Digital advances, from 3D models in public planning to patients living with pacemakers, are pushing sectors into new spaces which present unique opportunities but not without challenges.

In the final part of our mini-series we discover how digitalisation has shaped the automation, manufacturing and aviation industries here in Ireland.  Our guests share real-world examples of phrases we hear bandied about daily from circularity to 360 and industry 4.0.

Lots of sparks fly in this discussion with John O'Sullivan MD of Douglas Control and Automation, Lufthansa Technik’s Engineering Manager Barry Lowe and Chief Innovation Officer at IMR Andrew Lynch.

Listen below or on your podcast player!

Topics we discussed include:
 

• Why future generations will look back on this time and consider us ‘quaint’
• Can paper and digital systems co-exist
• Lufthansa’s LEAN journey
• Things you must consider when investing in plant
• A brilliant explanation and example of circularity & 360
• When is AI not AI
• How Digital Twin works
• Real examples of how CPD drives success

Guest details:

Barry Lowe: Engineering Manager at Lufthansa Technik Turbine Shannon.

Barry is a native of Athlone, graduate of Mechanical Engineering. Commenced career as Product Development Engineer with Hyster Automated Handling in Dublin. Gained international experience working in USA & Germany in a variety of technical roles.

Joined Lufthansa Technik as Marketing & Sales Manager and transferred to current role as Engineering Manager with responsibility for product engineering, process engineering and new product introductions. Promoted to Head of Mobile Engine Services Dublin with Lufthansa Technik, effective January 2023.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-lowe-58403877/

John O’Sullivan: Managing Director at Douglas Control and Automation

John has an engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from University College Cork, a science degree in Astronomy and Planetary Science from the Open University and a Diploma in Project Management from the Cork Institute of Technology. He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of Engineers Ireland and a Project Management Professional with the Project Management Institute. He is a Functional Safety Professional and Certified Machine Safety Expert, both certified by TÜV. He has completed a Masters in management at the Smurfit Business School at University College Dublin and is currently conducting Doctoral research in Management Information Systems at UCC's Cork University Business School. His area of research is automation projects in the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector.

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

Andrew Lynch: Chief Innovation officer Irish Manufacturing Research

Andrew is also the international Vice President of the EUREKA SMART Manufacturing Board of Directors, he chairs the ManuFuture ETP Working Group (State Aid Strategies- Research & Innovation) and is the national delegate to the European manufacturing policy platform, ManuFuture High Level Group (HLG). Andrew has recently been nominated by the EFFRA Board to the Made in Europe Partnership Board, an expert board which meets regularly with the European Commission to discuss the scope and modalities of the Partnership and future call topics.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/irish-manufacturing-research/

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

3.50 - Andrew Lynch

In a hundred years’ time, people are going to look back at these five or six years and say that is when everything changed. They’ll say we used to manufacture goods which we drove on trucks to put into shops and people bought stuff using a credit card. And they're going to say you guys were the ones who burnt the planet. It’s a wonderful time to be alive in this space.

Transcription text

Dusty Rhodes  0:39 

Hello, my name is Dusty Rhodes and you're welcome to our engineers journal amplified podcast and the third in our special series shining a light on digitalization of the impact it has had on Irish business and society. From 3d models in public planning to patients living with pacemakers. It's clear from the experts we spoke to so far that digital advances are pushing sectors into new spaces that present them with unique opportunities, but not without the challenges to assist us with our final dig into the world of digitalization. I'm joined today by John O'Sullivan, Managing Director of DRS control and automation, who has over 25 years experience in the sector. Barry Lowe is engineering manager at Lufthansa technique turbine and Shannon. Barry has a ton of international experience working in the USA and Germany in a variety of technical roles. And Andrew Lynch, Chief Innovation Officer at Irish manufacturing research, and also a contributing expert on several key international policy directors for manufacturing. Gentlemen, you're all very welcome. Before we get into some specific projects, I kind of just want to talk generally about how technology plays a part in your day to day work. And if I could start with you how has digitalization shaped advanced manufacturing over the past 20 years or so?

Andrew Lynch  1:59 

A great question, I'm old enough for those who can't see me are gray beards, I'm in my mid I would say early 50s. I'm still very pretty man and very lucky in that context. But if you consider me as a young Production Manager, General Manager manufacturing site all those years ago, and how I manage the facility and how I gathered information and how you how you made decisions based on the output of the data from that from from that facility, and so on, it was very manual and manually driven filling in manual charts and so on. digitalization is just a complete step change, it's a transformation, we now have the capability to look at optimization of a manufacturing facility, if you've got 60 different machines, you've got 150 different customers, you've got 1000 Or a million SK use, you know, we cannot put that into a platform, it will figure out the fastest way that we can manufacture that good, it can even figure out the best way to do with how much you know, the most cashflow in the month are on time and full highest metrics that we can meet. So if we make a change on a digital twin, for example, we can see this at at a digital or a non real level, we can interrogate the system itself, we can optimize it, and then we can execute in the real world. So there's, there's no financial commitment to doing something, we can see the impact of doing that thing, we can do it and execute it in the real world. So it's transformed everything I mean, you know, when you think about it, we can scan in a part electronically into a machine and build a park there. And then using 3d printing, you know, we've got AR VR goggles, you can put them on your head, and when you're looking into the bed of the machine, and arrow will come down and it will point into a particular dial that should be at seven instead of eight. And you could change that dial, you know, we can use you know, we're at the edge of using, you know, IoT sensors, I remember when an IoT sensor was, you know, $1,000 Now they're less than five years, we could put these things anywhere in 100 years time just to really encapsulate your question. 100 years time, people are gonna look back right now at these five or six years, and they're gonna say that is when everything changed. And I will be telling my grandkids in years, the company's got if I live and exist, I'd be saying, you know, I'll tell you what we used to do manufacturing, and you're gonna get a laugh. We used to put a manufacturing facility out in the middle of nowhere, we put people into it, we manufacture goods, and we'd manufacture we do many of them. And then we put them on trucks, you're going to love this. And we drive the truck to another big warehouse, and we put all the stuff in the big warehouse, and then we'd fly all over the world. And you're going to love this. We put it into more warehouses, and then we drive from that warehouse, we put it into a shop and people actually does shopping used to walk through the door of a big house. And there's lots of stuff for sale, and you bought stuff using a credit card. Our God forbid money. Let me tell you about how money worked. So our grandkids are going to look at this. And they're going to say you guys were not the one you burnt the planet. Because there's so many things changing in terms of how we do this. It's fantastic. A wonderful time to be alive in this space.

Dusty Rhodes  4:45 

Let me go to John next to John. How has digitalization shaped the automation industry in the last 20 years?

John O'Sullivan  4:52 

It's a path it's a it's a journey that we're on and my own personal situation. I'm Doing some research and I'm researching techniques and technologies that that we can bring to manufacturing. And it's basically it's how we get these new innovative ideas onto the factory floor. So what I've discovered just thinking about this for this podcast, I was thinking about what we do with what we've been offering to customers for last 40 years has been digitalization, and, you know, parts of industry 4.0 For a long time. So, you know, we, part of our projects in process industry would be an electronic controller that controls the plant, then followed by a human machine interface screen where the operator can can see, visualize the plant and visualize the process up into the supervisory level where the supervisors are dealing with batch management and recipe management, and then up into the business where data becomes the product. And the business has to evaluate life cycles and supply chains. So we've been offering this digital journey to our customers for decades. But the ironic thing is our own business wasn't digital at all, because we're in this pharmaceutical regulated environment, a lot of paper, a lot of signatures that have ink. So I've got two little stories, I suppose there's the story of how we're changing what we offer the customer. And then we have the how we change ourselves. So COVID was a great accelerator of our digital journey. And even before that, we started moving to Office 365. Instead of having licenses on site, we're dealing with subscription based licensing, Moving Storage, from the site to the cloud. And even in COVID, we were at the stage where we were doing remote testing with customers in different locations. And right now we've moved our timesheet packaging to the cloud, we're moving accounting to the cloud where because when people are working at home, they need to access all this data that we're producing. So I think after 40 years, we're finally digitalizing ourselves. My colleagues in Siemens would have a phrase about drink your own champagne, don't take your product and use it. And I've heard other people use the phrase which is eat your own dog food, which isn't as nice as drink your own champagne. So I prefer drinking champagne.

Dusty Rhodes  7:06 

I got to stick with the latter. Definitely John. Barry, can you can you tell us because you're in the aviation industry, how has digitalization journey changed things at Lufthansa?

Barry Lowe  7:17 

So I suppose I'd like to go back to our Lean journey. And when we talked about digitalization, we didn't relate it to lean. But if I look back at our Lean journey started in 2001, and is still a very active program within the facility in the company at the moment. And it certainly is a journey that doesn't really have a destination at this, there's always further improvement you can make. And when we looked at digitalization said, we kind of started by looking at industry 4.0, we've heard a lot of talk about industry 4.0. And we didn't really know what that would mean for for our company, Lufthansa here and Shannon, as John pointed out, we're a highly regulated industry as well. And historically, everything is paid for everything is stamped and signatures and all of that. So to make improvements, I suppose a lot of our improvements were Kaizen events where we found more efficient ways to do the physical work we do, and make improvements to our processes, very focused on our value stream map and, and and eliminating waste. And then we looked at as industry 4.0. As soon as we started looking at one was automation and two was information. We looked at analysis of our our labor where labor goes and the highest utilization of our labor was on blending, which is a very manual to repair the parts during the repair process. And I think the second one was blasting because we don't manufacture we repair parts, every part coming in can be slightly different. So therefore we need to have an adaptive process that can adapt to the condition of the incoming part. And that was really challenging, I suppose for the blending. So we looked at robotic blending and we also looked at Adaptive machining and we came up with technical feasible solutions, but we couldn't, couldn't take justify them from a commercial point of view. We tend to have our second significant manual operation was just blasting and we've successfully implemented robotic blasting for that and eliminated the manual element of that. Our plant is 30 years old. A lot of our equipment is old and it needs replacements over the last three years, we were going through an upgrading of a lot of our big piece of equipment like milling machines, lasers. So whenever we're buying new machines, we're buying them not for our current process, but looking ahead to what we might need for the future. So that was a big change for us was was to look for the future and up of what we believed was required for the future. And then we have new technologies like we've got 3d printing, which is laser blown powder directed energy deposition. So it's, it's effectively taking parts that come out of an engine that are worn, and been able to rebuild the material using this technology, which allows you to print like a honeycomb type structure. And that in the aviation industry was new technology, and very difficult to get approval to do it. So we've been working with one of the aeroengine OEMs, to develop the repair. And it's been in development for about 10 years, we started production two years ago. And one of the things we wanted to do was, was to try and find a way that would reduce the amount of testing of parts to validate parts leaving the facility. So we've done a lot of work through digitalization capturing the key process variables, the other big areas, all of the parts we bring in that we have to repair, we have to restore the dimension. So we've got to try and take a warm part and build up a surfaces add material to it, and then re machinery and grinders and, and coat it and bring it back to finish dimensions that comply with the requirements of the engine manufacturer. And a big part of that, then is the whole quality control of the product, making sure the parts are dimensionally Correct. Historically, that was all done manually measuring it with maybe a micrometer or a vernier type calipers. And the inspector, verifying the the dimensions within the required tolerance, we now are moving to CMM coordinate measuring machines, or we have a number of other digital measuring pieces of equipment where we can capture all of that data digitally. And that has the benefit of allowing us to actually have the theory, the measurements that were measured, rather than simply saying, looking at a record saying yes, they were measured and found to be within the specification, we actually have the measurements, we have it measured automatically. So you're not you're eliminating the human error already. Once you've your system, measuring system validated and calibrated, then you you have a much higher level of confidence because you're eliminating that human element in it. So it's bringing about a lot of change on our production floor. But what we're looking at now really is looking more on the other processes where whether it's our customer service or finance looking for where we can use digitalization to improve that. And one of the big changes for us was we identified an IoT platform ThingWorx, which effectively allows us to dump data from our machines, from our measuring systems from our ERP system, we can extract whatever information and dashboards we want from that going forward. So that that, for me is probably the most significant step that we now have that platform that we can build on.

Dusty Rhodes  13:06 

So all three of you are saying that, you know, you're all from vastly different sectors, both are all becoming reliant on digital systems and speed and efficiency and accuracy, are all seeing a huge improvement because of this. Let me go back to Andrew because Andrew, you kind of work on on a bit of an overview level because you're doing a lot of things in the EU as well. And another thing that you're very conscious of in our changing business these days is circularity what what exactly does that phrase circularity mean?

Andrew Lynch  13:37 

circularity is quite interesting, because it's this idea that we're, we're in a circular environment. In other words, you take something, you create something, you break that down and use some of the breakdown product back into the system itself. Again, it's like trees, for example, they grow up, the leaves go down to become compost and nourish the tree and away we go again. And it's that idea around circularity in that context. And I think it's, it's a beautiful idea, but one of the key key key key tenants that I keep saying to people is that there is no circularity without the manufacturing sector. So when we look at manufacturing at a European level, I like to do this every so often because I think it contextualize it, we do not have the raw materials that we need to support ourselves in this geopolitical region. We've got to go into Africa or China or Russia, as we've seen more lately, to get the raw materials that we need for everything from an iPhone to a tractor to a transistor to a bicycle. So it doesn't really matter what we're building or manufacturing if you'd like the raw materials don't necessarily exist in their natural sense on this continent. So we, as we do, in many cases, certainly in the sustainability sector, we have an onus on us to make sure that this idea of circularity, this example of using raw materials that are over and over again, in a circular sense is critically important, not just from some sort of esoteric, you know, we must pay to save the planet and all of that kids which is incredibly important, but just from a purely economic place we can get access forever to raw materials that are going to run out. I'll give you one very simple example. I am a carpenter. I hope you hear that accent from from what you're hearing online here. My wife is a beautiful woman. And we both live in the beautiful county of Longford in the Midlands, lovely, lovely part of the world. And we've been here for the last two decades wonderful people a great environment to grow a family and to live. And there are two beautiful companies near me one is pinata foods. pinata was beautiful organization large company they built a paninis and specialist breads products for Lidl and Aldi and different different groups right right throughout the country. Brilliant organization right next door to them in the city literally in the same building a state our business state. They have you have a lovely small brewery called St. Mary's brewery from St. Mary's a massive name here in Longford. Mel, as we all know was St. Patrick's first bishop I did not like him here. One of my best friends down here is called Mel this this a huge Demir so statements, and they make fantastic craft beers. I'm a man who loves his craft beer. So one of the things we did a lovely project supported by the EPA, for example, and our own circle air circulator is a is a PPP that that IMR and manages here on behalf of the stage and as the platform for policy on circularity. So if you're interested in that space, certainly check that out. And one of the projects that we funded out of that problem was in this sim bio beers, because we took the waste product waste bread that came out of out of food, we use that as a yeast starter in segments beer. So we had this lovely idea of a waste product coming out of one area as a starter to another. And that gives you a lovely example of the circularity model. Now I should say that they created a fantastic Belgian beer very strong, very beautiful. And it's exported all over the world and the first cousin in New York, who actually had a glass of St. Mel's Belgian brew coming from this particular sin by a beer project, EPA, and ourselves in it, Mr.

Dusty Rhodes  16:51 

Andrew, a lot of the technologies that we're talking about and Addgene, looking into the future, how long have these things trials for and researched before they actually go into mass production and become an everyday thing.

Andrew Lynch  17:04 

They're a very negative man, dusty, good.

Dusty Rhodes  17:09 

I just want to be safe. We say, My late

Andrew Lynch  17:12 

father, God be good to us to say that if what happens if concrete doesn't last beyond 100 years, the whole the whole world will collapse around us. There's an extraordinary amount of technologies out there, when we consider there where Barry was saying, Oh, look standard, what they're doing, that's an incredibly regulated sector. And rightfully so I fly on planes myself all the time, it's the safest form of travel, as we know, it's getting more accessible, more safe, you know, and again, we know the green agenda is coming hugely into that space. So a lot of these regulators are the farmer plants and medical devices or anything into the human system, etc. All of these are foodstuffs are foodstuffs, extraordinary, if you walk into any of the food production companies on the side, which we're very proud of, of that, in particular, from a green perspective, you know, green island green agenda, and this idea of St. Patrick green all over the world. So we've got extraordinary opportunities at an international level around this. So we know these are incredibly regulated and safe sectors that we're feeding into these technologies coming on board and the example the caregivers there, for example, earlier on around, you know, adding deposition onto some of these plants, etc, is very, very safe, very regulated. This is about grasping the opportunity. From a technology perspective, we know that in 10 years time, we're going to be using a way more than we're using now we're in that transition phase, if you'd like to get to that point. And I think I mentioned earlier on off off off air, and I'm sure around this idea of AI envision systems, we know that AI and vision systems can now read an oncology scan better than a human equivalent. And instead of doing up to eight to 10 an hour, we can do over 11,000 to an hour. And that's where we find huge help within our our systems, because we know that it can, it can add huge amounts of computational power, and the parts that we're finding difficult the bottlenecks that we have, and in everything from our health system to developing aircrafts, and all of these design capabilities, all of that can be brought to bear. Now, that doesn't mean that the human takes a step back or that cognition exits the state of and so on. There's this whole idea around human in the loop. We don't have decision systems, we have decision support systems. So if you consider technology, for example, is a bit like, how would you say, you know, Google Maps and you're driving along in your car, Google Maps tells you this is the fastest route to go from A to B. Now you might decide, well, do you know why I had an ex girlfriend used to live down there, I go down and see how that house is like this, and you go left at that particular junction, and we'll just readjust and say, Okay, I get it, we're going somewhere else, but you're still going to point B, and you want to be able to find a plot that is it isn't that it's going to take over the world. This isn't. We're not quite as Huxley's Brave New World at this point. But I think that doesn't mean that we should abdicate our responsibilities in the human element in this and as I mentioned there to John and Barry, I'm not altogether sure that you know, AI systems coming in and we know how people feel about AI and this is very which an age thing is? Well, I should, I should point out that, you know, when your young daughter son picks up an iPhone or an iPad, and they're sliding passenger using that technology them is the most natural thing in the world because it existed when they were born. Whereas if you look at how your parents are looking at to say, Oh, I don't know, young kids, they're always on the screens, I think it's negative, and so on. Because that didn't exist. We know, for example, AI gets an awful rap because our AI is everywhere, the minute it becomes a useful technology that we can understand it stops being called AI, and it starts being called Google Maps or Google search engine or something else that we're used to seeing, you know, how we how we, you know, Alexa, and all these things. That's all a, but there's stuff that we don't know. And there were still cognising about and that we're pushing forward is conceptual basis on that has that term AI? So I think those are, those are things that we should be very, very conscious of. But I don't I don't think that as I was saying, I don't think we should abdicate the human role in this. From a psychology perspective, from birth and Africa perspective, I'm not altogether convinced that, you know, people who get this type of technology, people who understand it, people who are advocates like myself that we should be using and can see positive contribution. So on, there is a whole pile, including a charter for AI, you know, What rights does an AI entity have, for example, there's already a, as there is a human chapter, we now have an AI chapter, which is accepted as an international level. So how we how we engage with this is something that keeps, as I said, not just the human in the loop, but the human at the center of that loop.

Dusty Rhodes  21:25 

John, let me go to you and ask you about because of something yourself and Barry, both mentioned, industry 4.0 What is industry? 4.0?

John O'Sullivan  21:33 

That's a $64,000 question. Yeah, I started, as I said, my own personal research, and I had a look around and because what is industry 4.0 It's a buzzword, it came out of Germany came from the German government back in the early 2000s, as how they would, what's the next step in industry? So industry, one was the, the manual labor transforming to steam power, then industry, two was electrification. And an industry three was electronics and automation. So we're up to the 80s. And now we're on industry 4.2. Our as Andrew said, we're an industry 5.0. And a lot of industries now are coming along with pharmaceutical 4.0. And food, 4.0, and so on. So what we're doing here with the industry 4.0 is it's about cyber physical systems. So we're linking the, the technology with the hardware and getting data. And I found the OECD came up with nine technologies and techniques that they would call industry for bio autonomous robots, autonomous machines, IoT Internet of Things, big data, cybersecurity, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, Andrew covered. So it's really a hodgepodge of lots of new things. And I think the one that I built I'm focusing on next is the is the simulation and what what people are calling digital twin, which is going to be the next phase of I think the next kind of accelerator for manufacturing.

Dusty Rhodes  23:07 

Okay, well, come on. You said so yeah, you have to explain your you're talking about paper, you're talking about digitization, tell us about digital twin digital

John O'Sullivan  23:16 

twin is, it's very exciting. So the first time I saw a digital twin was about 10 years ago, and it was the, you know, the diving bells that go down to the divers use to service the platforms at sea. So there was the ship where they went out to the platforms at sea, they had this big Diving Bell, and they brought down the divers, and they had to acclimatized and so on. So to do the training, and bring that ship into dark and do training, it was costing them hundreds of 1000s of pounds a day, you know, because the ship wasn't producing or wasn't being effective. So they developed an entire simulation of the diving bell, the pressures it would it would encounter, the technology is on board, the control room on the ship, and they put it on shore and they had cameras, they had animation. So everyone felt they were performing in the real world. And it saved a fortune you could train, you could commission you could make changes. And if you wanted to make a change to the actual machine, you could make the change virtually first and test it and then bring it to the real machine. So digital twin is we've we've digital twin cities with digital twin machines with digital twin products.

Dusty Rhodes  24:25 

So this has been happening for me for years. I know in the aviation industry with wind tunnels and modeling and, and all that kind of stuff. So you do have a twin. Are you saying that this is happening now more and more in say regular life?

John O'Sullivan  24:37 

Well, on the one hand, it's to do with cost. You can virtualize your process, virtualize your product and commission and train your operators and your your staff before you invest in the product. But even now I'm finding people who would never have used digital twin are now saying well I have supply chain issues. I'm not going to get the parts for two years. What are we going to do in the meantime? So let's build A virtual machine. And then let's train and develop it while we're waiting for this, this hardware to arrive. So it's interesting. It's probably the next thing we'll be looking at because we haven't got there yet.

Dusty Rhodes  25:14 

I was ready to ask do you do it a yourself but you're thinking about it. And it's something you get into. Speaking of out of aviation, Barry, you're with Lufthansa and I mean, digital twin must be something you've been doing for years, is it?

Barry Lowe  25:28 

No, it's interesting. When John spoke about it, I was speaking with Connor McCarthy from confirm the organization here and UL, and we're going to have a postdoc come on site in the new year, to look at developing a digital twin for our additive manufacturing process. We've got a lot of data that we've gathered, as part of our research, we have a lot of results from metallurgical evaluation of samples. And the idea is to build a digital twin of the process, and then use the digital twin then to help us optimize the process. But it was interesting, John, you're talking about using a digital twin, maybe where you don't have material or whatever, when when we have a new engine type that we need to develop repairs really typically don't have parts to work from. So for us to build the 3d model of the parts, and then to model the process and create a digital twin will be extremely beneficial to us going forward. So it's not something that we're unnecessarily using at the moment or stable, it's something that we see the opportunity, and really need to understand how best we can deploy it in in our business and get the most from it and to say we're starting off with that PhD or postdoc student who's going to work on a project for us to explore the value over two or three.

Dusty Rhodes  26:50 

Let me ask you, Barry, because you've worked in several different countries around the world. And we're kind of we're getting excited about digitalization and digital twins and all these things we could do. Is Arlen kind of lagging behind, or are we keeping you up to speed with, you know, other countries you'd have experience of?

Barry Lowe  27:06 

I think what's interesting to see is I think it was John mentioned this industry 4.0 originated out of Germany, back in the early 2000s. And one of our strategies is to try and collaborate as much as possible within the group. And certainly, when I compare what we're doing with push, our colleagues in Germany are doing very much aligned for maybe some hot on different parts, but they're looking more at the aircraft and the engines as a sort of a macro level. Whereas we're down on the detailed parts that we repair, looking at how we can apply digitalization to the actual processes used to repair departments. But I would say we're very much keeping abreast of of our colleagues in Germany, and trying to share as much or our knowledge and experience to to help each other and collaborate as much as possible.

Dusty Rhodes  27:59 

And do you find that there is a lot of that where you will go to Germany or other countries and you'll be inspired by something and then you'll throw in your tuppence worth, and they'll go, Oh, very good idea.

Barry Lowe  28:09 

Absolutely. Our key projects are what we call our latest projects, we would share that with them. The other area, I think is just within the region here we have a very active network called explore engineering. And that's an effort between the universities in the Midwest here and the industry in the Midwest. I think it was fascinating, really, because we talked about the manufacture of knees and hips, and that and we've got Stryker here in our region. And we've collaborated closely with them because they use a lot of the same technologies in the manufacture of hips and knees, as we do in the repair of air foils from aeroengine. So I think it just goes to show the great opportunity we have on this particular topic to collaborate. And over the years, we developed a very strong lean network, where companies collaborated on, on and shared experiences on their Lean journey. And I think it was a great opportunity for us to network industry together to share our experience on digitalization. And I suppose our most recent step forward was to consolidate our digitalization program in with our our Lean program, our CI program, because I guess when we set out on our journey, we saw digitalization as projects more like MPI projects, and we manage them with a gate process. And then we, I suppose one of the two spreads across the organization we looked at at training across the organization social we've had 20 of our staff across the organization do the UCD diploma in digital transformation. And it was out of that we really looked at are we looking at a transfer a digital transformation in our organization? Or was it more incremental improvement And really, we decided it's incremental improvement we're looking at. So when you talk about CI, continuous improvement under lean umbrella, we're effectively doing CI using digitalization. And so to bring the two programs together, made a lot of sense, because we're reusing and sharing the same resources. But it brings another dimension to our CI program when we talked about digitalization and opening up another world of opportunities for us. And part of the problem is we didn't have the knowledge in house, we didn't have the skill set maybe to really go after some of the digital opportunities. When we looked at CI, we looked at other non digital opportunities, let's say, and I think having trained 20 people on the diploma course, we now have people that are more aware of suppose hours and are looking for opportunities to make improvements to digitalization. And that's why I think def network would be really good to try and have companies share, experience and learn. If we're not competing against each other. We're actually collaborating and helping each other. And there's really a lot of opportunity there going forward.

Dusty Rhodes  31:12 

And do you kind of all need to speak the same language as well. And what you're doing is is helping them to do that. Just to wrap up our podcast for today. John, after listening to our barrier has been talking about or barrier listening to John, is there anything you would like to ask each other? I'll let John go first on that.

John O'Sullivan  31:28 

Barry, I I'd like to maybe touch base with you later about the digital twin journey you're on and your IoT solution you did you call it ThingWorx is the platform we're using. And it's the next step that we're looking at. And

Barry Lowe  31:43 

I like to like to talk to you, John, as well, because they call we're trying to do with Connor, in confirm. certainly interesting. Get your input.

Dusty Rhodes  31:51 

It started off as a podcast. And now it's Tinder. As like what's going on? So listen, John, what is it that interests you about what air Berry was saying that you're thinking,

John O'Sullivan  32:02 

not just the simulation, and the digital twin of the product associate and the digital twin of the process, and how that how that will affect the real manufacturing then, is fascinating. And the key is the feedback, you have to close that loop and get the data out of the factory floor and into the digital twin. Yeah, so that the digital twin is continuously improving in its true nature, you know that it's catching up with the real data, and you'll find that you're missing you have gaps, okay, we don't have enough data to be accurate. Let's add sensors, let's gather information so.

Dusty Rhodes  32:41 

And Barry, what is it wasn't that John was saying that you're gonna follow up with after the podcast.

Barry Lowe  32:46 

I suppose if I just take a step back, maybe just the one of the big challenges I found in trying to take an organization like ours, like we have 250 people. So we're a small company. We're a highly technical company. And yet I really struggled to guess digitalization embraced by the organization. I mean, if you look at from a financial controllers point of view, they're immediately looking at what's the return on investment. So I'm looking to try and get projects that I don't even know myself wanted to deliver. So we need to understand how the digital twin can do for our business. Before we can really put a project together without an ROI on it. I want to start with looking at some of the other projects where we're looking at process monitoring and dashboards, how do you see what the ROI is going to be on it? And if you want to invest in an IoT platform, before we even have a whole lot of projects that are gonna go on to it? It's really difficult. So one of the concerns I have for industry in general, if you take the smaller companies who maybe don't have the resources we have, how do you support companies like that, to take that step forward? That leap of faith as well as into digitalization and certainly is still seen as a buzzword, the industry 4.0 is a buzzword and some people it's like the engineers or our you know, it's it's a game or their toys to play an experiment with. And that's a big concern, I think.

Dusty Rhodes  34:05 

Well, let me ask Andrew about that, then. Because Andrew, we're talking about digitalization and developing things and you can do this answer. It's all amazing. And it sounds great for a big company that has the resources to do it. Because you've more of an overview of industry, do you find that this is filtering down into smaller players?

Andrew Lynch  34:25 

We've got to educate our own managers, not that this is something they could do, but this is something they have to do. And the problem is and I you know, I often give the example there of of hearing it, you're hearing aids went from went from just press or pressing, pressing or vacuum molded and so on to being 3d printed. It went from a couple of euros to a couple of pets. If you're an organization that was doing the latter, you are going to be out of business within nine months. It happens that quickly. We know that there's lots of medical device corporations at the moment at A at an international level that are looking 3d printing. Now if they get 3d printers in that manufactured product, what's that going to do to their supply chain, it's currently making plastic multipacks. And the tool makers that make the tools or molds for those plastic pipe manufacturers, that's a supply chain that could potentially be decimated. And we need to understand what that looks like and so on. We look at our car manufacturers, people supplying product into cars at the moment, as carriers transition from fossil fuels into electric, anybody who's making parts for all those, that's going to change significantly. If you're a company that makes buttons and panels for anything, what you're going to find is the buttons are gone, they're now on screens, we are one sided screens, and we press stuff, instead of having small plastic buttons, and so on. So there is a revolution in terms of what it is that consumers looking for. Were going from plastic parts to electronically enabled smart things. And we need to be on that journey. It doesn't matter what sector you're in, if you're a food manufacturer, for example. And you think the 3d printed food is something that will never happen, you're wrong. I've eaten a character that was 3d printed, you know, I've had a scan of my entire body and they gave me a little doll. It's not the cutest dog I've ever seen. It's a bit freaky, but it's, but it's a doll. Nonetheless, it doesn't matter what sector you're in, this is coming for you. And if you think that I can, I can stand still and do nothing. And I've got a good business, and I'm going to be alright Jack, you're not. Because regardless of whether it's the regulatory environment that's coming down from a circularity perspective, and is looking to manage and maintain the information to that data stream, or whether a multinational supplier for you is going to come through, or even a b2c customer, for example, there's a whole legislation coming down that I'm manufacturing machine given to a customer, I'm still responsible for the data infrastructures for that for 17 years after I started 14 years after itself. So these are things that are going to put huge pressure on on all systems, some of which, and most of which are going to be SMEs. But I think back to how I thought of ISR when I first came across, it's a good guy who never climbed this mountain. And now it's a hill, it's a very small hill, because we can all, you know, have the infrastructure and the knowledge and the mindset and the budgeting and so on to make that happen. This is just another hill in the making.

Dusty Rhodes  37:03 

I actually kind of gotta give you the last word, Andrew, in a way. All right, because is there anything from what Barry or John was talking about earlier that you'd like to add like to ask them?

Andrew Lynch  37:13 

John O'Sullivan, very serious question for you, my friend, collaborative robotics nonsense, are the wave of the future.

John O'Sullivan  37:24 

I would say for us, we've used them, and we ended up backing off from using them. There were limitations around the capacity and their accuracy. I suppose it's a trade off between the collaborative nature, and then what they can do, basically, how heavy can they lift? And how accurate can they repeat a task. So we've used them and then we've gone back to call it traditional robots from the big name manufacturers, Cuca, Mitsubishi, and then you have to install overarching safety systems around them. So for dusty if you're not familiar, a collaborative robot is where you can actually have a robot on the desk with you. And the human being is handing parts to the robot, the robot is taking parts. So it is it's in the it's in the name collaborative. But for that, you're dealing with a moving part that can be dangerous, and it has to be managed very carefully. So I would say there's a future there. But we've we've not had the case studies to use it. I just cannot. Can I just make a point on to reiterate something that the lead said about the SMEs in Ireland, I think you might say, Yes, Andrew, that we don't have robots per 100,000 robots per 100,000 people. But we're in a process industry where robots don't aren't required. Were moving liquids around more than parts. We don't have that OEM base that the Germans and the Italians have. So I would say we're probably digitalizing elsewhere, apart from robots. What we do need to do is this is this, this podcast is part of it. We need to build clusters of expertise, where companies like mine, we have the advantage over burying it, we can see what the other customers are doing. We can see what the other industries are doing. And we can take the best from each and deliver it to someone like Barry, we can take knowledge from the medical device from the the orthopedics and bring it to automotive bring it to aerospace. And those clusters are key to the to the growth of the industry in Ireland, I think.

Dusty Rhodes  39:30 

Well, James, it's been absolutely fascinating talking to all of you, I definitely get the impression that not only is digitalization alive and well in Ireland, but we are at where as good as anywhere else in the world, which is, which is good to say, Oh, I won't say we're better but we're as good as anybody else in the world, which is great. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today. John O'Sullivan, Managing Director of Douglas control and automation Barry Lowe, engineering manager at Lufthansa Technik. Turbine in Shannon and Andrew Lynch, Chief Innovation Officer at Irish Manufacturing Research If you'd like to look up any of our guests, you'll find their contacts and LinkedIn profiles in the show notes area of your podcast player right now. Our amplified podcast was produced by dustpod.io. For engineers journal, you'll find advanced episodes on our website at engineers ireland.ie or just press follow on your podcast player right now to get our next episode automatically. Until next time, from a self destructs 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 episode two we explore how technology continues to redefine sectors of the engineering world and how these strides in digitalisation are increasing speed, accuracy and efficiency in business. 

We are joined by Michael O'Shaughnessy Digital Lead for Construction at PM Group, Ed Arnott Electrical Engineer at MMA Consulting and Darragh Ryan, a Design Manager at Horizon Offsite Ltd

Listen below or on your podcast player!

Topics we discussed include:

• Offsite engineering and its benefits (01.49)
• How digitalisation has changed how we approach project management (04.47)
• The benefits of moving away from manual work to software systems (08.21)
• Trimble and the role it plays in electrical engineering (09.29)
• The biggest challenges of working in a post covid world (16.08)

Guest details:

Michael O Shaughnessy is Digital Lead for Construction at PM Group with responsibility for delivering  PM Groups Strategic Digital Plan for Construction 2025.

Darragh Ryan is a Design Manager at Horizon Offsite Ltd. Darragh’s work focuses on the design and management of light gauge structural steel frame projects across both Ireland and the UK.

Ed Arnott, Ed is an electrical engineer at MMA Consulting. Ed’s background in the industrial gas and petrochemical industries and specialise in hazardous- area electrical design.

Contact details:

Ed Arnott Electrical Engineer at MMA Consulting Engineers
uk.linkedin.com/in/edward-arnott 

Darragh Ryan
www.linkedin.com/in/darraghryan1

Micheal O Shaughnessy
linkedin.com/in/michael-o-shaughnessy-92a5241b

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

The cloud has probably been the biggest transformation. We've got people spread across the world working in the same environment in the same space and they're getting instant updates.

Michael O’Shaughnessy

Offsite construction is a relatively new industry and born out of digitalization. It's something that's becoming more and more possible as digitalization progresses. 
Darragh Ryan

The great advantage of the program I use, Trimble, is that it's actually designed around the regulations. So I know not only the capability of the equipment but I also know what is considered safe and legal. 
Ed Arnott

Transcription text

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

Dusty Rhodes  0:39 

Hello, my name is Dusty Rhodes Welcome to episode two of our digitization and engineering mini series, where experts at the forefront of their engineering fields explore how digitization has been woven into the fabric of business and society and how Irish engineers are rising to the challenge. Today we have a another three amazing guests for you. They are the digital lead for construction at pm group. Michael O'Shaughnessy. Michael is responsible for the delivery of pm group's strategic digital plan for construction. 2025 Darryl Orion is a design manager at Horizon off site whose work focuses on the design and management of light gauge structural steel frame projects across Ireland and the UK. And from m m a consulting we're joined by electrical engineer Ed Arnet. Ed's background is in the industrial gas and petrochemical industries and specializes in hazardous area electrical design. Let me start with Dara. Dara, you're an off site engineer. And I can't think of anyone more perfect to benefit from digitization. How has it shaped your industry over the last 10 to 15 years?

Darragh Ryan  1:49 

Yep. So offsite construction is a relatively new industry. And it is born out of digitalization, really. So it's something that's more and more possible, as digitalization progresses, when you do a building off sites, you need a lot of coordination up front in the design, you can't really figure it out, well, you can, you can figure it out on site, but that slows everything down. And that goes back to the more traditional way of doing things. But also construction you do your your drawings and model and 3d upfront, you coordinate where the m&e where the services are going, where all the steps where they act, tact wants, doors, windows, whatever. So all that is done upfront in advance, and then you manufacture the material before it comes to site. So, you know, without the digitalization, also construction will be, you know, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be where it is today anyway.

Dusty Rhodes  2:47 

And as an electrical engineer, how has digitization shaped your industry,

Ed Arnott  2:53 

I suppose the main impact has been the speed at which you can perform a calculation. Electrical Engineering has always been this sort of iterative process, every time you make a small change, you have to say, increase the size of a cable and maybe increase the size of a fuse, and maybe you change the cable route. And all of these little changes can have a big impact on the design. So having a system where you can calculate and recalculate very quickly is extremely useful. And then of course, there's the means of recording the information and sharing it with other fields. So some programs allow you to do that, and to keep a good record of all the equipment that you plan to use.

Dusty Rhodes  3:35 

And, Michael, I think the title of your job just shows the change that we have seen in some engineering firms, you are the digital lead ad pm construction, is this a sign of the importance that digitization is having at the company?

Michael O'Shaughnessy  3:49 

Absolutely. We have a strategic plan for 2025 led by I suppose a term we call D LPD. digitally enabled lean project delivery, digital being the enabler, lean being the foundation, you know, reducing waste from processes and, and trying to get gain real value for our customers down the line as we deliver projects. So it's somewhere we have to go it's primarily driven by a major skill shortage in the industry demands our true, you know, gone through the roof. Clients want buildings built immediately as the you know, they want to get the products on the market and, you know, we're seeing something just to go back to Gary's point, you know, we're seeing a huge amount of offsite manufacturing, and lean and digital underpins, you know, the speed of how we can now deliver so it's where the industry is going and, and pm grouper are trying to stay ahead of the curve and get there you know, you know, as the front runners you know,

Dusty Rhodes  4:47 

can I ask all of you these changes in digitization has changed the way that you approach a project in the first place? So if somebody says to you, we need x building facility in y place Has that changed how you start with your blank sheet of paper? What do you think? Darren?

Darragh Ryan  5:05 

Yeah, it would, it would like, first of all, the digitalization process allows you to visualize things very, very quickly. So site constraints, you know, that can be easily understood before every year on site, you know what what roadways are near is there's real networks near. So setting up the site and site safety. That's, that's a huge thing. Now that that can be done through digitalization, that couldn't be done previously. Also, what you can do with digitalization is get experts involved, that might necessarily be from that location. For example, you can get experts in from abroad from other parts of the country, you know, that have more experience with the problem at hand. And you can do that through digitalization whether it's, you know, video calls, or you know, remote working, things like that, you know, so. So on that side of things, it leads to more a collaborative working environment where things are safer, you get the experts there, and it leads to just better project delivery.

Dusty Rhodes  6:09 

And, Michael, how has digitization changed the way you approach a project?

Michael O'Shaughnessy  6:14 

Yeah, I think I think that's a really good question. And ultimately, it underpins, you know, the whole digital transformation. So, how we started this journey was we tried to understand what we do. And the key to doing that is identifying our our core processes. So once we defined and were very clear of what our processes were, we looked at where we potentially could strike value by optimizing how we deliver those processes. So what we found was, is in any project lifecycle, the construction side is where potentially the most risk is, it's where more things can go wrong, that's the longest time on site, you've got more people that are moving, you've got a lot of equipment moving in, you know, that's where the real efficiency has to need to start. So we looked at that in real detail. And we, I suppose, identified certain processes. And we felt that if we digitize those processes from, you know, making information better available to collecting data, we could ultimately remove some of the people and waste from from projects. So to do that, what we did was we identified core activities that we would not have typically done at design stage. So we would embed certain information into the models, we would do certain activities at design stage that when the information moved to the construction phase, that information was readily available, information was set up to be utilized efficiently accessed efficiently. But ultimately, we can try to drive back a, you know, an improved quality or an more efficient quality product, you know, when it wants to get to construction stage. So we put a huge amount of effort now up front, when planning out a project because, as I said, the risk is a construction stage. And that's where you have to plan better now to make these gains and drive these efficiencies.

Dusty Rhodes  8:02 

Alright, let's get away from talking about things in general and explore things a little bit more specifically, I'd like to start with Ed on this because Ed, you're very much into the digitization programs side of things, how does using software now differ from the way things used to be done by hand?

Ed Arnott  8:21 

Well, some of the guys I trained with will give you stories from the 70s about plotting on a graph, what a fuse would do and how much energy would go through it. Now, the great advantage of the program that I use at the moment tremble is that it's actually designed around the regulations. So I know not only the capability of the equipment, but I also know what is considered safe and legal. And therefore I can adjust my design accordingly. So for example, things like the tolerances of cables are based around standards that are actually derived from the British and Irish standards.

Dusty Rhodes  9:05 

And because you know what the standards are and you know what the regulations are and you know what is physically capable, then you know that the project is that you're working on so you're able to put all of this together within that software and boom, you can make it all happen much quicker.

Ed Arnott  9:19 

Precisely. So the software already knows that I have to comply with the standards. I just need to tell it what I intend to do and it figures out the best way to get there.

Dusty Rhodes  9:29 

Tell me about the software that you're using it's trembled pro design. Now I take it you don't work for them and you're not paid for them. This is not a sponsored feature or anything like that. Tell me in a sentence what tremble pro design does is it for electrical only or can be adapted elsewhere.

Ed Arnott  9:45 

It is only electrical, it is mostly a low voltage design tool. And explain to me what that is. So if I am designing a low voltage power system, and I want to decide what size of cable to use or what size of fuse I need, I can use this program to calculate those things. I can also simulate an overall power system, how much energy I'll need? What would be the effect? If there was a problem on that system? Where is it likely to fail? That sort of thing?

Dusty Rhodes  10:18 

And is this piece of software that you need to license and install on your network or various machines in your network? Or is it something that operates in the cloud?

Ed Arnott  10:27 

It's an installed piece of software, I understand. And then

Dusty Rhodes  10:31 

how does it update itself? How does it keep itself regulated with the regulations as at work?

Ed Arnott  10:37 

Well, the software developer tremble issues, regular updates, obviously, you need to maintain your license. But yes, each time the regulations are updated, or each time a manufacturer brings a new piece of equipment to the market, then the database is automatically updated with this extra information.

Dusty Rhodes  10:57 

So let me ask you about speed when you sit down and you're doing a project, and you're trying to decide what it is you're going to use and which cables you're going to use, and how long they need to be and all that. How long would that have taken to do on paper?

Ed Arnott  11:09 

Well, there are back of the envelope calculations, you could probably do, but to give an accurate calculation, it might take an hour or so to do a calculation, which might take a matter of minutes now.

Dusty Rhodes  11:22 

So you're literally saving hours on every project.

Ed Arnott  11:26 

Right? But the real benefit is if you need to make a change, because whereas you'd have to start again, from scratch on paper with this system, you simply click a button, see what would happen if the cable route was longer, for example? And you can do so instantaneously?

Dusty Rhodes  11:43 

Does that help you then when you're trying to design and you're trying to explore new ideas? And you say to yourself, What if you're able to make those changes and see what happens?

Ed Arnott  11:52 

It's good for what if scenarios, it's also good if there is say a late change in construction, say if you have to move a substation, or perhaps a different piece of equipment is proposed from what you originally intended, then you can see what the impact would be, and you can accommodate it very quickly.

Dusty Rhodes  12:11 

And do you find that that software also helps you to make better designs?

Ed Arnott  12:15 

I'd like to think it's both better and more efficient. You shouldn't need to build in such big tolerances if you can calculate accurately what to expect. Very good.

Dusty Rhodes  12:26 

Michael, let me move on to you when you are looking back on some of your work with renewable energy. How has digitization shaped some of those processes? Oh, I

Michael O'Shaughnessy  12:37 

suppose when I was working in renewable energy, I worked on a project or the products that we developed, was designed to be remote and actually below sea level. So getting information and data off that product was something that, you know, was a huge challenge, you know, there's a huge amount of research into, you know, what information should we gather? What information would tell us what would enhance the performance of the machine. So what we find now and how that's transferable to the type of sector I'm in at the moment is, we've got teams and teams of people that are spread across the world, from clients to design teams. So you're ultimately gathering similar types of data, and making it available that provides the right information, valuable information to all those that need it, regardless of where they are in the world. So

Dusty Rhodes  13:24 

Dara had referred to collaboration as being an advantage of the digital world, do you find that there is a lot of that collaboration going on?

Michael O'Shaughnessy  13:32 

Probably one of our main innovations or initiatives this year has been to release the what we call the collaboration portal is which ultimately is each project now has its own suppose website for want of a better term. It's got all the specific project information. It's got a shared collaboration space where you know, the entire team work and save all of their information or access their information. But I suppose where the benefits are, is each projects collaboration portal are structured identical. So where we have teams that are, you know, a bit more dynamic, that are moving from project to project, they can go to the very same location, regardless of the project and find that very same piece of information that's relevant to that project. So, you know, collaboration is key. Similarly to that we've, you know, launched an initiative called tiered agility, which is ultimately how we structure and manage our meetings, right down from the daily huddles that designers will have, you know, in relation to what their daily tasks are, right through to coordination between the different teams to the different trade partners that we work with, right through to management and then at leadership and governance level, or we're dealing with clients. So we've a real firm structure on how we want teams to communicate. So that means the people at the top have visibility and can access the core information that would matter to them and matters. to clients when they, you know, and gained and got gathered out efficiently, traditionally to projects would have typically, at the outset sort of set itself up, you know, in its own way, particularly large projects, you know, every project manager may have, historically may have had their own flavor of how they want to structure the project, but probably bringing in the standardization enables digital, and I suppose it enables efficiency. So, as people move around, they're working in a common environment.

Dusty Rhodes  15:28 

So, is this part of the strategic digital plan that you're putting together for PM?

Michael O'Shaughnessy  15:33 

Absolutely, yeah, it's that standardization. And that's key to success here, it would be very difficult to digitize, you know, multiple flavors of the one way of working. So you have, we have to standardize and, you know, if you have a common way of working, you can then enhance that way of working with it with one digital solution. Albeit, you can improve that digital solution over time. But I suppose all of these digital solutions, you know, require investment. So, you know, you need to, you know, invest and get benefitted out and use that investment, and products across multiple projects to gain value from it.

Dusty Rhodes  16:08 

We have a huge heavy hand from COVID, because it just accelerated everything that was digital last terrific. But now, we've been through that. And we've made a lot of advances in collaboration and being able to work across digital platforms, with your own strategic digital plan within PM, what's your biggest challenge over the next six months?

Michael O'Shaughnessy  16:30 

It's good question. Everybody's back to work. And everybody is traveling again. And the demands from the sector are huge, I suppose it's fixing on you know, certain processes, ensuring that we gain that real efficiency, you know, knowing exactly where we want to push our digital take our digital journey. That's the property the big push, but I suppose the demands on the business to accelerate and then the digital team to be able to maintain that speed is going to be the challenge. Dara

Dusty Rhodes  17:00 

offsite construction, that is your area and digitization must have made a huge difference in that. How do you explain to people the advantages of off site versus more traditional on site construction.

Darragh Ryan  17:14 

So off site what it aims to do, right? It's it aims to construct buildings more quickly, more reliably and sustainably, by taking work away from site and using off site construction. Right. So off site isn't just like gauge steel, what I do, there's two main types of it. There's there's two D Systems, and that includes like a steel frame, which is what I'm involved, that would also include timber frame, precast, panels CLT. But there's also 3d offsite systems as well volumetric systems, much modular systems, you know, so horizon where path of an E Text group now, so we mainly focus on residential buildings. So everything from high apartment blocks, concrete floors, to small houses, lightweight floors, student accommodation, hotels, healthcare, when you compare it to traditional construction, which is a more linear approach, first, the foundations get built, then the walls, then each floor and the roof, you know, whereas also construction teams can happen in parallel. And that ties in, you know, the digital process that allow that to happen. But, for example, while the foundations are being built, you can have walls being made in a factory. And then as the floors go up, you can be fitting out your internals. So things things happen in parallel, that speeds up time on site. So we can cut down, you know, a structural frame program for a superstructure of up to say, 50%. With like HCl, compared to traditional construction,

Dusty Rhodes  18:48 

I just want to double check that you're telling me that you can build the building 50% faster?

Darragh Ryan  18:54 

Yeah, true. We just do a structured frame, but we normally allow, like, if we're on a housing scheme, three days per house, that's walls, up floors in roof on watertight structure. Okay, so it's apartment block, I mean, it all vary in size, but you're talking a typical apartment block a week per floor to construct it, you know, so, so you are talking about 50% saving to say some of the more traditional methods, so also, if it's utilized, right, and that pre design stage goes in early, you can have massive savings and get reduced that site time, you can get revenue earlier, you know, from selling your buildings or renting it depends what they're being used for. So it has massive, massive advantages in terms of speed. I guess then another advantage, it will be the sustainability side of things. You know, it tends to be a lot lighter. It's less carbon footprint than say your your heavier, say more concrete based masonry block schemes. So sustainability is all So another general key advantage in it, and I suppose we touched on the other things earlier, but like quality control, it's in a factory environment, it's also leads to safety. You know, so there's a lot of advantages with like H and off site in general, that are coming into mainstream more and more now. And Michael will testify to that. But we saw the opportunity in the market, and you know, that that's why we're here today, really, that there is an opportunity, it has advantages, and it can, you know, deliver housing and buildings, you know, affordable. And quickly.

Dusty Rhodes  20:37 

How about digitization with clients? Because I mean, it's great for ourselves to know the industry, and we know all the parts. But what about trying to get the clients in understanding the design?

Darragh Ryan  20:48 

Yeah, so what we do is we develop a pre construction model is what we call it, we call it a pre con model for short. And we work in the Autodesk Revit environment. So we build a volumetric model, which is basically just shell elements of the walls, because our walls will have a certain thickness, you know, for the system build. So we build the volumetric model and coordinate that with the architect, you know, so the openings are in the right place, the right size, the walls are in the right place, steps in the slab, whatever, and then also bring in the other design team members. So mechanical and electrical is a huge part. So we would model in openings where the services need to be under huge openings. In buildings these days for mechanical ventilation, for example, we would model in them openings haven't pre made in the factory, so that no subsequent work needs to be done on site. And we would use this model as the basis to collaborate with the client and the clients design team, we would issue out the model with drawings. And that would be used as a tool to comment back to us to build this model accurately. We then use that model then to do everything internally becomes our kind of central design. So we use it to do the structural engineering, we export the steel if there's a hot rolled columns and beams in to the steel fabricators for fabrication. And we also then export it to our own in house detailing software to detail the studs. So that pre con model in Revit becomes a central model for all the coordination and all the design and, and then the manufacturing design as well.

Dusty Rhodes  22:31 

Let me ask you all, because there's pros and cons to everything in life. And we've been talking very much about the pros of digitization and wonderful is, what is the one thing that niggles you that is not being looked after? At the moment? I'll start with add on that one.

Ed Arnott  22:48 

Interesting question. I suppose for me, it's probably about sharing information amongst disciplines. So with my design software, I can export the information to Revit, for example, but it's a little bit harder to get information back from Revit if somebody else makes a change, so I have to maybe manually update the model or change the calculation myself.

Dusty Rhodes  23:15 

And why is that? Is it the same software that they're using? Are they using a different software to you?

Ed Arnott  23:21 

It's different software packages, I think part of the problem is that different disciplines require fundamentally different things in their calculation. So in my field, electrical, a lot of what I do is it's nebulous. We don't look at the physical equipment, per se, we look at its capabilities. But we must also be aware that the physical size of our equipment has an impact on other disciplines. So we have to allow space, as Dara was saying for rises and opes. And that sort of thing. And if somebody decides that we have to have root cables through a different route, that means they have to be longer, which means we might have to redesign them, and so on.

Dusty Rhodes  24:04 

And how do you think that that problem can be solved? Well,

Ed Arnott  24:07 

I suppose if they were one overarching program that could do everything will be nice. I sometimes wonder if something like a VR system might help if you could get a virtual design team and actually visualize what you're designing. So if you could meet together and say, This is my system, this is where I think it needs to go, this is how much space I need. And then you could change the virtual models or suit and agree things that way rather than exchanging drawings and then going through another iteration.

Dusty Rhodes  24:40 

Dara, do you think that that idea of virtual reality will work across the various disciplines?

Darragh Ryan  24:45 

Yeah, it could work and raise an interesting point. But I think the key what what Ed is trying to say there and it's very important is how the different software packages talk to each other. And that could be something that's sure Repeat when it should be something that's improved. It isn't great. We have something now and IFC, which is generally a 3d model type that can be imported into most older software packages, but it's still not perfect. And I think discussion between different software companies on how they can work together and import and export compatible formats, that that's, that's clear. I also think one of the big things might be training, there's new software updates every year for all the programs, but there'll be new things on Revit that we won't be able to use, because we're not trained to use them, we don't know about them. So I think there needs to be a more proactive approach in the industry to train people up and keep developing that skill set, you know, so that when the new things become available, we can pick them up straight away and realize their advantages straight away. I think that's something that the industry could do better, maybe have a training group or society. I know there's, you know, obviously, it's stuff it with engineers, Ireland and death, but perhaps a dedicated digital one,

Dusty Rhodes  26:09 

Michael, do you find with different disciplines wanting to work with each other? And then of course, having different pieces of software or even within one discipline, you've got variants of software? How are you getting across this problem with the strategic plan at PM,

Michael O'Shaughnessy  26:25 

we would have multiple tools, like Autodesk is probably a big product that's on the market. But we would also have a hexagon products, which is a competitor. And particularly in the complex projects that we work in. Certain products are preferred in industry for delivering complex pharma lines, for instance, whereas you know, Autodesk is probably the more collaborative suite, we go to great lengths to get coordination and collaboration happening between our disciplines. And I suppose, where information is not fully translatable, we've developed other processes to gather information from the specific tools to ensure that they are available to those who need it. And but it does take it takes a lot of people. And it takes good processes to ensure that that collaboration happens. And it doesn't come cheap, you know. And those processes, I suppose, are continuously improving. We'd have a team of people, part of our digital team working constantly on developing and improving those processes, ensure that we stick with what's going on in the market.

Dusty Rhodes  27:31 

Time is one thing and money is another and I'm quite sure that you find that people are in another area. Do you find that there is a reluctance for people to learn new digital tools?

Michael O'Shaughnessy  27:43 

No, I would think I would think there's a great lot of frustration in industry. And the demands external demands on on individuals, just due to the workload that's out there at the moment is probably tremendous. So people want to do better, and they want to get to work quicker. There's no doubt about that. And, you know, when this new technology comes, people really really do embrace it as what our experience is and you know, always are willing to go that extra go that extra effort to you know, upskill and develop their skills to understand what's now available in the market and how they can make life a little easier for themselves. I suppose.

Dusty Rhodes  28:24 

I'd like to wrap up today by giving each of you a chance to ask each other across questions, because I'm sure when you're listening to what everybody else has been saying that might be stuck in your head that you want to ask each other. Dara, is there anything you'd like to ask add or to ask Michael?

Darragh Ryan  28:38 

Yeah, Ed, obviously, coordination with m&e is a huge part of what we do. And the big thing that we find is there is a detachment between the consultants, the m&e, consultants and the contractors who are doing the work on site. You know, it seems that the consultants don't fully do the spatial design really of where docks need to go and it's more about performance spec. And I'm wondering how could we bring that design process in say mechanical electrical forward so that it could be coordinated at an earlier stage? Would it be worthwhile for clients to get you know, the m&e contractors in earlier as opposed to waiting for, you know, site to to happen, you know, to work alongside the design process.

Ed Arnott  29:29 

I can see some mileage in that I've had one project in particular where a building design was completed. And I was expected to find a way to get the m&e services from the basement to some heat pumps on the roof, with absolutely no service rises in the entire building. So I think you're right, possibly, some early discussions would help. And I suppose this goes back to my idea of virtual reality, the VR that you can talk through these things and maybe shift things around within your Virtual Building before you start drawing up plans.

Darragh Ryan  30:07 

Yeah, that's that's a good point, then for Michael, it seems that digitalization is more industry led, then legislation lead at the moment. And I think that's largely driven by what saves money we will use. So what do you think has been the biggest advancement quite recently in either your strategy or, or in digitalization that you that you can see, I guess,

Michael O'Shaughnessy  30:35 

access to information is probably been, you know, the the cloud really has transformed things. It's not long ago, since you know, every office in the world certainly in Dublin had a huge server room where, you know, you needed to be in the office, you needed to be on the network, to access files, access information, we've got people spread across the world, working in the same environment in the same space, and they're getting instant updates, information is updating in real time from, you know, locations right across so that what the cloud has has changed has just, you know, Ben, probably been the biggest transformation, I suppose. Yeah.

Darragh Ryan  31:17 

And just to add to that, I suppose it also has helped projects. I remember in the past, you know, when there wasn't the proper BIM system, and you know, file sharing system, you could have one set of consultants, whether they're destructure, or architect or whatever, working with revision six, and suddenly, actually, revision 10 is the latest revision. So having a kind of cloud based BIM service for a project as well has eliminated that from what it used to be, you know, so there's one true copy. And that's the latest file.

Dusty Rhodes  31:50 

Can I throw in a question for Ed, because we're talking about the cloud and everything being available everywhere at every time? Ed, you were saying that the software that you use tremble is based on the actual computer and getting updates doesn't happen as quick as you might have in the cloud? Do you have problems like that and keeping you up to speed with working with other people using that same software?

Ed Arnott  32:12 

Well, that's the program, but the files upon which you're working are obviously stored anywhere you like. So those can be on a project server, and often our

Dusty Rhodes  32:23 

Ra. Okay, see, you get around it that way. Edie? Have you got a question for Michael, or a question for Derek,

Ed Arnott  32:30 

I suppose. Probably best to excellent. Michael. With a design project, obviously, we've been discussing a lot about the upfront design and how we can deliver, say, a completed building. When it comes to the finished product. What happens with your, your as built drawings? Is there a way in which digitization can make the handover package better? So all the documentation, for example, for the end user or for the local authority, or whomever?

Michael O'Shaughnessy  33:06 

Tag said? That's a good question. It's certainly something that I spent a lot of time working on in recent times. So it's very fresh, in my mind, absolutely a. So the work we do typically upfront by developing the design, harvesting the data out of the design tools, and we we package that data and information into our portals. When we get to construction stage, we use digital applications to manage the inspection processes. And what we're doing in many cases, we're actually automatically populating some of the inspection forms from the data that's harvest added design. So you're, instead of using the old notepad or the the clipboard, where you're manually type writing in figures and tag numbers of equipment, and for part of the inspection processes, that's now all automated into the into the form. So an inspector will arrive to site, he's got a certain amount of inspections to do and all the forms are partially pre populated. And all they got to do is execute this step. So with that, then the asbestos and the inspection records all form part of the turnover package, because they're in a digital environment. And the models are all in a 3d environment that gets turned over as a combined package and ultimately then populates the operations and maintenance software package that they use for operating the system. The real value in that is is if something fails, or they have a maintenance strategy, they can go back and see who inspected a particular instrument or a particular piece of equipment when it was inspected by who what tests what were the figures and not shoot informed and how and when they might maintain a piece of equipment or roped off, you know, replace piece of equipment or service piece of equipment through the operation of the of the facility that they're working in. So it's just huge advancements in that space. But we probably have a lot more to do.

Dusty Rhodes  35:02 

Michael, I'll wrap up with yourself. Do you have a question for Edie or Dara?

Michael O'Shaughnessy  35:08 

Yeah, I got I'm not sure where to start, but I suppose maybe. Maybe for, for for Dara. Obviously, quality assurance now is a big thing. Certainly in our industry, I suspect it's the same as yours. And I'm a great believer in offsite manufacturing, do you find you have good quality processes or good digital quality processes for your product? Because obviously, when something gets shipped out your facility and lands on site, what's your kind of view on that?

Darragh Ryan  35:40 

Exactly? Yeah. So look, we've we've improved that massively over the last couple of months. But we've we're introduced a digital process here where each panel gets a QR code, and a QR code is stuck onto that panel with a sticker. Every time that panel goes through a different process in the factory, that he is rolling, that's when the QR code is stuck on, then it goes to assembly. And then it goes to add insulation and boarding and things like that, every time it's scanned and more information is imported in. And then eventually, when it comes out the other side of the factory and loaded onto a trailer before it's loaded. It's also scanned. So when you scan that panel, you can see who rolled it, who assembled it, who put the boards on what time what they when it was loaded on the truck when it was delivered to site. So it follows that process through and we know exactly, you know, it ties back to your quality process. But you know, who who did it? And where the responsibility were, if there's any problem, where was the breakdown. And then, you know, like the the processes then that you have talked about filling in the inspection forms. We also have something very similar. It's an app for site inspections, where we can take a photo, and we can drop a pin on the drawing. And it's all on the app. So the photo is at the pin. And there's a small comment, for example, please insert a new screw or something like that, you know, so we've got a full quality process that brings in the digital side of things that really benefits the end user as well because they have a higher quality product. Well,

Dusty Rhodes  37:19 

I think it might be fair to say that you're all very much proponents of digitization, but more collaboration, and more things working together would be helpful. Michael was shocked to see digital lead for construction pm group, Dara Ryan, Design Manager at Horizon off site, and Ed Arnett from MMA consulting. Thank you so much to you all, for joining us today. If you'd like to find out more about what we spoke about on the podcast because 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 will find advanced episodes on our website at engineers ireland.ie or just press follow on your podcast player to get our next episode automatically altered next time for me just erodes. Thanks 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.