, the 3d model. So that's part of the program and we the way that we are doing, it's pretty much an exploring phase. So we are engaging with three different companies, they have different business models, they have different techniques, as well to do a collection of the data. And what we are doing is really reviewing for each of the use case. So what's the level of detail we want to do, we want to look more the Google Maps Street View, do we want to look more like a block module. And then we are kind of like, getting to a conclusion that for different use cases, we need different models. And then one of the reasons is, so the block model, you can make it even more realistic. So if you wanted to better engagements with the people about using virtual reality, so they can be immersive in space, that's the best one because it's more comfortable to be looking on the other hands, sometimes people just want to very easily just recognize it doesn't need to be like very high quality and comfort level, because you're not going to spend that much time looking at the buildings. So then maybe the other model that is called Reality mash, it looks a little bit more a Google Maps, but be like higher quality, you would need to fly closer and capture too many pictures. So we are also like, asking those questions. So how close how many pictures? How do we do that? How often do we need to be capturing this data to keep updated? So parts of the project search warrants? Are

Dusty Rhodes  22:14 

those and you're using drones to get that imagery? Are you?

Veronica Sesoko  22:17 

Yeah, so for the Dublin fire brigades that use case I was mentioning, that's what they're doing. So that was one of just of discoveries. If we have specific buildings, it's very cost efficient. And it gives us a very good quality module and comfort levels, if we do a drone survey, because then they can just close the area, fly the drone, or very close the building capture loads of pictures, and it's still like, fine for them. But when we are talking about a city scale, it's quite hard to do it in a super high quality. So we are kind of trying to see, do we need all of those? And I think the answer that we're finding is we just need to mix. We don't need every single building in high quality. But just something that is recognizable, people are familiar, they know they can locate itself. And maybe for the specific ones that we want more details, or that we are going to be working on then we just go fly, collect the data, and have a more detailed one. But Dublin

Dusty Rhodes  23:21 

is a huge place to to cover, what was the main challenge of scaling up with those drones to cover the city?

Veronica Sesoko  23:28 

Yes, so at the start of the project, we were actually not using drums. The way that we were building the models were flying airplanes. So we could capture the data. And they could easily fly like few hours covered the entire CD and still give us like a good kind of like model. And that's kind of like what I was mentioning is about mixing those different levels of detail. So maybe we can just have those airplane photography's done. And it gives us like good context. And then for like the developing areas that we're doing the big blocks of like Poolbeg, or any s desert area, then we could just go and start like doing the surveys with the drones for the fire brigades. They also have like priority of buildings, they don't need every single building. But if they are like big employers or like have like chemical plants or something like that, so we can start doing the surveys in very detail level.

Dusty Rhodes  24:29 

Suzanne, let's move on to the medical end of things. How would you describe on a scale of one to 10 say the rollout or the change to digitization during COVID?

Suzanne O’Rourke  24:40 

Certainly from my experience, you know, because I'd be working with novel technologies and brand new devices. You know, one area that was really adversely impacted by COVID was our ability to progress. Clinical studies for a couple of different reasons. theaters were shut down because all of the left type of surgery initially was was closed off. And obviously we, you know, the the priority was to keep hospital beds available for COVID patients. But as understanding of the disease progressed, elective surgeries came back on board. But of course, then we had travel bans. So we were not physically able to travel and usually without with a brand new device, you would have somebody in the organization standing behind the implanting physician to be available to answer questions to provide support in person on very much, you know, that face to face interaction and getting live feedback on the device is very important. In addition to that, we'd be collecting user experience data, we're observing how they use the device, are they doing something differently than what we expect them to do with us. And so we couldn't do any of that anymore. So one area that that really came into play was how digitization really actually supported us being able to get back up and running. And, you know, all of a sudden, we had cameras in theaters. And that sometimes was just somebody's mobile phone, where you would have one of the clinical research assistants or a nurse holding up a mobile phone, so we could physically observe what was going on in a live surgery, you could see what was actually happening in real time as an implant was going on. And you know, be able to collect the data that we needed. Because ultimately, you know, if you applied to do a clinical study, you're supposed to have it done within a certain timeframe, or you're limited to a certain number of patients. So, you know, all of these studies stopping is really unhelpful in terms of getting new products to the market. So it was just, I suppose it wasn't conscious use of, of the technology, but it was certainly the availability of it meant that things could progress. And it just, it just became the solution out of the box that we didn't have to think of before, but it was really useful to see how we use that.

Dusty Rhodes  27:02 

So new devices, and getting them out there and improving medicine overall, is your area and you've mentioned to kind of devices in general, are you able to give me an example of like a widespread medical device that has been used by patients, which have come about through digitization.

Suzanne O’Rourke  27:17 

So I think, you know, if if really not necessarily a specific device used by patients, but if you think about a bit differently, you know, there's been a huge increase in artificial intelligence, and implemented and now starting to get approved, you know, particularly through FDA for doing analysis on scans. And, you know, so there's been a lot of breakthroughs in being able to have machine learning, looking at images taken of potential cancerous lesions, etc. And you know, where the machine is able to actually learn and feedback, whether or not it looks like it could be a cancerous tumor. And, you know, there's huge challenges in that area, because the the accuracy of the algorithms to make those decisions, and ultimately, you know, a clinician is looking at that scan, but it's which ones to look at, and been able to increase throughput, but maintain the same level of clinical care. So, you know, for for regulators, there's a huge amount of pressure there, because the speed of technology is nearly outpacing you know, the timeframe by which you need to be able to generate the data to prove that that technology is, is trustable you've got people's lives effectively in the hands of the software, and so software as a medical device, and all of the capability, you know, that engineers bring to that in software coding, etc. And then taking that to the regulatory environment and, and putting it through, you know, risk analysis and, and all of the types of testing and simulations to make sure that that works repeatedly and accurately and reliably. It's really quite challenging. But I think that's really you know, it's a space where a lot of of new companies are working in and I think the interaction with the regulators to nearly keep pace of regulation going in tandem with the technology is really important and certainly you see you know, the regulators are coming to the table with that which is really positive.

Dusty Rhodes  29:26 

I was about to say do you find the regulators are a little slow to move or does it seem to work out okay and your end of the world?

Suzanne O’Rourke  29:36 

Certainly my experience of it would be you know, I think anybody who works in medical technology and indeed pharma as well you know, when you when you hear you've got a you know, an FDA audits or a TGA auditors are coming to inspect your facility and your devices that usually put a few chills through the body and you know, there's a lot of focus on getting ready and there's a lot of panic and With the experience on that end, you know, which is checking for compliance, it's very, very different to new products. And there are great opportunities to actually go and talk up front to regulators, be it FDA or be the competent authority in Ireland. Also, you know, kind of there's there's new pathways being set up through the through the European Commission, but there's free forums where basically you can write a proposal, tell them about, here's what we're trying to develop, here's what we think it's going to be and propose how you're going to test it and do an awful lot of that conversation upfront with them, whereby you're sitting in the room effectively with expertise, you know, be cross functional expertise. So you'll have medical professionals present usability, human factors, expertise, preclinical animal testing expertise. Sterilization is a big part as well, you know, if it's an implantable device, and there's a great opportunity to interact with them and get feedback on, you know, what are they going to look for? In terms of the type of testing or if you know, you need to do a clinical study? And they certainly won't tell you the answer. They don't tell you what you need to do. But they will provide a lot of guidance about the gaps, that they think that maybe your proposal is missing things that maybe you haven't thought about. And it's always great to get the medical professional impulse, you know, when when you're talking about something that's brand new, that there's nothing similar right there. So yeah, it's great. It's really exciting. And they're actually really collaborative at that stage.

Dusty Rhodes  31:39 

Looking back over, say, the last five years, Suzanne, what's the one problem that has been solved for you by digitization?

Suzanne O’Rourke  31:50 

I think, you know, it's probably more of the solutions that Jeffrey and Veronica have already been talking about. So I think certainly, from a manufacturing of medical technology perspective, you know, the move away from paper based records happened quite a long time ago. And there's, there's very few organizations now, which would use paper based processes. A lot of the documentation, the records, you know, setting up traceability for how devices are built instructions for how the devices are built, the training that's required, all of that is digitized. And, you know, is is much easier to access records, it's much easier to if you need to do an investigation on something to be able to pull all that information from wherever it is you are in the world. And certainly if you're working in a multinational organization, everybody who is located, basically worldwide is able to access all of the same information at the same time, which is fantastic. And the other thing I think that that lends itself to then as well as is that, you know, you really do have companies that are working 24 hours, because there's always somebody awake, and there's always somebody pulling a record, or working on a test reports are working on testing, no matter where you are in the world. So you know, you finish up your day. And by the time you're getting back to your inbox in the morning, you're getting updates on, you know, maybe, you know, a clinical study or some new device testing or, you know, so it's, it's very, very accessible. And I think the sharing of information, and the speed and efficiency at which information is shared in that way really helps us progress things. You know, we do see a lot now, you know, certainly Ireland would be, you know, is a huge success story. It's a Global Center for Medical Device, medical technology, manufacturing, and has been for many years. And you know, certainly I think, you know, the industry is at the forefront of implementation of things like, you know, industry 4.0, being able to basically, you know, standard board and see exactly where devices are. And exactly, you know, are things being built as they should be or, you know, your yields as they should be, or you have more failures in manufacturing than you should be, etc. So it's much more visible, it's much more accessible. And that's, that's fantastic. And I think that's what we want to see that level of visibility and accessibility of information, it would be fantastic to see that move into the clinical area, you know, for patient records and access to doctors, etc.

Dusty Rhodes  34:20 

So we've been listening to each other and all the various projects that we've been involved in what question would you like to ask one of the other guys on the panel? Let's start with Veronica.

Veronica Sesoko  34:30 

Yeah, well, because my background is in transportation. So transport engineer. I find like really fascinating about Jeff projects. So you mentioned all the like language barrier. Do you think with like the new technology like that they do like real time translation. How are we going to get to that point that maybe you can have the chat boots and just like translating real time and then three Oh, The queries that people might want to have, maybe as parts of like the solution, I don't know as well, like, what's the costs for building this kind of solution? But maybe that's something in the future that could help. I don't know your views?

Jeffrey Roe  35:14 

Yeah. So it's very interesting. It's very interesting question. We have been piloting WhatsApp bots. And we've had some great feedback from because WhatsApp is very, it's very widespread in Senegal at the moment. And so we have been testing out WhatsApp bots for customer queries, and like checking account numbers, that sort of stuff. And in that, I certainly we could build in some more real time translation into local languages. But the the problem is that these local dialects, unfortunately, big tech have left them behind. They're not making translation systems for Wolfie or another local tribal dialect. They're just not unfortunately, not interested in such a small community. So unfortunately, I don't think we'll get to the stage where we can do some real time translation services, unless these big tech companies come out and spread more democratize their technology and enable it for kind of minority languages.

Dusty Rhodes  36:20 

Suzanne, what about yourself? What question Would you like to ask Jeffrey or Veronica?

Suzanne O’Rourke  36:25 

Yeah, I think it was really interesting listening to, you know, all of that management around around the port, you know, and all of those pieces of paper flying everywhere, and ultimately, when you boil it all down, you know, it's about moving things more efficiently. And, you know, I, I just, I wonder, you know, it just sounds like such a transferable type of technology, you know, that if, you know, we were ultimately able to, you know, have patients maybe with with trackers or even hospital trolleys going traveling to an operating theatre, for instance, you know, that you would be able to see, you know, if there was a delay and not not to move somebody or, you know, freeing up time so that you can have more efficiency and more throughput going, going through, you know, what, sometimes there are limited resources, you know, particularly things like CT scanners and MRI scanners, you know, there's, there's limited resources for those and to be able to maximize our efficiency and get more people through, you know, will be fantastic. And I was, you know, I mean, it seems to me that that type of technology has to be transferable. But, yeah, I posed that one to Jeffrey and see, see what he can do?

Jeffrey Roe  37:34 

Well, well, the technology is very transferable, because we got our start originally doing operating a public bike sharing scheme in Cork, Galway, Limerick, and Waterford for the NTA. So if you just think of bikes, translate them to trucks, there's lots of the moving from all these bike stations around. So we use a lot of our learning from managing and running those logistics about having a shared resource and having predictions of capacity. And then we brought off to the porter opera port operations field. And it was just about embedding new types of technology. So instead of RFID, scanners and bike locks, we're moving to cameras to count trucks, and read number plates. So it is quite interesting how the technology, why we started off in the public bike sharing schemes, then into port operations. And now we're bringing some of that technology into some software we're developing for a national railway. And so it's interesting how bikes and trucks and now trains are very similar sorts of problems and needs in terms of software.

Dusty Rhodes  38:43 

And Jeffrey, when listening to Suzanne, talking about the medical side of things, and Veronica talking about movements in in cities, is there anything you'd like to ask either one of those?

Jeffrey Roe  38:52 

Yeah, I'd be interested in asking, Suzanne, how does digitalization impacted your supply chain, and I'm sure these devices have 1000s of different parts, and how maybe data sheets and specifications and all that impacts your supply chain and into the device itself,

Suzanne O’Rourke  39:12 

whenever that's which is quite interesting and potentially quite challenging is there was new requirements brought in both in the US and more recently in the in the EU about the unique device identifiers, which the barcode effectively on the label of every device. Now, we would be very used to managing things like barcodes and scanning things in and out and have an automated scanning systems. But the hospitals now have to basically scan these barcodes and that becomes part of your patient file. And you know, it used to be that these take physical stickers or labels off and they'd stick them onto your paper patient file, you know, whereas now we have this expectation that they're going to scan this information in and that that information is uploaded to a cloud so if there ever had to be some kind of a recall on devices that it's very easy for a regulator who would have access to that cloud data to be able to see where all the affected devices are. So I think there's still some challenges, you know, in terms of pulling that information in at the point of views. So where the device comes out of the box, and just, you know, making sure that if you open to devices, which sometimes happens if they come in different sizes, and you know, the clinician is not sure which one are they going to implant, so they could open the two devices, but then you know, making sure you only scan the one that you used, and so that that information gets uploaded. And then from manufacturers, we now have all these unique numbers for devices that all have to get uploaded into the into databases, which is really proving quite challenging, creating these huge data sheets, that thing get uploaded into a centralized database, and, you know, getting all the formatting, cracked, and all of that stuff. So it's a real area of learning, like, what the intent is, is that you'd have one connected supply chain. So regardless of the system, each manufacturer is using, ultimately, the device ends up in this database, you know, where basically the regulator is able to have visibility to where all devices have been used. So I think there's there's lots of opportunity there.

Dusty Rhodes  41:11 

And on that note, we'll wrap up our podcast for today. My thanks to all of our guests Jeffrey row from teltik, head of engineering, Susanna rook managing director with Trisquel consulting and Veronica Marie T. Sissoko from Accenture, the duck. Of course, you'll find the website and LinkedIn details for all of them in our podcast show notes, which are in the description area for podcast player right this moment. And for more episodes of our engineers journal amplified podcast do click the Follow button on your player right now and remember, full Members get advance access to new episodes online at engineers ireland.io. Well, it's a next time for myself to students. Thank you for listening to our engineers general amplify podcast. Talk to you soon.

When you take a pill such as Anadin, you want to be very sure that what's going into your body is manufactured in the correct way. This is the precision required for pharmaceutical projects and an expert in that area joins our Amplified podcast today.

In 25 years since first joining the PM Group, Peter Farrelly has had immeasurable multi-national experience working across the full life-cycle of projects; from inception and funding through to design, procurement, construction, commissioning and qualification.  PM Group itself is known for its work with leading pharma, food and medical technology companies, with 3,500 employees working in Ireland, the UK, Asia and the US.

Our chat covers everything from the challenges of constructing medical facilities to handling brownfield sites during Covid, right through to the incredible levels of sustainability PM managed at Bio Cork 2 and their award winning work on an Irish facility which generates power using the sun.

Listen below or on your podcast player!

Topics we discussed include:

• Special considerations for pharma building projects
• Do glass panelled walls work for clean rooms
• Huge impact of constant medical change on building design
• Are multifunctional facilities possible
• The biggest impact of digital on engineering
• How digitally enabled lean transformation is revolutionising their business
• What is the holy grail of electric vehicles
• How Peter would tackle the EV challenge
• Ways new graduates are innovating business

Quotes

When you take a pill you want to be sure what's going into your body is manufactured in the correct way.

Regulations will change but base skills stay the same no matter where you go

The biggest challenge we've had over the last while is speed and COVID was a driver of that.

You can only imagine the challenges of building a vaccine facility on a brownfield site with 450 people during COVID restrictions.

Guest details

Peter Farrelly is a chartered engineer who is skilled in A&E Design, Project, Construction & Operations  Management and Business Development.  He is the Regional Development Director for PM Group, which is known for its work with some of the world's leading pharma, food and medical technology companies.  It was founded in Ireland in 1973 and today has 3,500 employees working in Ireland, the UK, Asia and the US.

Contact details

www.pmgroup-global.com

www.linkedin.com/in/peter-farrelly-3a75397

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/

 

Transcription text

For your convenience, here is a 90% accurate automated transcript of the podcast.

Dusty Rhodes  0:00 

Right now on amplified the engineers general podcast we're about to meet one of the key men at pm group. Peter Farrelly

Peter Farrelly  0:07 

what an engineer is someone who's solving problems and trying to improve things and in our case, trying to improve the lives of people that our clients are making products for our providing services to.

Dusty Rhodes  0:40 

Hello there, my name is Dusty Rhodes and you're welcome to amplify the engineers journal podcast, where we speak with leading members of our community of creative professionals about how engineers are delivering interesting and sustainable solutions for society. Joining us today is a chartered engineer who's skilled in AE design, project construction and operations management and business development. In his 25 years since he first joined pm group, he's seen massive growth, which gave me a ton of multinational experience working across the full lifecycle of projects from inception and funding through to design, procurement, construction, commissioning and qualification. pm group itself is known for its work with some of the world's leading pharma, food and medical technology companies. It was founded in Ireland in 1973. And today has three and a half 1000 employees working in Ireland, the UK, Asia and the US from pm group. It is a pleasure to welcome to our podcast Regional Development Director Peter Farrelly. Peter, how are you?

Peter Farrelly  1:44 

I'm well, thanks. So Steve, thanks for having me on that a

Dusty Rhodes  1:47 

pleasure. Tell me what attracted you to this crazy business of engineering?

Peter Farrelly  1:52 

Yeah, well, that's a good question. And I suppose it's hard to know where it comes from directly because I was on the probably one of one or two in my generation across all my cousins. There was no family tradition in engineering. So but several, the next generation are taking up engineering. So maybe I've inspired somebody along the way. But I suppose I was always interested in how things work, and, and fixing things. And some of my youngest memories are having tools and trying to fix things, which I'm quite sure was actually breaking things that were working perfectly well before I got near them. But I suppose it probably comes from my upbringing, the environment that I grew up in, it was always very focused on finding solutions to problems and sometimes very novel solutions. And I suppose that's what engineers do. So although there weren't many trained engineers, in my family, I'd say there were there was a lot of engineering spirit and engineering mindset and engineering minded people that I that I grew up with. So when it came to what to study, there was a long list of various engineering courses and not much else. But I think whatever you do, you should have real interest and passion fresh. And that was the case with me and engineering. And I've, I have to say, I've never once regretted the choice. And I would say that, even for somebody that's not really sure how to do a base education in engineering can open opened up many other doors and career choices, for example, in it in finance, in teaching in management, and many other areas.

Dusty Rhodes  3:25 

They call it a very portable career, don't I? Yeah, that's

Peter Farrelly  3:29 

true. You know, and particularly with international recognition, through engineers, Ireland and other institutions. You know, if you need to build a building the fundamental that you know that the regulations and codes will change from place to place, but that the base skills stay the same no matter where you go,

Dusty Rhodes  3:46 

Listen, let's have a chat about p m group, because the company does an awful lot of work with the farmer, very, very precise. Industry. What kind of challenges in general do you do farmer facilities come with,

Peter Farrelly  3:59 

to specific challenges around that are probably the quality of what needs to be built, when you go to put something into your body, when you take a pill, you know, you buy a packet of energy and in the supermarket or somewhere else, you have to be very, very sure that what's going into your body is manufactured in the correct way. So I suppose from our point of view, it's about building those facilities and making sure that facilities are designed, built and commissioned and then validated in a way that can provide that quality and that traceability with the, with the products that are ultimately manufactured in the facility.

Dusty Rhodes  4:33 

And what kind of things do you have to take into consideration when down when thinking about the building, if we're

Peter Farrelly  4:38 

just talking about the basics of the flow of materials into and through the building the flow of people back to this point about what you're going to put in your body contamination comes from people so there's a big, a big emphasis on making sure that the people don't break when they're entering the facilities don't bring in anything that could contaminate the products that are in there. So a lot in the air Early stages about how the building works together the flows of materials, flows of people waste in and out raw goods, finished goods, all of those sorts of things. I think then it's just the cleanliness of the space cleanroom facilities are in a lot of pharma facilities. And they take a particular expertise and design expertise to, to implement.

Dusty Rhodes  5:22 

So when you think of clean rooms, you think of something that's generally maybe in a basement with no windows and fluorescent lighting, and everything is done. Whereas people like to work in more area and brighter surroundings these days, as designed change to enable that.

Peter Farrelly  5:39 

Yeah, absolutely. clean rooms can be very big spaces, very big facilities. But some of the sorts of techniques we've used is having glass paneled walls instead of some other materials. So you can actually see through to the daylight outside to external windows, and also see the other people working in the facility as well, because that can be an issue if somebody goes in an older requirements to change. And, again, an optical into some of these facilities. So you can't go in and out really quickly in some cases. So, you know, we've we've done some of those sorts of things to try and help with that.

Dusty Rhodes  6:16 

If I had to work in a lab, I'd love to work in a penthouse lab. So you'd have a view? Yeah, well,

Peter Farrelly  6:21 

when you when you look at what some clients are doing, particularly the, you know, clients where they have their global headquarters, and they want to attract a lot of r&d staff, like, for example, in the UK, in the Oxford, London Cambridge region, there's a lot of companies located there. And for those facilities, they will get in the most renowned world famous architects, the facilities will be to the absolute highest standards possible, they invest a lot of time in not just the lab facilities, but actually the the environment that the people will work in, to inspire the people, but also to to enable them to attract the very, very best people that can get in the market,

Dusty Rhodes  7:01 

medicine and pharma. And everything is changing constantly. Does this impact the design then of the building?

Peter Farrelly  7:09 

Yeah, it impacts it hugely. There are lots of different types of pharma facilities. So if I take the more traditional one, where, you know, as I said, before you get your bucks of energy and in the supermarket or some other some other drug you'll be familiar with, the type of facility to produce something like that is, is well known. And you know, there are lots of them all around the world for many, many years. And I suppose the the facility types are very different. When you look at the facilities to produce the active ingredient for a medicine, it will be very different to the facility that produces the actual tablet that you take, or the solution that you drink, or the the whatever is injected into your body, there'll be very different facilities. But if I take it from another, another angle completely, there's a whole new suite of Advanced Therapy, medicinal products at MPs are cold. And they're medicines for humans that are based on genes, tissues, or cells. And they're quite novel and quite new, some of the things that are done with that. So some classes of though these 80 MPs are considered to be personalized medicines. So if you imagine, in a facility, traditionally, a batch of tablets could be you count them in the millions of tablets, whereas in this facility, if they've taken something out of your body, and they're going to do something with the cells or genes, every person is a separate batch. So the requirements and the challenges of designing a facility such as that are entirely different to designing a facility to make traditional pharmaceutical products.

Dusty Rhodes  8:44 

So can you give me an example of that, then? Yeah,

Peter Farrelly  8:46 

I mean, we, a number of years ago, did a facility, it was the first of a kind in the world, actually, it was without precedent. It was a cell and gene therapy catapult facility to promote a number of companies, you know, startup phase, probably smaller companies that needed effectively what could be described as incubator space, that facility had to be designed not only to cater for all the usual farmer requirements, but also had to be designed to cater for up to 12 different tenants at the same time, all with different requirements, all with their own issues around confidentiality, access, egress, all of those types of challenges.

Dusty Rhodes  9:27 

And then do you have different design considerations, then, if you're doing something, I mean, vaccines are just so important. These days, we've had COVID recently. And that's different from kind of like, you know, a tablet, it's different from something that you're doing for on a person by person basis. What what's the difference when you're working with vaccines?

Peter Farrelly  9:46 

Yeah, you're absolutely right, tested as does differences, loads of similarities, but to be quite different number one, and you're dealing with a liquid and in many other cases, it's going to be a tablet format or something like that. The biggest challenge we've had or For the last while is speed, and the COVID pandemic was was a driver of that, obviously. So the types of facilities are lots of it is similar, but you're you're trying to fill into vials or syringes that will be used to inject into people. So, you know, the quality of the facility and the hygienic conditions need to be even higher than some of the more traditional facilities. You know, we've done a number of those projects. I remember during the COVID pandemic watching the news one night, and the cameras were outside the Pfizer facility that was was shipping the first batch of vaccine. And that was a facility that I was involved, I was working on a project there, we were working on a project there. And you know, it makes me very proud as an engineer that you've done good that you've, you've been involved in something like that you're helping in a very positive way. Another example, we've done a project for MSD in Belgium, to expand their vaccine manufacturing facilities, and throw up its own challenges. Because not everything we do is Greenfield, a lot of the work that we do is brownfield work. So you're going into a facility that's already in existence, and you have to cut and carve and chop it up. And in some cases, still with live production happening in that facility. So you can't bring the current production down. So we need to be very, very careful. But in in that particular project, we had probably 450 people on site at the peak, a lot of that was during COVID restriction. So you can imagine the challenges of trying to build a vaccine facility with 450 people on site during COVID restrictions. But we did it anyway. And we got through it. And it was very safe, safe project over a million hours worked on site without without any instances. So it just shows you the scale of the challenge with designing and building some of these facilities. So thinking

Dusty Rhodes  12:01 

about that on on a brownfield site during COVID with foreign and 50 people working trying to expand this facility was what's what's the one solution you came up with, that you were most proud of?

Peter Farrelly  12:12 

It's, it's probably not just any one solution. But the sheer logistics of getting that number of people in, you know, so a lot for something like that you're gonna have a workforce, the workforce, and that project, by the way, came from 25 different countries, oh my goodness, trying to get people in and out of the facility, trying to make sure that people could connect with their families at home. And people couldn't travel them when travel restrictions were lifted. So there was a multitude of things so hard to single out one thing that was that was better than another.

Dusty Rhodes  12:44 

Let me ask you just kind of dealing with clients and and an overview on a project because clients often want something fast. And then but they also want you to be flexible. And then of course, they're always looking at price. How do you handle that?

Peter Farrelly  12:58 

It's, I suppose it's a feature. It's a real challenge in our industry at the moment, every client wants something built quicker and cheaper and, you know, hold all sorts of things and all the things that you can't square all the circles, a key part of our strategy, we've embarked on a Lean transformation program that we call delta, which is stands for digitally enabled Lean transformation. And it's a way of improving and transforming our business. And at its core, we're trying to apply these Lean principles to remove wasteful activities and friction. And we're doing that through the use of all sorts of digital technologies. So I suppose that's, that's one of the ways that we're that we're doing it.

Dusty Rhodes  13:46 

And digital technologies are changing everything. I mean, it's changed the way we work and people I'm working from home more and stuff like that. What's the biggest impact digital has had on your business in the last two years?

Peter Farrelly  13:57 

You know, everything we're trying to do, we're trying to enable with digital, we're looking at all the aspects. When we lean something out, how can we get digital tools to help us to enable us to lock in those gains that we get from that lien and the transformation. I mean, there's loads of examples that are the more traditional ones that you'll know about, you know, all the drawing tools, all the CAD, all of those things, the paperless office, all of those things, and I suppose we also have been using just just like everyone else, you know, teams and zoom and all of those things helped us when we were all done, couldn't travel for a long time. But we're looking at technologies right across the business. And if I take something like augmented reality and virtual reality and some of our projects, and they're really transformative in terms of how we deliver our projects, and really our cutting edge compared to what we're seeing in the marketplace.

Dusty Rhodes  14:57 

So looking at digital and the how it's able to transform arm the way we work and people working at home and remote working in in the office and stuff like that, how has digital kind of changed your operation in the last few years?

Peter Farrelly  15:08 

Well, example we're doing it on a large data center project at the moment, we're able to go into the field, and we're able to look at the building as it's being built, you can see what's actually physically constructed on the ground, you can overlay that with what's coming next, you can find problems in real time, you can find problems before they actually happen. So tribes huge efficiency in in how we build those buildings, because you can imagine how complex some of these buildings are, the structure alone, the services within the buildings, and all of those things sort of enabled us to look at those in real time. I think, you know, this is all linked back to a more general question about continuing professional development and the importance of it, and understanding what's going on. I mean, you don't have to be an expert. In all of the systems, I wouldn't say we have very few people that will be an expert in all the systems, but it's about knowing enough about it that know how they operate, know how they can add value, and know what they can do, and being able to talk about it.

Dusty Rhodes  16:08 

And what about the continuous professional development? How do you implement that into your own career?

Peter Farrelly  16:14 

Well, from the get go, in my own career, I've always put a lot of focus on education. And every time I thought it was finished with education, I went back again and again. So I've said the last time that I'm done with it, but who knows what will happen, what will happen in the future. So I've done quite a bit of formal education. And going through the process with engineers, Ireland to be a chartered engineer to be a fellow of engineers, Ireland. But that's it, there's also just keeping up with the day to day. So there's lots of stuff that happens within the industry, attending industry events, and going to conferences. Again, engineers, Ireland run a lot of really, really interesting, CPD modules that, you know, it might be somewhat unrelated to your day job, but some very, very interesting stuff. And some of it is directly related. Some of it is highly applicable to the things we're doing every day and the stuff that I'm doing every day. So I'd say it's a mixture of all of those things. But even I'm in a very fortunate position. That, you know, I spend a lot of time client facing with our clients are talking to people, and you know, just talking to different clients, you learn new things, you learn different things. And again, across the sector's we work, and we work in in different sectors. And actually, that's probably one real advantage we have because some of the principles that were able to use and apply in one sector, we can then bring to other sectors, and it brings some really good innovation to those sectors.

Dusty Rhodes  17:50 

Is there one thing just you mentioned, engineers, Ireland, it tell me the one thing that you've done with them, that maybe you didn't want to, but actually had a good effect on your career,

Peter Farrelly  18:01 

you know, the process of becoming a chartered chartered engineer is not a simple one. And that's for good reason. You know, you don't have somebody that rocks up tomorrow and says, I want to be a chartered engineer. So there's quite a bit of work that has to go into, you know, making sure that you get the right experience and making sure that you, you've covered the areas that you understand enough about the industry. So that's, that's a process that was, you know, it was it was tough to do, but highly valuable once it was done.

Dusty Rhodes  18:32 

And what was the one thing though there that do you have something in your mind me, I don't really want to do this, but you did it. And and it worked out?

Peter Farrelly  18:40 

Well, you know, simple things like talking about yourself and writing statements about how good you are and, you know, fill in filling in application forms to say how wonderful you are doing all of these things. Certainly doesn't come easy to me. I'd prefer other people maybe, to say it was it was it was warranted or marriage, rather than having say it myself,

Dusty Rhodes  19:04 

it's always much easier to sell somebody else than to sell yourself that sort of I have found but if you've picked up ways of doing that with engineers, if that's all good, listen, let's talk about one of the biggest innovations because we were talking about innovation and digital and all that kind of stuff. One of the things that we see in our day to day lives now are electric cars. Do you find this an interesting engineering problem?

Peter Farrelly  19:27 

Yeah, actually, the the whole Evie sector is part of our strategy within pm group forms part of our strategy. So I suppose it's interesting and challenging. It's a real strategic growth market, but it's growing at an exponential rate. And there are a few companies that can support the sector that have the right experience. And when you look at the profile of the clients that are involved in the sector, so you have lots of absolutely new startup companies, and like I mean, absolute starting from scratch and they're looking to be big players, you have jayvees. And because there are so many people hedging their bets, they don't know who's going to win this race, to get the best electric battery, you know, it's, it's the Holy Grail at the moment, you have many old companies. So for example, all the major automotive car companies that are as old as the motorcar are involved, and some of the large chemical companies, and it's interesting to see that some of those companies have actually not succeeded, they've pulled back from the market a bit or the left to others a little bit, because the challenges are so great, or they took the wrong bet. And they've just said, you know, we're not throwing any more good money after bad, and we're just, we're just gonna leave it there. And some, some are failing, despite all the investment and experience, so a big challenge for us to know what clients we should work with. But I suppose the other challenge in that whole sector is there's when people talk about Evie batteries, there's so many different types of projects within the sector. So at one end, there's the mining for the raw materials. Now, we're not involved in that at all. But then you take those raw materials, and you turn them in to the refined battery materials. And that's quite an interesting one, when I spoke before about how you can transfer skills from one sector to another, and some of the equipment so you know, some of those battery materials that come out at the end of that process. Some of it's like a powder. And, you know, you're using the same equipment from the same suppliers, and fundamentally a lot of the same design as you would use for a pharmaceutical facility that's producing some powder, or a dairy facility that's producing infant formula. So it's quite interesting, even though they're totally and utterly different sectors, some of the same technologies, and some of the same ideas can apply. So we're able to bring that thinking and knowledge from sector to sector. And once the once those raw materials are made, you then make battery sales. And that's another another part of the supply chain. And then those battery cells are assembled into battery packs. And that's what will actually go into your car, your electric car that you're that you're going to see on the road. At the other end of the scale now, which is an absolutely booming market currently, is the recycling to get the raw materials out because they're they're very difficult to get to mine initially. So getting those raw materials back out, and putting them back into the supply chain to start the process again.

Dusty Rhodes  22:36 

So Peter Farrelly, let's imagine you're the Elon Musk of the evey battery world, and you've got $10 billion in your back pocket, what would you do?

Peter Farrelly  22:46 

That's a That's a good question. And I interested in the last point I made there about the battery recycling. And it's probably probably a focus that I focus on because, you know, whoever wins the race, or whoever gets the best best bet and produces the best battery at some point that will need to be recycled, and you'll need to take it back out. Also, personally, the sustainability aspect of it. I like it's a very, very important part for me and for our business. So I like that part of it too. So I probably would bet, maybe not all 10. But maybe one of my billions on on that sector.

Dusty Rhodes  23:29 

Let's talk about pm group, once again, because I mean, the group is growing phenomenally. It started in 1973, as I said, and then kind of to the 90s and the naughties. expanding into the States and Asia and all across Europe and stuff like that. Give me an idea of how big the company is now today.

Peter Farrelly  23:45 

Yeah, so we're an international firm headquartered in Ireland, and we're delivering critical facilities. So the more complex, the better. And that's probably what, what our sweet spot is. So if it's a very, very straightforward facility, and I suppose some of the facilities you've heard me talking about today are not straightforward. So the more complex, the better. You mentioned the we're, we're 49 years in business. And we have been trading internationally for quite a long time. We were just just in last few months and celebrated 25 years in Poland, equally 10 years in Boston, I think we must be 11 or 12 years in China now. And next year will be 25 years operating in the UK. And in terms of scale, where we have about 3600 people at the moment. And we're our turnover is approximately 400 million. And I think a unique feature of pm group, which is we believe is unique among our peers is that we're employee owned. So every employee in the company has an opportunity to be a shareholder in the company. It means that everybody can share the benefits of the company and share in the success of the company. But it also we Think drives a different mindset. It drives that owners mindset right through the company, no matter what anyone's doing, what their position is, what age they are, what level they're at, in the company. If you're a shareholder in the company, you're invested as an owner in the company as well.

Dusty Rhodes  25:15 

One of the problems with a company that is growing is finding new staff. And I believe you've taken out somewhere around 500 new graduates through through this next year. Where are you getting these people from? And are they up to? It's a terrible thing to say, are they up to the job? But you know, when somebody's coming in new and you've got to train them, do you not? I mean, what challenges do you have that?

Peter Farrelly  25:37 

Well, I'll answer the last bit of that, first, are they up to the job, I mean, I have to say, I'm blown away by the people that I meet. First of all, they're they're typically really, really well educated, they're typically really well motivated. They are, you know, credit to their, to their parents, their education system, their environment, wherever they've come from, I mean, they're definitely up to the task, I would say, there's a lot of bad press about people and you know, younger people, and, you know, not wanting to work in Olympics too much. I mean, I don't see much of that in the people we have. And maybe our selection process is very good, I hope it is. The graduates that I've seen are very, very, very high quality. And it's not just their technical ability, but what they bring to the company, they really challenge your thinking in a positive way. They look at things in a completely different way. They don't have the same experiences, as as we have. So they're coming at things from a different point of view completely, which is often a very refreshing and very good point of view, and linked back to innovation, which I can come back to in a second. But the amount that they're bringing to our innovation, drive is huge. But it's not just graduates, we also have apprentices and interns of the company, we're taking them in, and our schemes are accredited by the main professional bodies such as engineers, Ireland, I, Mackay, ik me subzi, they might mean nothing to you dusty, but so some of the listeners that those institutions will be will be important, we probably took on over 1000 graduates in the past five years, 500 new graduates coming in now, it's a huge challenge to keep those people coming in and to find all those people. But we're, we're working hard to do it. And I suppose the other thing that's really important to us is diversity. And we've put a big effort into trying to balance out our resources and our personnel. As you know, the engineering profession is dominated by by men, there's they're mostly mostly men in the profession. And particularly traditionally, the bottom 2020 to 40% of our graduates are female, which most compare very, very favorably with any of our peers or any other similar industries. That's a huge achievement and took a lot of work schedules. That point.

Dusty Rhodes  27:53 

You mentioned that the graduates and new people coming into the company really help with innovation and challenging your thinking and looking at things different ways. What way are you innovating.

Peter Farrelly  28:03 

I suppose the most tangible way we're working on innovation at the moment internally is, I mentioned previously, we invest approximately 4 million annually in innovation. But we run an innovation action awards scheme. That's what we call it innovation in action. It's where we get ideas from everyone in the company. It's open to everyone. And there are a number of categories. And people submit ideas. And those ideas are evaluated to see what innovation can derive from that. So they're in technical areas, non technical areas, where people have published articles in health and safety, you know, the most disruptive ideas, and I mean, disruptive in a good way, in a bad way. But it's amazing what's gone through from that. And I mean, you'd expect some innovation. From a lot of technical people, we have a lot of very, very experienced highly technical people in the company. But also, as we talked about, from the graduates that are just in the door, and they see something and they go, why aren't you doing it this way? Or why can't we do it that way? Or the here's something that I'm doing in my, you know, my personal life? Can we look at that. And some of those, some of those ideas are really good. Also, we have some ideas really good from our administration teams from our finance teams from right across the company. So it's not just from an engineering point of view. And we've just actually recently launched a new innovate app, bringing it right to people's pocket our fingertips. And you know, that it's not that it's not just something that we do once a year, we have an award scheme, and we go through this, it's that ideas are submitted, they're evaluated, and they're continually being brought on as projects that we run with and that we develop in the company

Dusty Rhodes  29:46 

on a scale of one to 10 How would you say this attitude of innovation and actually embracing that change benefits the company?

Peter Farrelly  29:56 

Oh, like a 10 a 10. Yeah, I mean, it's well put it this way, if we weren't doing it, the company would would fail, you know, you can't stand still. So innovation. And I think any other company would say the same, you know, you need, you need to be innovating constantly just to stand still. But it's trying to not just standstill, but to push it on to the next level as well to try and get ahead of the curve to try and see Potter our clients looking for what's the next thing that's coming that we can do? And how can we work with our clients? And a lot of this is about working with clients, our clients are demanding it, it's not just stuff that we want to do our clients want us to do it as well.

Dusty Rhodes  30:36 

Why do you think engineers in particular, are more open to change in innovation,

Peter Farrelly  30:42 

the types of work that we do, certainly in pm group, the type of work we do, like, the no two projects are the same. You know, it's, it's, it's very, very different. It's always very different. So every time even if the projects are very similar, if the challenges are similar, there are always new challenges and different challenges, or whatever they may be at a particular time or on a particular project. So you sort of you constantly have to innovate just at that project level, or at that project delivery level. So I suppose it's a natural extension, then, when it comes to taking a step back and looking at how we can do it at a business level.

Dusty Rhodes  31:18 

Let me ask you about one or two more projects that pm group have have done just to wrap up our podcast today. And in particular, I wanted to ask you about one that's won a number of awards for the company. And that's the Yonten project.

Peter Farrelly  31:30 

Yeah, so this is the bio cork two facility in Ringaskiddy. In cork, it's 19,000 square meters expansion is effectively doubles the size of the existing facility. And it's producing immunology and oncology treatments. So very, very important treatments for people that are that have those conditions. And you mentioned about award winning. So I mean, it won the ISP, which is the International Society of pharmaceutical engineers, again, people in the industry would recognize that it won the facility of the Year award. And in 2021, there's another publication that you know, some boring engineers will be concerned about cold the Engineering News Record, which is locked for projects and and often our competitors globally, and have won the Best Global Project Award for 2020. And in addition, and really importantly, to us, it also won a major safety award. But I suppose the other interesting aspect of that project is it had a leading sustainability aspect to it, somewhere between 25 and 30%, energy savings across the buildings and processes. It used over 60%, less water 40% less electricity, and 99% of the construction waste that was generated was recycled. So a strong sustainability angle to the project to

Dusty Rhodes  32:50 

speaking of sustainability, let's wrap up with another project actually in Cork. And this kind of I find this funny, because in Ireland, we're talking an awful lot about wind energy when it comes to sustainability and wind farms off the coast or up on hills and stuff like that. But you've done a particular project in Cork, which is using the power of the sun,

Peter Farrelly  33:11 

correct? Yeah. That's a project for Eli Lilly. And it's a 16 acre facility. It's the single largest solar farm in the Republic of Ireland, which produce 5.6 megawatts of power. So it's a big facility. And I suppose to just put some dimensions on what that means. It's the equivalent of almost 1000 cars, driving 10 million miles and using half a million gallons of fuel, or 500 million mobile phone chargers. So very interesting project very important project, again, showing our clients drive towards sustainability and how we can help them with that.

Dusty Rhodes  33:50 

Peter Farrelly it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you today and thank you for sharing so much on the podcast.

Peter Farrelly  33:54 

Thanks. So see, it was nice being able.

Dusty Rhodes  33:56 

If you'd like to find out more about what we spoke about on the podcast today, you'll find show notes and link details in the description area of your podcast player right now. Our amplified podcast was produced by just pod.io for engineers journal, you will find advanced episodes on the website at engineers journal.ie or just press follow on your podcast player to get our next episode automatically. Until next time for myself Dusty Rhodes, thank you so much for listening. Take care.