GUEST DETAILS
Alasdair Henderson is BAM UK & Ireland’s Executive Director of Ireland. Alasdair joined BAM as a graduate engineer in 1996 and has worked his way up through a variety of operational and business leadership roles across BAM. 

He is well known as an advocate of purpose-led business, believing that the best and most sustainable financial results are achieved when the things we build add value to society.  He holds safety, quality, inclusion, and collaboration as key tenets of what makes a good business and is delighted that he sees all these things on a daily basis at BAM.  

Alasdair is actively involved in policy development in the industry and is a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a fellow of the Institute of Quarrying, and a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde.  

Connect with Alasdair on LinkedIn 

MORE INFORMATION
Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.

QUOTES
"The time you spend thinking most about safety is normally immediately after an accident." - Alasdair Henderson 

"It's one of the largest buildings in Europe." - Alasdair Henderson 

"If you start with a misaligned scope, it never gets better. It just gets worse and worse and worse." - Alasdair Henderson 

"You can absolutely make those environments safer, warmer, more welcoming by changing the way you design that infrastructure." - Alasdair Henderson 

"Our industry is addicted to concrete and steel. If we want to get to net zero, we're going to have to do something around that." - Alasdair Henderson 

KEYWORDS
#Engineering #Construction #BAMIreland #NationalChildrensHospital #PublicProcurement #Sustainability #Diversity #Digitalisation

TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription.

Dusty Rhodes  00:04
Hi there, my name is Dusty Rhodes, and you're welcome to AMPLIFIED the Engineers Journal podcast. Often engineering is focused on the technical, logistical and production parts of a project. Today, we're going to hear from a leading engineer who believes that the best outcomes are reached by focusing on the people. 

Alasdair Henderson  00:22
The reason the construction goes wrong is that the expectation of the customer and the belief from the contractor of what they're providing starts misaligned. So that's scope misalignment, it never gets better.

Dusty Rhodes  00:33
Our guest today has almost 30 years of experience with one of Ireland's leading construction companies, where he's worked in business operations and HR before moving on to the C suite.

Alasdair Henderson  00:43
The time you spend thinking most about safety is normally immediately after an accident. 

Dusty Rhodes  00:49
It's a pleasure to welcome BAM UK and Ireland's Executive Director of Ireland. Alasdair Henderson, Alasdair, how are you?

Alasdair Henderson  00:55
I'm fine. Dusty. Good to meet you.

Dusty Rhodes  00:59
Now, listen, I always get wild and varied answers to this first question, how did you get into this wonderful game of engineering? What was the little thing when you were a kid that went, 'whoa, I want to do that'?

Alasdair Henderson  01:10
Well, I had a head start Dusty. So my father was a civil engineer, still is a civil engineer, retired, but it's just not, it's a lifestyle choice. It's not something you give up. So as we I'm one of four boys. As we went around on various holidays with the family, we were perpetually standing up beside various structures for Dad to take photographs. We thought he was photographing us. He was there. He had us there for scale. So it sort of becomes a way of life. And so I've got a very vivid memory of when I was about five years old going to one of the projects that Dad was working on. It was a tunnel project in Aberdeen. Of course, five years old, I had a hard hat that didn't fit me, and we went down a shaft in a Ricky old cage, sharing the cage with a box of nitroglycerin explosives, and then went out along the tunnel. And when you're five years old, boy, does that make an impression on you. So I think it was, I wouldn't say it was predestined, but it was pretty well set up. So that's how I got into it.

Dusty Rhodes  02:08
So you just kind of went through secondary school and then on into university and everything. And when you came out, then as a new graduate, you pretty much joined, BAM, straight away, and you stayed there your whole career. What kept you there?

Alasdair Henderson  02:20
Well, we do fantastic, interesting things, and I've moved around in the business, doing a lot of different things. So when I joined, I actually joined as a student. I did two years of summer work as a student and did some just extraordinary jobs. Again, working in tunnels, working in ground, investigation and characterisation. I studied civil engineering with geology, which is a slightly odd thing. It's civil engineering infrastructure, as you would expect engineering to be taught, but with this wonderful little thing of geology thrown in there, which normally engineering is very analytical. You know very much about the answers, very much about things having definite answers. And then you throw in the natural world and all this ambiguity that comes with it, and you start to realise just how you know how much we deal with it through engineering. You know, that has natural variability to it. We'll come back to that because it's a really interesting subject as to how you deal with ambiguity generally. But that got me into that got me into ground engineering. So I joined BAM as as a ground engineer. And gosh, every, every three or four years, I was doing something different in BAM. So interesting, nice, big business with huge opportunity.

Dusty Rhodes  03:21
You have a particular fascination with tunnels and being underground, and I believe you were involved in quite a big underground project in London at one stage.

Alasdair Henderson  03:31
I was, yeah, look, we have spent a lot of my time underground. It's, it is a thing that either thrills you or horrifies you, and you know, so Crossrail is the project you're talking about. We as a business, we did a lot of the tunnelling in Crossrail. My particular part of the business was looking after how you deal with the settlement in the ground that happens when you make these tunnels. So if you can imagine, when you bore a tunnel, which is what we were doing in London, the ground around it relaxes, and as the ground relaxes, the structures on the surface start to settle down. Now we were, we were tunnelling under Mayfair in London, you know, the highest value property in London, banks, jewellers, you know, amazing places. You know, it's just an... it's a natural factor of making those big horizontal holes in the ground that the ground relaxes. So the predictions were that we would have settlement of maybe up to 200 or 300 millimetres in some places. And of course, you can't have that with a building. So we have this technique called compensation grouting, where we inject liquid cement above the tunnel to jack the ground back up again. So you don't get 200 millimetres of settlement all at once. You get 10 millimetres, and then we push it back up by 10 millimetres. Then you get another 10, and we push it back up by 10, so the building stays in the same place, the tunnel stays in the same place, and we sort of fill in the gap with compensation graduating. It was wonderful.

Dusty Rhodes  04:50
That sounds logical, but explain to me the scale that you're doing that on.

Alasdair Henderson  04:56
So we would sink a shaft. And you know, I would love to. Take people on tours around Mayfair, because I can say we had a shaft there. We had a shaft there, but we would, we would have a vertical shaft, and then we would drill out horizontally up to 90 meters. So we'd be drilling, and the head of the drill would be two or three streets away with, you know, hundreds of 1000s of people every day walking above these things, traffic, going, businesses operating, absolutely unaware that that's what was in place. And we had these arrays, these beautiful arrays of grout pipes in the ground that allowed us to access every point where we needed to put crowd. And we could just inject every time the monitoring system said we're seeing some settlement here, we could go to that particular location and just push it back up again.

Dusty Rhodes  05:38
Are there any other particular projects that kind of bring back good memories like that for you.

Alasdair Henderson  05:42
Oh, sure, I did one in called Locky tunnels, which is in the Northern Highlands of Scotland, which was hydroelectric tunnels. So these are aqueduct tunnels that allow water to be collected in one part of the hillside and taken through this tunnel and put into a reservoir, and then they're used to generate hydropower. These tunnels are typically between about two and a half to four meters in diametre. Two sets of tunnels here totalling 24 kilometres long. So you know, going going through mountains in Scotland. Now it's from a technical standpoint, it's wonderful, it's interesting. It's all those things they were bored in the 50s, and we were in there repairing them, stabilised, and then doing rock bolting, hard rock tunnels, so they're unlined. And you go through the middle of this mountain and you see these, you see the rock all around you, and it's beautiful. I mean, it's you just, you know, you see this fresh-looking rock. But there's something that's even better. I mean, you've taken an ultraviolet light, and this is the geologist in me. You've taken an ultraviolet light, and you switch off every other light, and you switch on the UV light, it causes some of the minerals in the rock to fluoresce. And it's like, I don't know, it's like being in a movie. It's things just shine and sparkle. It's, it's like diamond mines that you might see in a Disney film. And it is just the most stunningly beautiful natural phenomenon. So, yeah, look, there's, there are so many things in that kind of length of career. One of the real pleasures of working in infrastructure and engineering, particularly as a contractor, is you go to some incredibly interesting places, and you see things, and you go to places that nobody else is allowed to see or see, so wonderful.

Dusty Rhodes  07:15
So listen, tell me about your career then, because you've kind of pivoted through all of those like, hands-on engineering projects, and then you kind of got into business roles, and then on to people and culture. Just tell me briefly, the story of your journey.

Alasdair Henderson  07:27
So I went to university fairly young. That's just the Scottish education system I studied at Glasgow. So I say, I've got, I've got three brothers at that time. You went to your local university because, well, you couldn't really afford to see anything else. That's where you went to, yeah, turned out to be a very good university. I really enjoyed my time there. Came out, and as I say, I'd done two years of working as a student, as a contractor, and I think as a young engineer, I had done what was a very theoretical degree. So the view was, you know, I'll do maybe five years in contracting, and then I'll move off into consultancy, and I'll be a consultant engineer for the rest of my life. Yeah, it didn't happen. I went straight into contracting, into a part of the business which was focused on ground engineering, a sort of specialist contracting business on ground engineering, and it was a really interesting way to start your career. So one of the things about specialist businesses is that they are very close to their customers, and they're very close to the doing of things. What a lot of people don't understand around the contracting industry at Tier One is there's a lot of subcontracting. There's a lot of management of subcontractors for us as a business, a lot of direct delivery as well. But a lot of the activity and construction happens within that specialist supply chain. So people are employed there, and they do the special things that once you add it all together, makes construction. So as a young engineer, the first thing I did was went out onto projects and started to run them. And you were given a project. It had to be planned, it had to be priced, it had to be won. And then when you landed on the project, you had to deliver it, which meant organising your own resources, understanding what they cost, making sure that you are applying for the money that you are earning, working with the customer. To understand, is the customer satisfied? Are they getting the thing they need? Managing your workforce and then reporting all that back, forecasting where you're going to end up, all the other bits and pieces that come from the business, the commerce of contracting and of course, as a young engineer, you don't really you respond, you don't think, think twice about anything like that. You're just doing the things that people have said, No, do this. Now, do this. This is the process. Get on with it again. As a young engineer, you you're looking to do the most exciting and exotic things you can, because it's technically interesting, it's engaging, and it's very self-centered, and it's very much experience built, and all those sorts of things. You know, you know. You learn that working with customers. You learn the the the same management of a workforce, rather than leading a workforce, because at that that stage is still very much management, and you learn commercial management, which are from any business perspective, are brilliant things to learn. So that was a real plus in being in that specialist business. Yes, you know, after a few years of doing that, you start to a few things start to dawn on you that that idea that people are looking to you for their cues, that you've got this workforce that are really talented, really capable, don't come from the same background that you do. Haven't gone to university, aren't like the circle of friends that you're used to and you because of the work you do with them and working really closely with the group of people that you need in order to deliver a project, you really see how they contribute value and how they make their own contributions, which is an interesting realization for a young man from a privileged middle-class background, which is exactly what I was. So you start to think about leadership, not consciously, but it sort of happens, the idea that you've got to motivate people, that you've got to explain to them why they're doing the things they're doing, what it is that is important, and why we're trying to achieve the thing we're trying to achieve. Not just dish out instructions and expect people to deal with them. And you also come across some other stuff. I mean, you get tested in a way that's quite surprising, the as I say, the surprise of shifting from managing to leading and realising a that that's a thing and B is a really, really important thing, but also the surprise of having to cope with the unexpected. You know, it's a it's a regrettable fact of construction still much, much better as it is now. It is still an industry where there is significant hazard and managing safety is a real problem. And the first time you have an accident, or you're exposed to an accident, and a real human being, somebody you're responsible for, is injured, that's a that's a real moment of change for you as an individual.

Dusty Rhodes  11:31
When you talk about that, do you have a particular incident in mind that you can share?

Alasdair Henderson  11:36
I have to say, the I've got a lot in my history, unfortunately, where we you know very minor incidents, and you can look at them, you can understand how you prevent them in retrospect, and a very small number of more significant incidents, and they all leave an impact on you. And they all leave an impact on you because you learn a very interesting thing. The time you spend thinking most about safety is normally immediately after an accident. You look at it, you understand that. You think, if only you know, here's the things we could have done that would have prevented this. And a lot of what we do now, actually, within the business is is about trying to find better ways to do that, to get people to think about safety without them having to go through the consequences of having an accident in a curious thing. And this is a really interesting thing about the business right now, as as you get safer, and the accidents become further and further apart in time, the opportunities for learning get further and further apart in time. So you need to find a new way of learning. You need to find a new way that allows you triggers that. How do we make this better? And we do that through a particular way in the business now, which is really, really successful, but in those days, you know? So that was the that was the 90s, the first thing you injure somebody, or somebody's injured on your project, or you have an incident, something happens, you know, it is unplanned. It's surprising, and you are the person you have to cope.

Dusty Rhodes  12:50
How does that make you feel?

Alasdair Henderson  12:54
It's a huge mix of emotions. Again, I think engineers are trained to be very analytical and very pragmatic and get things going, even more so in contracting. So when something happens, it's full activity mode. Stop this change that make it safe. Do this. All the activity comes out around how you deal with the immediate aftermath of something, whether it's safety, whether it's technical, whatever it is to stabilise the situation, and then that period of reflection happens, and it happens at the same time as investigation and improvement and all those things, but the personal reflections that come from that, particularly around safety, build up. I won't say that on day one, when you've, you know, when you've the first day after an accident has happened and something you're responsible for, you're immediately changed. You are, but not in ways you recognise, but over a period of, you know, a few years of not very many of these things happening, but enough that it has that impact, you start to understand the nature of that responsibility and how that compares with some of the other responsibilities you have. There's a really interesting thing. So I became a I became a dad when I was Gosh, 28 or 29 something like that. And you know, prior to that, work was absolutely everything. The biggest problem I could think of as a work problem, all those sorts of things. And I now say to my staff, you know, until you've stood in a pediatric A and E at two o'clock in the morning with your child in the arms, you don't really know what a problem looks like. And after you've done that, then it gives you a different perspective, and it allows when something happens, say, an accident happens. My first question is, is anybody hurt? And if the answer to that is no, the rest we can deal with.

Dusty Rhodes  14:24
It's really interesting how you say there's a difference between managing a project as an engineer and then leading people. And it's something you seem to have come through kind of quite naturally, because as you are managing then you become a leader, something you didn't realise you can learn by experience, which is one way of doing things, but obviously it's better to learn from others experience before you, and to do some kind of, you know, kind of professional or personal development on on that were you able to learn about leading people as a result of those incidents and experiences that you had?

Alasdair Henderson  14:58
Yeah, and through both. The mechanisms that you've just mentioned there. So, you know, as an organisation, we've always done lots of very good individual development. Early Career Stage used to be very focused on technical development and leadership didn't come until later on. We've changed that a lot in the business now that leadership, as soon as people are being exposed to the idea that they are managing groups of people, we help them into leadership training, because it's such a positive impact and it makes such a difference. Commercially, in our business, it makes a huge difference, because you end up with better managers and better leaders before those individuals it, it accelerates the way they think about those things. But informally, and I think certainly my early career, that was the most profound thing. I had some really inspirational people that I worked with who without, without formally teaching about leading, or without even perhaps knowing that they were doing it through leading by example, visible leadership and just the way they conducted themselves and the humanity of them actually allowed you to recognise that this is a good way of doing things. I had a particular line manager, a chap called Ian Walz. She's retired now, but Ian, I still keep in regular contact. And I think Ian, I would say, allowed me to understand that you can run a big business, a complex business, like a contractor that has lots of commercial concerns, that has lots of activity going on all at once. You can do all of that without being a monster, without being a table banger. You can do that and still be a human being and that, if you know, I can pass on any lesson. That's the one I want to pass on to people humanity and being, you know, being authentic and true to yourself and true to human beings that you're working with is much, much more powerful than the whole command and control trying to tell people what to do. Most often when you try and tell people what to do, number one, they're a bit suspicious of it. And Number Number two, at least some of them don't do it. So it's really not a great method of how you get things done. I

Dusty Rhodes  16:50
think the point you're making about people and the importance of people is stuff that you don't really realize until you're, as you say, in the middle of a job, and there's all kinds of which you're very experienced that now with diversity and inclusion and all kinds of things, which I want to talk about later, but firstly, I want to just pivot and talk about BAM for a few minutes, because BAM Ireland is known for delivering ambitious projects across all kinds of sectors, and one of the biggest and most well known recently is The National Children's Hospital. Big projects like that always have changes. Can you tell me, firstly, how big is the National Children's Hospital project, and why is there always changes when it comes to these things?

Alasdair Henderson  17:31
So it's, it's one of the largest buildings in Europe. And I think perhaps some of the commentators on the project or on the outcomes the project, don't necessarily understand just what a scale a project. It is six and a half thousand rooms. You know it is. It is going to be the envy of not just European, but, you know, Western Hospital pediatric care across the world, really. It's, it's an extraordinary facility. It's a brilliant facility for Ireland, the whole island of Ireland. And it will transform pediatric care with a shadow of a doubt. But of course, it's not at that stage yet. It's at the stage where people see it as a project. They see it as government expenditure. And of course, they're quite rightly concerned about those things. I think, as you zoom out from that, and I've been involved with lots of major projects, you start to see patterns in some of them. And one of these patterns that you see around major projects, and let's not, you know, let's not apply this absolutely to Children's Hospital. It has its own particular features, but generally speaking, with major projects, one of the things you notice is that, and I'll be clear, major public funded infrastructure projects, they are, you know, they're huge, so they tend to only be affordable by governments, and immediately, then you have the value for money, public expenditure questions being asked, which takes you into political arena, and quite rationally, society are interested in that these projects are hugely complex. They are so complex that, in reality, being able to understand the scope and delivery at the start, before you've done anything, becomes almost impossible from a just from a sort of philosophical standpoint. They are so complex, and the complexity can't be seen until you're in amongst it. But of course, we have ways of dealing with that, and one of the ways of dealing with that is detailed, rigorous engineering planning. The more time you can spend on that before you start building, the better the outcomes are. And that's a lesson from major infrastructure construction everywhere. Unfortunately, that tends to conflict with a political desire that once you've got permission, planning authority, budget for doing something, you really want your start now shovels in the ground, Bill, build, build, because they the the political capital that comes from having started something, the visibility of starting something, and the public's need to see that progress is being made is a physical need rather than a, you know, rather than a sort of practical need. And so often these projects can be started before they are actually ready to start. And the result of that is that change happens as you go through the project. Again, I'm not going to say that specifically what's happened at Children's Hospital, but it's a thing that you see the other really. Interesting, recurring theme that happens with these major infrastructure projects that are hugely impactful on, you know, creation of opportunity in society, creation of wealth, provision of service, whatever it looks like. But the benefit is, once that benefit starts being provided the day you start treating a child in the Children's Hospital, everything that's gone before is forgotten. I mean, if I talk about Dublin, specifically, Port tunnel. Remember port tunnel? You look at infrastructure that deeply problematic and complex in its time, was an absolutely essential piece of infrastructure now Dublin, Dublin Airport, terminal two. You know, it's you wouldn't imagine Dublin airport without terminal two right now. But you know, another complex infrastructure project that had its own challenges.

Dusty Rhodes  20:41
I want to get back to this particular topic of public procurement because public procurement and contracting models is something you will be very familiar with, right Can I ask you, what is your view on identifying the best procurement model for Ireland, which is focusing not just on the cost, but on delivering the right outcomes for the country.

Alasdair Henderson  21:01
You've nailed it just in that sentence. Outcome focus is the thing that's here. Now, you know, Ireland's had all sorts of challenges, as every country has, in how you procure infrastructure effectively, and there's a lot of moving parts in that you've got. You know, how well funded is the country? How are you procuring that money? Is it Is it money that's in the treasury? Is it money that's coming from external financing? What's the risk appetite for the organisations that are delivering this? Because, you know, fundamentally, risk starts with the person who wants to develop it. If you want to, if you want to build a tunnel somewhere, let's say you want to build a tunnel for a metro system in Dublin, for example, right now, that's a government problem, and all the risk sits with the government. At some point, they'll contract to some organisation to do some construction, and the purpose of that contract is to pass risk. It's to deliver scope, but it's fundamentally a risk-sharing model, if you like. You ask somebody to do something, they commit to do it, and they take certain risks in doing that for a commercial price. That's changed a lot in the past. In past five years, actually, never mind the past 10 or 20 years that the level of risk associated with the business model of contracting has changed enormously, and the ability of contractors balance sheets to sustain that, or I'll put that a different way, the willingness of contractors to sustain those kind of risks on their balance sheets has reduced enormously. The construction industry knows very well what it's doing. It absolutely can deliver these projects well. And actually, Ireland is good at delivering these projects. There's a narrative that says we don't know how to do this in Ireland, not true. We do know how to do it. We just sometimes choose to do it in a way that is different, and you end up with the wrong outcome. But jumping back to what you want from this, anybody who's procuring fundamentally, they're looking for something around budget, something around program and something around the expected benefits. So let's call those outcomes. If a procurement model that you're currently using doesn't take you to those outcomes, then it can't be right. So single stage, lump sum contracting are offering up complex projects to say before you know, we conceptualise something for six years and put it out to the market for three months to have it priced, which is automatically a rush. And therefore, you know, information poor and time poor, tell me right now, without knowing anything about the future, what that's going to cost. And you can't charge me any more, by the way. You know, how do you expect that model to deliver a rational outcome. And that takes you to thing we call two stage contracting. The two stage contracting has unfortunately got a bit of a poor reputation in Ireland from a couple of implementations. It is, right now, the best way, and it's demonstrably the best way. And it does two things. You you have a first stage which is has to be competed for. So you have the market competition thing, but the first stage allows the customer and the contractor and other interested parties to work together, paid to work together, to develop the scope, the planning, the risk profile, and get to the end of the first stage, where the customer knows what it is that they're going to be paying for this that everybody has talked about what it is we're doing, that the design is fully developed, the risks are understood and properly allocated, and crucially, the scope alignment. So the understanding of what the customer thinks they're getting versus what the contractor thinks they're providing is perfect because you've been working collaboratively together to do it. If at that point, the customer says, this is the right answer, let's go. You move into phase two, and that's building the customer. Can also say, actually, having gone through all this detailed phase, I can see I don't want to do this. Or this isn't to you know, this isn't the right price. We need to do something else. Most commonly challenges that happen with construction. Or the reason that construction goes wrong is that the expectation of the customer and the and the belief from the contractor of what they're providing start misaligned, so at scope misalignment, and if you start with a misaligned scope, it never gets better. It just gets worse and worse and works. So, you know, it's a real challenge. One of the challenges that people throw at two stage contracting is, well, you do this first stage and that that just increases the cost these. Jobs, it's much more expensive because everything's getting lumped in there and adapt. What actually happens is it gives you a much closer view of what the likely outturn cost is. If you want to compare procurement methods, to say, give me your best guess of what you think is going to cost. So your best tender price for the start? Yes, you can compare those. You can compare those all day long, and you can go for lowest price, or you can go for some other most economically advantageous model. But that's just the price that's proposed at the start. It doesn't include anything that might happen, or anything you could foresee happening if you had a bit more time to spend on it. And it's certainly not a brilliant guide to what the outturn cost is going to be.

Dusty Rhodes  25:38
No so procurement is a complicated area. And as you say, it's about budget, and then it's about benefits. Another thing that I think you must be considering is sustainability, because it's a huge focus for for engineering today, and there's a lot of kind of rethinking and change going on in the construction industry around that. Bam says that it's committed to building a sustainable tomorrow. Sounds great. Lovely Little Yeah, very corporate explain to me, as a human being, exactly what that looks like and how it's being implemented.

Alasdair Henderson  26:12
So you'll have heard of net zero. Yeah, everybody talks about net zero. So this is about getting to a place where the carbon emissions of the way we live our lives have there's no net emissions of carbon. There might be some emissions of carbon, but there's something else that offsets them. If you understand it, 39 40% of carbon emissions come from the construction or operation of the built environment, whether that's infrastructure buildings, the house you live in, the way you heat your house, the way you travel. 39 to 40% of anthropogenic CO two emissions come from that if you can't deal with the built environment, which is the construction industry, then you just can't get to anything, to net anything. So you have to deal with the way that construction traditionally gets done, and the way we operate, the built environment, the buildings we have, and the infrastructure we use. So very straightforwardly, there's two parts to that. There is the capital build phase. That's the bit that I suppose I'm very involved in as a contracting business. What does it cost? What do we emit in doing these things? And then there's the operational phase. What does it cost to run your building, power, water heating, particularly the operational phase is very strongly guided by how the facilities are designed. How are they designed to operate. So things like putting an air source heat pump into your house or into your building, instead of a gas boiler or an oil found boiler, zoom out to building scale. You know the kind of buildings you see in central cork, central Dublin, central Galway, big, impressive buildings, and of course, they are heated in different ways. Efficiency is important. How they're insulated, things like lighting, making sure that the lighting is efficient and well designed. Energy consumption, water consumption, trying to limit the use of water. There's some other interesting aspects in sustainability as well that aren't just about consumption, but the way that the building deals with the environment. So we we take a green field and we turn it into something hard and concrete or aluminum or whatever. When rain hits that it runs straight off it and into the into the drainage system. Instead of soaking gently into a field. When rain hits a field, the water flow is attenuated. It's slowed down. When rain hits a building, it's speeded up and it rushes down into the surgeon. Get these flood surges that happen. So now, when we design buildings, just as a case in point, we've done one in southern Dublin, we have what's called a blue roof, so it has a green roof. You're probably familiar with that, a roof that looks sort of grassy. It's actually a different kind of plant. It's not grass, but it looks nice. It's not like a hard roof. So water comes into that, but beneath that, we also have a water storage layer so it attenuates the rainfall. It doesn't just hit the building. It goes straight into down pipes. It hits the building and is slowed down so that the peak flows in the outfall into the sewer are much, much slower. Come back to the construction phase. It just, just to be absolutely, uh, sort of final point in this, the construction phase. One of the biggest things you see in civil engineering construction is diesel being burned to construct these things. You know, big equipment fueled by diesel plumes of smoke. CO two emissions. Two years ago, I switched our business to using hydro-treated vegetable oil, certified hydro treated vegetable oil. That's a that's a really important distinction. So this is not HBO that comes from palm oil or or first virgin sources, if you like. It's comes from used waste oils that recycled to make a fuel that has a huge impact on our CO two emissions that come from from liquid fuels. The thing that everybody's doing our car fleet. So we have a fairly big car fleet, three or 400 cars, moving those over to EV over a period of three years. By the end of 2026 our fleet will be 100% EV. So you know, we really are stopping doing the things that we said we would still do.

Dusty Rhodes  29:43
Also on planning projects, while we're talking about these things, how is BAM handling the challenge of supporting biodiversity that may be interrupted by sites

Alasdair Henderson  29:52
biodiversity is one of the most interesting, most productive challenges for us. Actually, it is. It's really hard to measure, so we don't yet have a great. Measure of what improvement in biodiversity is in a, you know, purely numerical sense, but conceptually and qualitatively, you can absolutely see it. So imagine what you you know, if you imagine the motorway, what a motorway looks like, and how the in the engineering profession says this is how a motorway should look. You know, it's strips of tarmac and at the side, sometimes you're in a cutting where you've got slopes going up from you, and sometimes you're on an embankment where you've got slopes going down from you. So you have this alignment of the road, and it doesn't just follow the land. It cuts through the land, sometimes cutting, sometimes embankment. And you'll Picture those embankments and those cuttings, and you'll see long planar surfaces that are covered in grass, the same kind of grass. And it's very neat. It's very geometric. Is exactly how an engineer would draw this. This is, this is what good practice looks like. Make it neat, make it tidy. It's easy to maintain, easy to construct. So from engineering standpoint, that's been best practice for many, many years. And from a biodiversity standpoint, it's catastrophic. It's monocultural grasses, the roads and indeed, Rails, long, linear infrastructure is a real problem, because it interrupts, interrupts the movement of animals. So animals that are naturally migratory are animals that are territorial. So as they produce offspring, have to expand their space. These long bits of linear infrastructure block that. So what do you do about it? Well, there's a few things you can start using, things like green tunnels. It's just one solution, but it's a solution where you allow these spaces, green tunnels and green bridges at these crossing points at regular intervals on long linear infrastructure to allow natural migration of animals. But you look at those long linear slopes, those planar slopes with monocultural grasses on them, what we actually need there is some decay and decomposition. Positive decay and decomposition now saying those words and the word positive in the same sentence sounds nuts, but it's that is how nature works, that you need that you don't want to be cutting the grass all the time. You want trees that fall over and rot and they support insect life and they create nutrients and all those sorts of things. So the way that we manage those landscapes changed. Don't make a mistake of thinking they're not managed. This is people are it's very popular to talk about rewilding as a solution. Rewilding is just another way of managing a landscape. These are now managed landscapes, and we have to deal with them. If you look at the global biodiversity loss, and you look at a map of that, the Ireland and the UK are in the bottom 10% the most biodiversity, the most sort of loss of natural biodiversity across the globe, largely through land use. This is about how we've set up our infrastructure, but also how we use the land that we've turned over to farming. This is not farming as bad. This is just we have to find ways to manage the landscape in a different way that support all the things we need as a society, infrastructure and farming amongst them, but also all the things we need in order to continue. What are we doing as a business? Well, we're starting to feed this into the way we design these projects, the way we conceptualize them, the way we advise customers about them, and the kinds of things we leave behind through our monocultural landscapes, more active biodiversity, where we manage motorways, and we do plenty of that in Ireland, thinking about the way that we manage verge cutting and things like that. Less of it allow wildlife to grow, allow plant life to grow, variations in plant life, even sometimes things you know that are a little bit twee, but you know, bug hotels and beehives and things like that all make an important impact. But the biggest single thing we can do is change what we think the best practice in constructing long, linear infrastructure looks like.

Dusty Rhodes  33:22
Let me get away from the environment and back to people. And one thing I hear over and over again on the podcast is about engineering and diversity and inclusion within the industry, from your point of view. Why is it important?

Alasdair Henderson  33:39
Well, you know we we are of society and in society as an organisation. If you honestly believe that we can construct the right things for society in the right way and not include the viewpoints and contributions from part of society, whatever that part looks like, whether it's gender, race, whatever it is, then you're kidding yourself when you look at the way the infrastructure is designed. And let me, let me give you an example around public transport. If you are like you and I are, you know, a white male of a certain age, confident in our space, the world has been designed around us. So the world has been designed to suit us because it's been designed by people like us and built by people like us to be operated. So when you walk into a, I don't know, a railway station in Dublin, or you're sitting in Kent station in Cork, or Kent station down in Galway, which we are rebuilding, by the way, you're standing there, it's an environment that you're completely comfortable with. If you're standing there at 10 o'clock on a Friday night, and it's not terribly well lit, and there's not very many people around, and you're a woman, you've probably got a different experience with that. You've certainly got a different experience of that. And how can we deal with that? Well, that is an environment that's been created by engineering design. You can absolutely make those environments safer, warmer, more welcoming by changing the way you design that infrastructure. And unless you've got. Insight at design stage and at construction stage, then you're not going to build the right thing that works for the rest of society.

Dusty Rhodes  35:07
So this is why you're saying we need a more diverse people included in the industry, at the design site, in engineering, because they will bring these different perspectives, and the projects will be better as a result.

Alasdair Henderson  35:20
Exactly that. Let me give you another example. You're wandering around city centre cork. Somebody's doing some work on something. They've put a hoarding up. It's blocked off a bit of the pavement, so you have to step off the pavement into a temporary walkway. Now, you and I can manage that. You know, we're able-bodied. We can walk and all the rest of it. If you're a wheelchair user, if you've got a buggy if you know, if you are not of that group, then that just that simple change has a really profound impact on the quality of your life that day, or your or actually your ability to do something. Those insights are necessary for how we think about infrastructure, even a temporary sense. And then, of course, from a from a business perspective, this is dead, dead obvious. You know, even if you don't believe the moral case for including people in your business. We are sitting here in Ireland with basically full employment bar structural factors. So we have not just a skills crisis, but a total availability of population crisis. Is the Civil Engineering and Construction Industry sufficiently attractive that people are rushing towards it? No, not really. So we need to make sure that we have access to all of the people, the potential talent that could come into our business, and make sure that they feel that this is a welcoming environment for them to come to and stay.

Dusty Rhodes  36:29
Do you think there are kind of preconceptions then about how engineering works that's creating barriers?

Alasdair Henderson  36:36
Oh, yeah, absolutely. When we do when we do student placements or school placements, one of the things we try and do is get the parents in on day one, because more often than not, the parents are hugely influential in how children choose careers or feel about a certain industry. And often the parents have a view of construction. If they're not exposed to construction or infrastructure, indeed, engineering, more broadly, directly, they tend to have a view on it that is sometimes a bit dirty. It's about manufacturing, or it's about digging holes and stuff, and it looks a bit I don't really want my daughter to go there. And then you bring them along and you show them the the really high-quality professionals that we have within our business, the money, amount of money we spend on incredibly productive, modern equipment, the use of digitalisation. I mean, it's, it's Minecraft, RIT, big, if you like. And the parents see this, and they see the care and attention, sophistication, understanding and the support of culture around what we do. And I have to say that parents absolutely love our industry when they see it, and they're very happy for to say, you know, my daughter, my son, yeah, go do your placement there. But before that, contact, yes, there's absolutely preconceived notions around mucky, dirty, you know, not very nice industry.

Dusty Rhodes  37:45
Listen. Let me wrap up our chat today by talking about something we love. Talking about the podcast, the future from your point of view, though, looking towards the future, how do you see engineering evolving in the next 10 years?

Alasdair Henderson  38:00
Well, look, we're sitting here today. There is a force 11 storm across Ireland. We've just come through a Christmas period where one of the principal freight transport links came out of action. You start to understand that Ireland is in a place where it's its infrastructure is fragile, and the infrastructure that supports the rest of society needs attention, needs to be built. And on top of that, when you look at the challenges that Ireland as a country faces, and the world generally faces, these extreme weather events that are challenging the infrastructure that we have now, buildings, you know, where the cooling systems aren't enough to keep them cool in the peaks of summer heat, railways, where we have the rails that buckle in the peaks of summer, heat, cold weather snaps that freeze and land snow on us that we can't clear for a week. Those kinds of events are coming now, and they're coming more regularly, and our infrastructure is not shaped through it. So we need to update the infrastructure we've got, and we need to new build, new infrastructure that helps society work. And the positive around this is you can see this also from the way that government policy is shaped around it. Is shaped around this. People really now understand the value of that infrastructure and how it creates opportunity and employment for a future Ireland. So I would say, if you're thinking about coming into engineering, generally, construction, specifically, it is probably the most important 50 years coming in construction that there has ever been when you look at the challenges that the world has to deal with. We are the organisations. We are the industry almost uniquely that has the capability to deal with that.

Dusty Rhodes  39:29
It's happening, and it's changing so fast that the next 10 years is going to be particularly important. Aside from that, on the technology side of things, you know, we've got aI everybody's talking about, you've got more and more and more use of robots and stuff like that. Are you excited by any of those new technologies?

Alasdair Henderson  39:44
Oh, hugely. And you they're making a big impact in our industry already, efficiency, effectiveness that we've gone through quite a long period of productivity not really enhancing. And then you start to see how some of these automation techniques are really enhancing our productivity, and whether that is modularisation for house building. I. Whether that is about much clever, more expensive capital equipment that we buy, but it's much more productive, and therefore it's worth it. You know, those things are changing. What you will definitely see in construction over the coming years is there will be fewer people in construction, which is, it's a bit like the the Genesis that farming went through. It becomes more productive, and it's not because it doesn't mean that fewer people are employed in the industry. What happens is there is a bigger industry because it's able to do more. So by increasing our productivity, we get away from some of the skill challenges that mean that we just need more people to do things and with the people we've got, but we do need people, let's be clear, but with the people we've got, we can do even more. It's a huge opportunity. And digitalisation is just extraordinary. What we do now compared with even five years ago, absolutely amazing.

Dusty Rhodes  40:46
And my favourite expression is when you look at these new technologies, you have to remember that this is the worst they will ever be. What about Finally, on materials? Because materials are changing all the time. Lots of innovation. There have you seen any that excite you?

Alasdair Henderson  41:02
Yeah, and we're actually doing a lot in that space. So concrete and steel, our industry is addicted to concrete and steel, both very, very high embedded carbon content with content materials. And of course, if we want to get to net zero, we're going to have to do something around that. So one of the technologies we've been working on biocarbonisation, it is about how you treat the ground in situ using bacteria. I'm not going to bore you about it now, but it's an extraordinary use of natural resource that you can use bacteria to improve the strength of the ground. So instead of doing that traditional construction thing of digging a hole, dumping the soil and then filling the whole field of concrete, you can actually treat the soil so it's got a higher strength and is more usable as a construction material, but we must start using more effectively, ceramics, fiber based materials. Get away from our absolute addiction to concrete and steel. Aviation has been doing this for many, many years. The materials are well understood. They absolutely have application in civil engineer.

Dusty Rhodes  41:55
Last question for you, Alistair, and a little bit of advice for everybody who's listening today. You've got a very interesting point of view on what engineers should be interested in. Explain to me.

Alasdair Henderson  42:07
So I when I talk to people about the things that they should be developing in their career. And of course, you do get lots of people come and say, How do I get your job? You know, how do I become like you? Not many actually, but people who want to progress in their careers. And the thing I say to them, I suppose, is a little bit surprising, but the thing I value most is bread, and that's for a few reasons. You know, breadth of understanding of the world that you're working in. As I say, we are in society and of society, if you don't understand it, then the decisions you make around how you do things will not be good decisions.

Dusty Rhodes  42:37
So you're talking breadth, breadth, yeah. So, all right, yeah, maybe the Scottish, Scottish accent sounds like bread. You see the toast? Sorry, the breath, yeah. And that's, you

Alasdair Henderson  42:47
know, that's everything that is. It's culture, it's society. Why do we do the things we do? Why we talk? Why do we exist? Philosophy, you know, philosophy. You should absolutely be interested in philosophy, understanding what it is, where we've come from, where we're going. Those things might not sound like engineering, but they change your perspectives, in your Outlook, and help you deal, help you engage with stakeholders who are relying on you to do good work and help them meet their requirements. All of that feeds into a sort of critical thinking mode, if you one of the challenges that we have in the modern world is lack of critical thinking, and it often comes from an inability to see perspectives from other people, if you if you work to improve your bread, apart from being interesting and self-fulfilling anyway, it also allows you to be a better critical thinker, because you are able to see and understand more perspectives. Helps you reduce your, you know, Availability Heuristic biases. It helps you reduce your confirmation biases, all those things that constrain critical thinking, and goodness knows, we could do with so much more critical thinking in the modern world.

Dusty Rhodes  43:50
What a fantastic point of view to wrap up on. If you'd like to find out more about Alasdair and some of the topics that we've spoken about today, you'll find notes and link details in the description area of the podcast. But for now Alasdair Henderson, Executive Director of BAM Ireland. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Alasdair Henderson  44:06
Thanks, Dusty. It's been a pleasure.

Dusty Rhodes  44:08
If you enjoyed our podcast today, do share with a friend in the business. Just tell them to search for Engineers Ireland in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland for advanced episodes and more information on career development opportunities. There are libraries of information on our website at https://www.engineersireland.ie/Resources/Amplified

Until next time from myself, Dusty Rhodes, thank you for listening. 

GUEST DETAILS
Roma Agrawal is an engineer, author and presenter who is best known for working on the design of The Shard, Western Europe's tallest tower. She studied at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford. Roma has given lectures to thousands at universities, schools and organisations around the world, including TEDx talks. She has also presented numerous TV shows for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery, and hosts her own podcast, Building Stories.
Her first book, BUILT (2018) won an AAAS science book award and has been translated into eight languages. 

MORE INFORMATION
Looking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer. https://www.engineersireland.ie/   

Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.

QUOTES
"I really love the idea of responding to what's there. This building could only have been on this particular site." - Roma Agrawal 

"There's lots of different systems that have to work together to make sure that a big skyscraper stays stable." - Roma Agrawal 

"A building like The Shard, we predict might move about half a metre. What's key as a structural engineer is to make sure that we don't feel that." - Roma Agrawal 

"As a student, I don't think I ever understood how essential the skill of being able to work with other people is to be an engineer." - Roma Agrawal 

"I think being enthusiastic about what you do is a big thing. I think we're all too modest." - Roma Agrawal 

KEYWORDS
#construction #theshard #site #management #wind #design #collaboration #engineering

TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience, we include an automated transcription.

Dusty Rhodes  00:01
Right now, on AMPLIFIED, engineering The Shard.

Roma Agrawal  00:03
What we did was a method called top-down construction. So that means we're building downwards and upwards at the same time. That technique had never been used before in a building of this size, and definitely not to construct the core of the building, which is the central spine of the building.

Dusty Rhodes  00:21
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes, and welcome to AMPLIFIED the Engineers Journal podcast. Skyscraper building is not exactly up there for things Ireland is famous for. But what if you were charged with designing one for the centre of one of our major cities? How do you handle working in a constricted space? How high can you go? What forces are you dealing with as you go up, and what foundation do you support the whole thing on. Our guest today is going to share some amazing stories about all of these challenges because she spent six years of her life designing the foundations and the spire for the world-famous Shard building in London. She is a structural engineer whose many accolades including being voted the UK's young Structural Engineer of the Year becoming an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the institution of structural engineers. It's a pleasure to welcome Roma Agarwal, how are you, Roma,

Roma Agrawal  01:11
I'm great. How are you doing?

Dusty Rhodes  01:15
Very good. Listen. Let's get straight into the Shard. How did you get involved in designing the foundations and the spire on this world-famous skyscraper? 

Roma Agrawal  01:25
Sure. So I guess the short answer is, I managed to get a graduate position with a company back in 2005 and the first project that I worked on was a footbridge, which is in Newcastle. And I spent about 18 months working on that in a very small team. And then once that was coming to its end, my boss said to me, Roma, do you fancy working on The Shard? And I did a very kind of cool and composed Yes, yes. That would be lovely, while secretly, kind of screaming in my head,

Dusty Rhodes  01:58
amazing. Listen The building itself is famous for having many angled sides. To say it stands out the minute you see it, which point towards the sky. But there's a historical story behind that, related to the ground. Tell me about that.

Roma Agrawal  02:15
It's a very interesting point, because a lot of people say, Oh, why is this building at London Bridge? It should be in the City of London, or Canary Wharf, or somewhere where there's other tall buildings. But actually, The Shard couldn't have been anywhere else, because the geometry of The Shard is inspired by the site which was bombed during the Second World War. So the London Bridge station sits on top of these old Victorian arches which have been there since the 1800s and a portion of those were destroyed, leaving quite a jagged shaped site. So what the architect Renzo Piano did was to look at the shape of that site, kind of draw, I guess, an irregular, octagonal sort of shape, and then project the sides up at about five or six degrees lean. And that's what created the geometry of The Shard. So it's completely a site specific piece of architecture. It's not just a rectangular building that you could stick

Dusty Rhodes  03:09
anywhere. So it wasn't a design feature. Was something that essentially was helping it deal with the actual ground that was standing on, yes,

Roma Agrawal  03:17
and it was also a way, I guess, of using every millimetre of space that was available on this construction site, because you're in the middle of London, it's an extraordinarily expensive and busy part of the city. And so, you know, people really want to maximise the space that they're creating in a, you know, commercial building. So, so from all of those different perspectives, it really made sense. And I think design wise, I really love the idea of responding to what's there, rather than just saying, Okay, here's a generic building that could be anywhere, but no this, this building could only have been on this particular site.

Dusty Rhodes  03:52
So how did that site and that particular constraint, if you want to put it that way, with the design, how does that impact the design of the foundation?

Roma Agrawal  04:00
So the foundations were such an interesting part of the building, and sadly, the bit that nobody ever sees again once it's finished, what we were looking to do was to go down three levels of basement. A lot of the plant of the building is down in the basement. So the huge air conditioning and air, sorry, air cooling units that push the air around the building, huge water tanks, you know, the sewage system, all sorts of stuff that such a tall building absolutely needs, but you don't want to see that stuff. So stick that in the building. There's space for parking 12 cars, very specific. So we needed to go down about three stories. And what we did was we put up what we call a sea camped piled wall. And for those who are not engineers in your audience and have never heard of that, what it means is that you basically put in some softer piles, which are big concrete columns that dig straight down into the ground. And then between the softer piles, you put in a hard. Pile. You're basically creating the walls of a bath, in a way. And then you can dig down in within that wall structure. And that structure is designed to keep the water out. There's a lot of ground water in London, because we're next to the river, keeps the water out. And the wall that we created the basement also, you know, really does reflect the shape of the site. So again, we were really maximising how much basement area we could get.

Dusty Rhodes  05:28
How do you need to think about the design of a foundation for a skyscraper in particular? I mean, a lot of people listening will be well used to buildings, you know, five, maybe 10 stories maximum here in Ireland. But when you're dealing with a building that's got almost 90 stories, what? What are the differences when designing the foundation? What are the considerations?

Roma Agrawal  05:47
I mean, the obvious one is that the loads are huge. So we've got, we've got a lot of loads coming down. So we really need to think about kind of the deep ground conditions. Now, I mentioned London River. The Shard is also very close to this river, and we have about 50 meters of clay. And clay is quite a changeable material. So when it's wet, it sort of shrinks down a little bit when it sorry, the other way around, when it's wet, it expands. When it's dry, it shrinks. And so there's this movement, this seasonal change that happens. So we really needed to think about that. So in the case of buildings that aren't that tall, you would be able to put a raft foundation in so big concrete slab, and you can place the building on top of it, and it sort of stays, you know, good enough, stable enough, but with the type of loads we were talking about with The Shard that just simply wouldn't have done the job. So what we needed to do was to make sure that our piled foundations were bearing or sitting on top of a very compressed, strong layer of what we call the Thanet sands. So if you imagine putting your finger on a table and pressing down on it, the table is just sort of receiving all that force that you're chucking onto it, and that's what the Thanet sans are doing for The Shard. So there's lots of different systems that have to work together to make sure that a big skyscraper stays stable. But also, yeah, does it doesn't settle or settle unevenly, because we definitely didn't want the leading tower of Shard to be happening.

Dusty Rhodes  07:20
And are there special considerations when you're building beside a river, there must be

Roma Agrawal  07:25
So the waterproof thing is, is very, very important. The groundwater is, is changeable, but it's pretty high, and we were definitely going meters and meters below the water table. So the pressure that the water table is putting onto the walls of the foundation increases as you go deeper and deeper. So not only do we need to make sure that we're holding the ground up and that the ground is not going to move too much, because that ground around The Shard was carrying a train station, a bus station, a hospital and all the numerous other buildings that live around London, there's a tube line not too far away. So we don't want that ground to move too much, and we need to keep the water out. So we had actually, you know, a few different layers of waterproofing redundancy to make sure that, yeah, even if water trickles did come in, there's a place for that to drain away.

Dusty Rhodes  08:18
And what about interacting with other people? Because, you know, you mentioned that there's a tube station other major facilities nearby. Did you have to interact directly with them to find out kind of the way those facilities were designed and to see what it was that you could and you could not do, or were you just kind of going it should be like this? And I imagine the former. Yeah,

Roma Agrawal  08:39
definitely the former. And people often ask me what my biggest challenge of working on The Shard was, and I think that's the answer, really is, you know, managing and working with all these different stakeholders, as we call them. And I spent nearly two years of my time on The Shard doing that, and that is one of the least glamorous bits of the project. So, you know, I did that. Then I did the foundations, which are super, really important, and then I did the pretty bit at the top, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But yes, in dealing with stakeholders, you know, we want to build this building. We want to make sure it's safe, and all the people around us want to make sure that their structures Stay safe, and that's a perfectly legitimate requirement. What was complicated in this case was how many different stakeholders we had. And I mean, that is fairly usual for, you know, big city sites. I think the scale of this building made everyone, perhaps a little bit more cautious, you know, again, rightly so, really looking at all the risks involved. So yeah, so we interacted with all these different stakeholders. And one of the things that I remember we did was we put about 1500 prisms, little ones all around the construction site, inside buildings, inside train stations, inside tube tunnels, and we had lasers pointing. At these prisms that and they caught, you know, they logged the x, y, z coordinates of all these, these prisms. And then, as we were digging the foundation, we were monitoring how much each of these points were moving, and we also had a prediction of how much we thought they would move, which was done by some very clever geotechnical engineers, and we had to keep an eye, you know, there was a system in place that if the movement on a prism went above what we expected, then there would be a ping, and we would need to go and check if this was okay. Is it going to recover? What's happening? And so that was interesting. I think there was a couple of people in my team, luckily, not me, that got a text message every time there was a ping. I don't think that would have been a very relaxing time for them.

Dusty Rhodes  10:53
Moving away from the foundation and kind of just thinking about going up the building literally. Can you tell us a little bit more, in a little bit more detail about the vertical and the horizontal forces which affect the overall stability of a skyscraper,

Roma Agrawal  11:07
sure. So it's the same as any other building or bridge that you might be dealing with, so wind and gravity. So you were lucky that in the UK, we don't need to design for earthquake loads, because that obviously makes things far more complicated. So we're primarily looking at wind and gravity, and we look at what's called accidental loads. So, you know, in the 1960s there was a building called Ronan point which suffered quite a bad collapse because a gas cylinder exploded in one of the flats. So we're looking at, you know, unusual loads like that. And then we're looking at ground movement, you know, how much is the ground going to shift and move underneath the building? We looked a little bit at temperature as well. So particularly for the spire, which is the very top of the building, because that was all exposed steel, we did a short, you know, little check on, well, how hot might the steel get, and how cold might it get, and, you know, how much might it therefore expand or contract into different seasons. But we didn't really find that there was much of an impact there. What's interesting to me, particularly, you know, I was a graduate engineer when I started on that project, was we have all these codes and regulations that we're using to design the building, but for the wind side of it, that stops at 100 meters and The Shard is 300 meters tall. So what normally happens is that, you know, there's two options. One is that you can do a software analysis of different wind loads. What we did was to get a specialized company to create. I think it was a one to 400 scale model of The Shard filled with wires and lots and lots of sensors on all the different faces of it. It's put onto a turntable and it's put into a wind tunnel. So in a similar way that you might test an f1 car to see how the wind or the air is aerodynamically flowing across this piece of engineering. We did the same to The Shard. So we twisted that turntable in 32 different positions around the circle. And we checked, is it 32 or 36 I don't know one of the two Well, 360 degrees,

Dusty Rhodes  13:16
so might be 36 every 10 degrees?

Roma Agrawal  13:18
Yeah, I was thinking about that. And then we basically measured what the wind forces were on the different faces of the building. And again, the taller you go, the higher and the more complex the wind forces can get. So we needed to check how much we expected the whole building to sway or to move under the worst case storm for 100 years. But we also needed to check that individual panels of glass didn't experience so much suction or pressure that they would crack. So we're looking at the wind on all these different scales,

Dusty Rhodes  13:58
and does the wind vary a lot? As you say, that means 300 meters tall. Does the wind vary a lot from, I would imagine it's different from at the top than what it will be at the ground. But are there many variations as you go up?

Roma Agrawal  14:12
So I mean, overall, you would get a fairly steady increase as you're going up. But that increase, the rate of that increase can increase so it can get sort of stronger and stronger and stronger a bit more suddenly, the the further up you get. And this is particularly important for the design of the spire again, which is, you know, the very top bit of the tower where you we had The Shards, you know, which is where the building gets its name. So these are big, long, cantilevered, so sort of free standing bits of steel and glass, which are essentially unsupported, and they're quite vulnerable to this deflection, to the movement that can happen from the fairly strong wind loads.

Dusty Rhodes  14:55
So what is holding them in place? Because you said it's not connected. It to the building. So

Roma Agrawal  15:00
I often describe it as a vertical diving board, or a diving board at a slight angle. So you've fixed one the bottom end of it, and then the other bit is, is flexible. And in this case, our diving board was made up of a steel frame. So we do have, you know, steel columns there. And we love triangles. You know, engineers, I've got a tattoo of a triangle on my finger. It's a really important shape in structural engineering. So we've created some triangular what we call trusses to try and help keep that stable, and then the glass is attached to that. So what we could do, in this case, particularly for that very top section, is make sure that the joints between the glass could take a little bit more movement than they needed to take elsewhere in the building. So we kind of anticipated that, yes, it will move more. There's more wind load, but let's design that in and make sure that the glass panels will be okay. So it's all sort of taken into account and put in there, into the design I've

Dusty Rhodes  16:00
heard with a couple of skyscrapers, especially when the group told they can actually move, like a number of inches, or even a number of feet, when, when it is particularly windy, is it the same as a shard?

Roma Agrawal  16:11
Absolutely. So I think children and also any grown ups that that aren't engineers, are always totally gobsmacked when I tell them that all structures move and that The Shard sways. So a building like The Shard, we predict might move about half a meter. So so it's not a huge amount, really for a tall building, but yes, it sways. What's key as a structural engineer is to make sure that we don't feel that. So if you think about when you're on an airplane, you're clearly traveling very fast, but if there's no turbulence, and you're just going at a steady speed, you don't feel like you're moving. However, when there's turbulence, you really feel it, because that's a sudden change in the speed that you're going, so you're kind of being buffeted, and so we just need to make sure that the building's not going to be buffeted in that way, that you know the accelerations that the human experiences in the building will be below a certain level, so you don't feel it in your gut. You don't feel seasick.

Dusty Rhodes  17:15
And tell me more about the spire, because it is possibly the part of the building that is most exposed to the elements and the most difficult to get at. How in your design were you thinking about combating corrosion and fatigue? Yeah, those are

Roma Agrawal  17:30
great questions. There was so many different things we have to think about. So we've talked a lot about the wind. Fatigue is a really interesting one. So fatigue is, again, for the non engineers out there, if you repeat the same motion again and again and again and again and again, then metal suffers from what we call fatigue and breaks what we so we did look at the fatigue for the spire. Fatigue is incredibly important on roads and in airplanes as two examples, because the number, so we look at the number of cycles, what is the number of times

Dusty Rhodes  18:05
that an aircraft takes off in lands? Yeah,

Roma Agrawal  18:07
yeah. And also, it's the wings. When it's being buffeted in the air, you have these, like, continuous, you know, massive cycles of the same joints being being subjected to fatigue. It's actually not the same in a skyscraper, because the wind forces on generally not that high. And then you have the odd storm, and then you have the odd very bad storm. You don't get the same number of cycles that you would for, say, an aircraft or for trucks driving over the same joint in a bridge. So we looked at it and figured out that actually, it's not going to be a problem here, but we still make sure that the grade of the steel we're using, the strength of the steel, you know, what mixtures it has in it, exactly what its composition is, is conducive to being exposed, first of all to the elements, but also being exposed to these cycles of movement. So it's all painted to, you know, with layers of paint that are specifically designed for being outdoors, and that, you know, will require a little bit of maintenance and touch up every 25 to 30 years. Go have a check see what's going on. But yeah,

Dusty Rhodes  19:20
I was, I'm fascinated to know how you get guys or ladies or people up there to maintain the spire. And it fascinates me in that I'm a radio guy. So I see these antennas, and there's always a light at the top of these 300-metre antennas, and I always go, who changes the bulb,

Roma Agrawal  19:43
not me. I can tell you that I do not like heights, which is ironic. I know don't like don't like heights. I very clearly remember actually climbing up from so it was level 69 to level 72 on a ladder. This was before the lifts and the stairs had gone in. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life. And I got to the top, and this was even before all the glass had gone in, so obviously there was lots of safety netting and all the things. But I got up there and I told the guy, I said, mate, I'm not coming down until the stairs are installed, because I'm just gonna sit here. How long is it gonna take? In a few months? Fine, I'm here for I'm here for the long run. Sorry, so you were saying about so what was really interesting, so it was not only the maintenance of the spire, but actually building the spire, right? Because you're sending people up quite high to do up bolts and nuts and bolts and get bits of steel in, and then the glass and everything. A lot of them are rock climbers or some sort of adrenaline junkie that train to fix steel so that they can basically get paid to do what they love. And isn't that just isn't that crazy? And I love that, because it's not the other way around. It's not the steel. I mean, sometimes, of course, it is that the steel fixes get trained up to go up and do these things at height. But it's also people going, I love, I love being hanging up from a harness 300 meters up in the air. Yeah, teach me how to do nuts and bolts and I'll go get paid for it. Yeah, not me. There's not enough money in the world for that.

Dusty Rhodes  21:13
Tell me, do you know much about the big now, you're the expert, but at the very top of the building and at the very bottom of the building, but the in between bit the actual building itself. I mean, there's offices and there's a hotel and there's apartments and everything in that. Do you know how each of those spaces influenced the choice of materials that was used? Yeah,

Roma Agrawal  21:32
absolutely. So I did spend one summer designing the steel beams for the office floor. Again, one of the less glamorous parts, I do have to say, the least glamorous thing I designed for The Shard, or you could say the most, was some steel to support marble urinals in the hotel. So you heard it here first, maybe not first, but you've had it here. So the yes, the different materials we used in the different bits of The Shard was actually quite an unusual thing to do. So most skyscrapers have a single use, so they're either offices or their hotels or their apartments. And then there are some big, mega skyscrapers around the world that do what The Shard does, which is a mix of all the above. Now, what we normally do in the UK is we use steel beams with a little concrete topping slab for Office floors, because you have bigger head, you know, headspace above you, the steel beams have holes in them, and offices require lots of ducts, so whether that's for cables and for, you know, air conditioning, for water and so on. And the second thing is that offices don't really need as much daylight. I guess you could have bigger floor plates, and there are bits which are farther away from windows, and that's kind of okay, whereas, if you're building an apartment building or a hotel, you want daylight, you want windows on every flat on or every room that you're dealing with, so that they tend to be smaller floor plates. First of all, they don't have as many services. You don't need as many ducts and so on. And you want good acoustic separation. So you don't want sound to be transmitting from one level to the next. So you tend to just go for a concrete slab. And what that does is it reduces how much space each floor takes up. So just to give you some numbers, for the office floors in The Shard, we they were 3.65 meters, if I remember correctly, because I am going back over a decade, whereas for the concrete floors for the hotel, it was around 3.2 meters, or 3.4 meters. So you've basically reducing you can squeeze more floors in essentially, you know, as you stack them up. So, so that's what we did. So we said, Well, if that's what we would have done in a separate building, why don't we do that on The Shard? So the office floors are lower down in the building, where the floor plates are bigger and they're made of steel, and then you go higher up, floor plates are smaller, they're made of concrete, and that's where the hotel goes. So just kind of actually very logical. When

Dusty Rhodes  24:05
it's explained to you, it's very logical. I hadn't, I hadn't thought about that before. Roma, you weren't the only one to work on The Shard. I'm just wondering, like, how

Roma Agrawal  24:14
many who told you otherwise,

Dusty Rhodes  24:18
you gave it away, or you said I'm not going to bow floor 76 tell me how many people in all Do you know? Did it take? Yeah,

Roma Agrawal  24:28
I mean, I only joke because, you know, it's obvious that engineers work in teams, and you can't do anything without 1000s of people in the case of The Shards. So you know, a lot of again, when I talk to young people, and even when I think about it myself, the complexity of the number of people with the different expertise that get involved in the building is kind of mind blowing. So I was in a team of structural engineers, which varied between, say, eight and 15 of us. Okay, so relatively small team. Then you had mechanical engineers. Electrical engineers, public health engineers. So you had all these engineers. Then you had all the architects, and there were two different practices working on it. And there was dozens of them. You had the quantity surveyors that look at the cost for everything. You have the contractors, obviously, that are building. And there were hundreds of them. There's the client, the developers, the hotel people, the office tenants. I mean, it just snowballs when you really think about how many people are involved. And then, of course, all the interiors, like, you know, the designing of all of that, and all the people working on site. So it was, you know, literally 1000s of people. And, yeah, I mean, for me, it was a once in a lifetime experience. I guess for most engineers working on a project like that, is a, is really a once in a lifetime experience?

Dusty Rhodes  25:44
Is that because of the building and the iconic design of it, or is it just sheer size of it that made it a once in a lifetime experience? Yeah,

Roma Agrawal  25:53
I think it's both. I think it's working with the team at Renzo Piano. You know, working with such incredible architects is is rare for so many. Well, such famous, big name, international architects can be quite rare. And yeah, we, I mean, it was a high stakes project in a way, and we had a very clear deadline that the outside of the building needed to be finished for the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony as well. So, so there was a bit of pressure on that as well.

Dusty Rhodes  26:22
Listen, let me ask you about because you said the amount of other consultants and architects and engineers that you're working with, and obviously you have to get on with people and all that kind of stuff. But for you, how did working with that number of people impact the design?

Roma Agrawal  26:37
So the way I think about it, so first of all, as a student, I don't think I ever understood how essential the skill of being able to work with other people is to be an engineer, and I think that's changed in the education since I was studying. So I think they're doing more group projects. They're doing more interdisciplinary projects at university to give students a taste of that I didn't have that to the same extent. So I came into work and went what, you know, I did a small project first, which was a very small team, and I think that was really good for me to just get, get my hands in, understand the engineering, the technical side, and have a bit of experience working with all other people. And then going onto The Shard was, you know, the other end of the scale, really, and it is absolutely crucial that you understand how to work with other people. You know, we were talking about some of the challenges on The Shard, so, yes, one of the big challenges working with all these different consultants is that everybody's got their own perspective on how, on what they need for the building and how to solve the problems. Okay? And I think what we have to keep reminding ourselves of is that we all have the same end goal. We all want this building to be built, and we want it to work well, okay, so, so that's the sort of umbrella under which we're all operating. And then within that, the structural engineers want to have nice, straight, consistent steel beams. The mechanical engineer wants lots of holes in my beams, not, you know, they're not my beams, in our beams to put the ducts through. And then, you know, the electrical engineer wants something else. And the quantity surveyors are saying, That's too expensive. What can we do to try and make this a little bit cheaper? The architects are saying, how do we make these nuts and bolts up in the spire look absolutely brilliant, the contractors are saying, but we need to build it safely. So I think, because it was The Shard, and we all really, really, really, were very motivated to make sure it was a great product. I actually think, you know, I'm not just saying this, we did work really well together. We had and also, I think the other thing that made a difference is we, because it was such a long project, and there were so many years spent on it, you know, we were working together for years on end, which also can sometimes be unusual. We were an international team, so I loved all the different perspectives that brought you know, there were practices based on Canada in the Netherlands, in Paris, in London, in Hong Kong, everywhere. So overall, I think we did well.

Dusty Rhodes  29:12
Do you have any particular story that you remember that can explain how something arose and you all work together to fix it?

Roma Agrawal  29:20
So one that comes to mind is, is how we constructed the basement. So we talked about the time scales that we were working to. So, you know, we've got this deadline. Cost, obviously, is always the forefront of everyone's mind, because budgets are really, really important, because you can't build a building if you just carry on increasing costs. And then we were also thinking about the ground movement, which we've discussed a little bit or a lot, and what we ended up doing so the structural engineers, the contractors and the quantity surveyors, the project managers, came together and said, you know, how can we build this building, or the base basement in particular, in a way that will help lead. Create some of these risks, you know. So we have this risk register with big red things going ground, movement, timescales, budgets, you know, how can we actually bring these and, you know, get some creativity out of it. And what we did was a method called top down construction. So that means we're building downwards and upwards at the same time. So in very, very short, we actually essentially built the ground floor slab first, and then we left a hole and dug underneath the base, you know, underneath the ground floor slab, while we started building upwards at the same time. And I, you know, I can spend an hour just explaining how that was done, so I'll spare you, but the upshot was that that technique had never been used before in a building of this size, and definitely not to construct the core of the building, which is the central spine of the building. And this required a lot of work between the structural engineers, project managers and the contractors to say, how can we logistically make this work in a way that's buildable safely to the budgets and time constraints, but that doesn't compromise the stability and the structure as you're doing it?

Dusty Rhodes  31:15
I want to move away from The Shard and just talk about kind of engineering and engineers in general, because, like, the team and the amount of people you said that were involved with that, and the quality of them and from all over the world, and you were, like, right in the center of that amazing. And then when you look at that, I mean, it is a feat of human engineering, you know, and any of those iconic buildings around the world are, why is it that we do not, in our society have engineers who are like rock stars? Do you know what I mean? It's kind of like, you know, kind of you two will go, Yeah, whatever bloody blood album was, that was our latest thing, you know. Why don't we look at The Shard and go, you know, such and such a person did that?

Roma Agrawal  31:58
Because, I guess one of the big reasons, which we've just discussed, is that it's not just one person that's done that, right? Like there is such a huge, massive team that gets involved in it. So you tend to have the starchitects, as they're called. So we might know Renzo Piano was the architect, or we might know Norman Foster built this other thing, or David Chipperfield built that. So we tend to know the names of the architects more. But again, they work in huge teams, and again, it's never one person that's created something. So I think, I think there's that, I think culturally, something has really shifted, particularly in the UK. If you think 250 years ago with the Victorian engineers, you know, Brunel was a rock star. I'm not sure he was the nicest of men from what I hear, but he was certainly a rock star in the sense that people knew who he was, and he was very good at PR, from what what we can understand by today's standards, you know, he knew the politicians. He knew funders. He went out there, got fancy pictures taken of himself and invited famous people to the opening of things that he did, or particular thing so he knew how to play the game as it were, and then we seem to have lost that at some point. And it's a very complicated I don't know if anyone really fully understands why that's the case, but I grew up in India, so I spent 10 years of my very formative childhood there, and being an engineer, there is the thing people aspire, or definitely parents aspire for their kids to become now,

Dusty Rhodes  33:27
let me ask you about that. Would you say that it's the same in the in the UK, that parents aspire for their kids to become engineers? Or it's absolutely

Roma Agrawal  33:36
not, no, no. So there's a bit cultural difference.

Dusty Rhodes  33:39
Is it? Is it just the money where they go? Ah, engineering, good money in that, or is there something else behind it?

Roma Agrawal  33:45
I mean, it can't be that simple, because engineers can make decent money in the UK as well, and it's a good steady job and and, you know, technology is always flying forward and all of this. So it can't just be that. One of my theories is, growing up in India, your science education is more emphasized, whereas I think in the UK, it can be the other way around. So I always loved math, science, physics. That was like, yeah, that's that's fine. That's normal. And actually, you know, potentially to the detriment of history and English and literature and so on. So I studied all that stuff, but I don't think I was ever massively inspired by it, and so I barely did any writing until I was in my 30s. So and I think over here, it's sort of the other way around. I think maybe perhaps it's a rapidly developing country, India. So you see roads being built, buildings being built, bridges going up. And so you understand that, Oh, wow. You know, there's engineers responsible for making these big changes to our lives, whereas in the UK, I think we generally see it as being noisy and a nuisance construction, which can be no doubt. And the thing that I always say is the only time I ever hear the word engineering art in public. Think is when your train is delayed because of engineering work. So there's not a nice connotation to that. I think, yeah, it's, I mean, it's a complicated cultural situation. And then, you know, we could talk about the whole gender thing, which is a whole other topic that,

Dusty Rhodes  35:17
listen, it just amazes me, because everybody's going on about, you know, kind of engineering, and they can't get enough engineers yet. You know, the whole industry is so male dominated. It's like, imagine if you just had the same amount of women coming into the business. Then we'd have more engineers than, well, maybe not that we need, but we'd certainly have plenty of them. But I think it's interesting what you say about India being a fast growing country, and there's a lot of construction and everything going on around you, do you think maybe it's a case then of you cannot be what you cannot see. So when you were growing up, you were seeing all of these constructions going up and engineers putting it all together and figuring out all the problems. And because of that, it made more sense to you to get into

Roma Agrawal  35:59
it, possibly. But it's also just talked about more in everyday life. And in fact, what you'll find in India is that there are comedians or actors or artists or dancers who said, Oh, yeah, my parents forced me to become an engineer. Made me do engineering, and then I've my rebellion is to get away from that and become a comedian or something, whereas it's almost the opposite here, where, you know, the rebellious thing, especially for a girl, to do, is to become an engineer. So it's all it's very cultural. I think that's an important thing to remember. And somebody told me, and I think this is correct, that 70% of computer science or computer engineering. Software Engineering undergraduates in Iran are women. If you go to places like Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, there are a lot of women studying maths and physics and so on. So it's a cultural thing. I have a little girl who's now five, and when she was a baby, I wanted to buy her digger onesies, like I wanted pictures of construction vehicles on on her clothes. So where did I have to go? I had to go to the boys section. So, you know, from the minute they're born, we've decided some kind of stereotype or part for them, and then where, you know, consciously and unconsciously filling their heads with that nonsense. No, when you

Dusty Rhodes  37:24
say that, that reminds me of my childhood, which was a long time ago, but I find it absolutely amazing, and not in a good way, that life is still like that. It's like little lady bird books. I want to be an engineer, and I bet you it's a blue color on the cover. Yes, that's just bananas. Listen, but affecting change. Okay, so you you've grown up in a different culture, and now you kind of overhear more Western European things. What would you say to engineers who are listening today? How can they change people's perceptions of engineering?

Roma Agrawal  37:57
I think just talk about your work in an excited way. I think being enthusiastic about what you do is a big thing. I think we're all too modest. I think, you know, we we say, oh, yeah, I just, I just did a little bit of work on this little thing. Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm this type of engineer. And we just, we just do little robots that may solve cancer one day or, you know, we don't really know, we're not really sure. I just think people should be, you know, they're passionate about their work, that's why they're doing it. So I would really love for engineers to share that passion, and that could just be with their families. It could be with young people in their lives. It could be with their children's schools. It could be people that they meet at a dinner party. I think just, first of all, just talking about engineering in everyday life is great. You know, we talk about books, don't we? We talk about music, talk about this as well.

Dusty Rhodes  38:46
Engineering. I picked up a little networking tip that I never thought would work, and I've put it in place since, and it works a treat, and it relates directly to what you've just said, and that is, when you're at an event or something, just kind of go you're talking, how you doing? Oh, yeah. So what's your name? Where are you working for? So what's the big problem wrecking your head this week? And it's amazing that people, oh, man, I'm working on this building, or they come out and they actually tell you, it's really interesting. So I think that's good. What you say about people with engineering, and you can kind of go, Matt, I had a really interesting problem this week because they gave me a lump of steel and they said, support this marble urinal. That kind of a way, like, you know. How did you do that? Like, you know, so, so, that kind of a way. Listen. Let me wrap up by asking you about a pivot, because all of this talk of engineering you've gotten out of the game. You terrible woman, you've decided to pivot. You're in a you've become a writer and a public speaker and a podcaster. Tell me. Tell me about the books that you've written. Yeah,

Roma Agrawal  39:53
I've unfortunately become that statistic of the woman in her mid 30s that has a child and quits her engineering job.

Dusty Rhodes  39:59
Ah. Yeah, is that? Is that why you do this? Because you said, I want more time and I want to be at home and family is more important for now?

Roma Agrawal  40:06
No, it's much more complicated than that, actually, because the pandemic had hit at the same time, and also I had written two books while I was working as an engineer, and I didn't think I could do pandemic new baby, write and be an engineer. I thought four things was a bit too much for me, so I said, I need to pick three of these things. So so the book, the writing, became the focus. And I said, I'll give myself a year, and it's now been five. So yeah, so I stopped the formal engineering practice five years ago, but I'm very much still in the world. So I've now published four books about engineering. Two of them are for adults, two of them are for children. They are aimed at the general audience. So when we were talking about engineers sharing excitedly what they've been doing, that all comes down to storytelling for me, and I think as somebody in radio, you'll know all about that. You know, we you know, how do you tell stories? How do you keep an audience script? How do you create that tension? Find beautiful, historical things that are relevant to people's lives today. And so my first book, which is called built, is about how we've built our world. You know, what are the stories that hide behind the structures that we can see all around us. So I've talked about how the ancient Chinese mixed sticky rice into their mortar to create a slightly more flexible mix, or how the ancient Romans created those watertight areas to create their foundations. And you know, we did that on a huge scale, on The Shard, and engineers love it, because we haven't studied history during our degrees, and what I've done is to give them an opportunity to dig into that, why things are the way they are now, and what are the social impacts of things. And non engineers just go, Wow, I love the history and all that stuff, but this science stuff's really fun as well. So built, then came out as how was that built for children? And then I started my most recent adult book, which is called nuts and bolts, just as the pandemic hit. And that's about seven small inventions that change the world. So, you know, tiny inventions that turn make our world work. So I really wanted to explore the very, very complex stories of simple things like the nail. So I have seven inventions that I picked, and I've explored them, and it's a very global book. And then, most recently, just a couple of months ago, the children's version of that came out, and that's called seven small inventions that changed the world. And I'm working on my next two as we speak.

Dusty Rhodes  42:40
Wow. And you also have done a podcast as well, which I listened to. And the reason I mentioned that is, well, as a podcaster, I have to compliment you and say that that is one of the highest qualities podcasts I've ever heard very few people tackle documentary and that storytelling thing, and you did it very well. But also the topic of the first episode of the podcast with Roma is The Shard, and she goes into a lot more detail about the building and how it was built. So we'll put more details on that in the show notes for you. Of course, if you'd like to find out more about Roma Agrawal and some of the topics that we spoke about today, you'll find notes, and we've got link details and LinkedIn and all that kind of stuff in the description area of the podcast as well for you. But for now, Roma, thank you so much for sharing so much with us today.

Roma Agrawal  43:24
Oh, it's been a total joy. Thank you for having me.

Dusty Rhodes  43:26
If you enjoyed our podcast today, please do share with a friend in the business. Just tell them to search for Engineers Ireland in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland, for advanced episodes, more information on engineering or career development opportunities that there are libraries of information on the website engineersisland.ie. Until next time from myself, Dusty Rhodes. Thank you for listening.
 

Louise on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-o-flanagan-3a12ba3a/
EirGrid Website - https://www.eirgrid.ie/ 

MORE INFORMATION
Looking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer. https://www.engineersireland.ie/  

Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.

QUOTES
"Leadership is one part of project management. Leadership is about getting people to buy into what you want to deliver and to want to help and assist you in that."

"There is definitely a shortage of female engineers in Ireland. 23% of engineers coming out of university are female and that drops to about 12% actually entering into the workforce. EirGrid have a very active graduate program where you'd see 50% of our graduates are female."

"As an engineer, you can have the most perfect plan on paper. But unless you actually meaningfully engage with your stakeholders, that may be where that plan will stay. On paper."

"It's what a lot of engineers’ face when they're delivering infrastructure projects. First, you need to explain what the need of the project is, but then also listen and take on board that feedback. You must engage with the community."

KEYWORDS

#engineering #renewable #grid #womeninengineering #eirgrid

TRANSCRIPTION

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription

Dusty Rhodes  0:00 
Right now on Amplified, lessons learned from an engineer leading the charge for renewable energy in Ireland.

Louise O'Flanagan  0:05 
You know, as an engineer, you can have the most perfect plan on paper, but unless you actually meaningfully engage with your stakeholders, that's maybe where that plan will stay. On paper. It's one lesson that I took away and I've learnt a lot from that experience.

Dusty Rhodes  0:21 
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes, and welcome to Amplified, the Engineers Journal podcast.
Energy demands are skyrocketing and the system needs upgrading. But how are we ensuring a reliable electricity supply and embracing renewable resources today, we're joined by a principal engineer who will share EirGrids ambitious plans to transform the power system and accommodate 80% renewable energy by 2030. She'll also fill us in on the vital role of engineers in this transformation, the complexities of integrating renewable energy and overcoming regulatory hurdles. It’s a pleasure to welcome a Fellow of Engineers Ireland and a leader with two decades of experience in this field, where today she is Head of Engineering at EirGrid, Louis O’Flanagan. You're very welcome.

Louise O'Flanagan  1:09 
Hi, Dusty. How are you really nice to talk to you.

Dusty Rhodes  1:15 
Let me start off with asking about the role of Head of Engineering, for those who may not be familiar with it, what is the Head of Engineering in EirGrid? What does it entail?

Louise O'Flanagan  1:27 
So my role is, I'm within our infrastructure department, and my main focus is providing engineering teams to oversee the delivery of grid infrastructure. And that kind of encompasses setting the standards, the specifications that infrastructure needs to be built to so it can be part, become part of the grid. We've teams of engineers that go out to site or review designs to make sure they're adhering to those standards. And I also have a team that look after asset management. And so that's the grid that's already built. How are we maintaining that is the coming to end of life? Do we need to replace it and refurbish it? So really take care of the grid that we already have, and the teams that we have look after both the grid that's onshore and what will be the new grid that's going to be built offshore to facilitate offshore wind.

Dusty Rhodes  2:10 
One of the things I hear about the grid is problems with getting new renewable energy sources onto the grid in the first place, and because you literally have to make Hey, while the sun shines, what do you do when you have a surplus? How do you how do you store that electricity? What's the thinking on that problem?

Louise O'Flanagan  2:27 
So there's a few things that we can do to support that. So one is, we want to make sure that we have a balance of what's called thermal or conventional generation on the grid. That's kind of the base that we have there, and then we'll have renewables that will be supplying at other times. But you're right, sometimes we are going to have surplus renewables on the grid, and what we want to do there is we want to interconnect to other countries, to other grids, and be able to export that energy when we have a surplus in Ireland. And obviously, the converse of that is when we don't have sufficient renewables being generated on our grid here, we can import we also are looking at, you know, other technologies, such as batteries that can store some of that energy now that still has to go to such a large scale that we would that we can depend on it solely for that purpose. So we'll still remain to be a mix. And there's also other things that need to be brought in as well. So it's not just a case that we can say, once we do all those things, that's it, when we walk away, we need to be able to support the grid as well and make it stable. So there's technologies such as synchronous condensers that need to be built onto the grid as well. And so it's air grid's job to make sure that we have a balance of generation to meet demand. We don't actually generate anything ourselves, but just to make sure that we're planning and developing that grid to accommodate it and then to operate it so that it does remain secure.

Dusty Rhodes  3:41 
So with your engineers hat on and your genius problem solving, when you look at the storage of electricity, what is it that are you actually working on anything at the moment? What are the ideas being floated around?

Louise O'Flanagan  3:55 
In 2021 we launched our roadmap called shaping our electricity future, and that set out how we were going to achieve a grid that was capable at that point, 70% renewables, and now we're looking at 80% renewables, and that's bringing on about 17 gigawatts of renewables in the next 10 years onto the grid that's going to be a mix of wind, of solar, of offshore wind, of battery storage to be able to support that and and it's not just about building new grid to do that, it's about using the existing grid that we have already. And you mentioned some of that grid is quite old, and it is so it's going to be a combination of where we can use our existing grid, make it work harder, make it work smarter. Is it capable of carrying more and deploying new technology to try and do that? Make it work differently, to try and also then incorporate technology to make the grid operate in different ways. So we have a number of initiatives such as dynamic line ratings. So that's looking how, say an overhead line is operating in real time, as opposed to assuming a certain value of what the capacity is of the line. We have other technologies, such as power flow controllers that will actually make the. Power flow through different circuits, through different routes on the grid, to try and reduce some of the, you know, the constraints that we have, or the congestion that we have on the grid. So it's not just one single thing that will make us achieve that. It's a series of different steps that, in combination, will help us to get to those targets that have been set. We'll also need to build new grid that is also there. That's a need that we have. So we need to build more transmission lines, more substations, as we realize that growth over the next 10 years as well. So it's not just a combination bringing on renewables. We're also seeing growth in demand on the island, and we have new interconnectors that are going to be built over to France. EirGrid is progressing, which should be energized in 2026 that's the Celtic interconnector project, and we'll have another one to the UK. That's a green link project. So there's a lot happening on the grid right now. And in fact, if I look at just even Dublin, which is where I live, we have a initiative called the pairing up Dublin scheme, and that is essentially replacing older cables on our grid. They're about 40 to 50 or 60 years old, those cables, so they've come to end of life, and they need to be replaced. But there's an added benefit that the cables that we now replace them with, well, they're going to be newer technology. They're going to be higher capacity, and it means that we can have that added benefit of not just replacing the old cables, but the new cables that come in are going to help us reach that demand growth in Dublin and also help us move renewable energy around the grid. So the renewable energy that's going to come, say from the west of Ireland, and indeed, the offshore wind that's off the east coast of Ireland as well. So it's a really great way of trying to make the grid work in different ways and make most of it, and that's where our network planners come into that picture and try and set out how that roadmap will be developed.

Dusty Rhodes  6:39 
And because, I mean, what I hear is that, you know, the air grid, the whole grid needs, it's been there for 100 years, and we need to put a new one in, all right, that now, that's my uneducated view of what I'm hearing. And you mentioned about certain parts of the grid reaching end of life, which, of course, it does, yeah, roughly, if you were to throw a percentage on it, all right? And I'll say that. I'm not going to quote you on this, because I can ask for statistics. But do you think like we're at a stage where half of the grid needs to be replaced, or a quarter of it needs to or all of it needs to be replaced? No,

Louise O'Flanagan  7:13 
It's nothing like that. I mean, what we have is we've had different stages of building the grid depending on what was needed. You know, we would have had large generation plans, say, built in the 80s or the 90s. And then, you know, when we had 2020 targets, we had a significant amount of grid built again to accommodate that, to get to 40% renewables. There's been a huge amount of investment on the grid. This is just an increased step change, and we're going to be investing billions of euros in developing new grid. I mean, at the moment, we probably have in the region of 200 substations, and there's about 7500 kilometers of circuit. And we estimate that within the next 10 years, we're probably going to see an increase of that number by about 30% of new assets onto the grid. So it's quite a considerable increase. And as I said, where we have, maybe some of the circuits that are older and that we want to replace them, we're going to replace that with newer technology so we can make the most of the grid that we already have.

Dusty Rhodes  8:09 
How do you approach that problem, then, of asset management and innovation? Because firstly, you're you're looking at what's there, what you might need, and then you're looking at what you have now. And I mean, it's terrific looking at new technology, but not all of it is going to be here in 10 years time. Do you know what I mean? Something else would have come along to replace it. So when you're when you're thinking about asset management and innovation, what is the little checklist of things that you do off in your head?

Louise O'Flanagan  8:36 
Well, for me, it goes right back to the start of what is our obligation? It's a license obligation, statutory application, safe, secure, reliable transmission system. And when you're making that investment decision, and when you're making decisions about replacing existing assets, that's what I would have in the back of my mind. Is what we're doing like, are we achieving those objectives right now, or do we need something new to do that? And will it do that in 10 years time? Will it be able to do it in 20 or 30 or 40 years time? And that's the horizon that you're looking at. Like we need to build grid to last, because it takes quite a long time to deliver like by the time we go through planning, what's needed then actually engaging with our stakeholders, with communities, with landowners, and delivering that infrastructure, going into planning process, and then we work very closely with ESB networks for the delivery side of it. It can take quite a number of years to deliver on that infrastructure. So we want to make sure that what we're deciding on is built to last for decades, and it is that kind of future generations that we're thinking of and when we have that purpose in mind.

Dusty Rhodes  9:40 
So then, when you were thinking about what you have to do, say 2025, next year. Okay, what's your own biggest personal challenges you're thinking about for next year? You go, Oh, God, I have to sort this.

Louise O'Flanagan  9:54 
What is immediately ahead of me in the short term is about some of the newer projects that we. Want to deliver over, say, in the West of Ireland, so the North conic projects and we have deployment of new technology onto the grid. But also we'll be looking at what are those, say, circuits or substations that now need to be revisited and see if they're operating correctly or if they come to end of life. So it'll start to look at what that portfolio for the future brings, and also the accommodation of offshore wind. Because, you know, the target is to get five gigawatts of offshore wind connected by 2030 and so that is a very short timeframe in which we need to get all of these projects moving. The first round of them are going to be delivered by developers with their grid delivering a second round on the south coast. So there's a huge focus on offshore wind, it really offers up a step change for us, for Ireland in achieving those renewable targets of 80% so that's probably what the next year will look like for me anyway, and for my colleagues, keeping in mind

Dusty Rhodes  10:52 
that Ireland is aiming to have 80% of the electricity generated by 2030 there's one point that I always here where it's a clog point in any major project or infrastructure or whatever it is, and it's always the planning system. It's a bottleneck, and it's a bottleneck for renewable energy projects as well as anything else. Is this causing any concern for future proofing the grid?

Louise O'Flanagan  11:18 
I think what the planning system is seeing is there's quite a lot of infrastructure being built at the moment and being going through the planning system. So not just for grid, but, you know, there's lots of other projects that are also being submitted at the moment, as well as housing and growth. So it's quite a considerable amount of economic growth in Ireland at the moment, we're seeing lots of projects being progressed. So I think what EirGrid can try and do to support that is when we bring projects to the consenting stage, is that we've, you know, we've done a lot of our done a lot of work before we even get to that stage, in terms of looking at what the options are in front of us, seeing what is the best option that we have, engaging, as I said, with stakeholders and landowners and communities, so that we have really engaged them, told them about the project, taken on board, their feedback, so that when we do get into the planning system, that we have done a huge amount of work of understanding what is the best project that we can bring forward.

Dusty Rhodes  12:15 
The reason I ask that is because when you feel like you're an ordinary engineer and you're going through this planning system, then you're looking, well, air grid wouldn't have that problem because they're enormous, so it's just kind of nice to hear they use the same problems as the rest of us.

Louise O'Flanagan  12:29 
We would factor it in, I suppose it's factoring in that timeline in. When I'm talking about those delivery timelines, we'd have already considered that it might take about 12 months for us to come through the planning system,

Dusty Rhodes  12:41 
You were telling me before we came on the podcast, and I thought it was a great story, and it was a case study that we were chatting about, and it's all to do with the planning system and talking to people, and this whole thing about a substation in Ireland where where you were going to locate it, and, and you kind of thought, yeah, substation. Who cares? But that wasn't the case. What happened?

Louise O'Flanagan  13:04 
Yeah, it's, it was one, when we were chatting about it, I was, you know, I thought about, it's one of the first projects I took on when I joined air grid. So it's going back maybe about 12 years. This project had quite a remote area of Ireland, the West of Ireland, in terms of infrastructure be built. It was quite modest, you know, a substation. It's all enclosed within a building. You can't actually see much of the electrical infrastructure. And was going to connect into an existing overhead line. So I suppose, from my perspective, I thought it was going to be quite a short project, and quite maybe quickly into delivery. And as always, we engage with our communities when we're going to deliver infrastructure. And it was really interesting actually. Then when we went out and we started talking to kind of local community, we realised actually they had quite a lot of interest in the project. Some of it was concerns, some of it was positive, and some of us actually just wondering about what this meant, and trying to make people bring them on this journey of this is to connect renewable energy. This is what our targets are and what that would mean for their area. And I suppose initially there was, as I said, there was some concerns about this, and it's probably what a lot of engineers might face when they're delivering infrastructure projects. And you engage with the community. First is you need to explain what the need of the project is, but then also listen and take on board that feedback, and what the community asked us was, could we look at some of the other options? And some of the options we had ruled out because they were maybe more technically challenging or had maybe more environmental management for us to contend with. We did get that commitment. We said, we'll go back and look at it. So through, I suppose, a period of maybe 12 months, we looked at other options that were available. Some of them, we still realised, but there was one that we said, look, actually, we might be able to take this further. And we had a look at that. And bearing in mind, there's, you know, wind farms that are waiting to connect into it. So there's still a need to progress the project and keep momentum going. But ultimately, what we were able to do as a project team through engaging with our oncologists. With geotechnical engineers, with electrical engineers, we did come up with another option, and we were able to move the substation further away. And I think overall, when it went into the planning system itself, what I found really interesting was there wasn't a single objection to the project. In fact, I actually, you know, actually got a letter of support from that community for the engagement that we'd had on the project. And what it really taught me was, you know, as an engineer, you can have the most perfect plan on paper, but unless you actually meaningfully engage with your stakeholders and communities, that's maybe where that plan will stay, possibly is on paper. And actually, you know, it's one that I took away, and I've learned a lot from that experience.

Dusty Rhodes  15:40 
Louise, let me ask you a little bit about yourself. How did you get into engineering in the first place? You've got a great passion for it.

Louise O'Flanagan  15:48 
I think that, I think that passion has developed over the last 20 years of being an engineer. It was certainly not something that I had ever considered when I was in secondary school, it was a teacher of mine, and she recommended it to me. She said, You know, you're good at maths. You really like science. I know you'd like a profession and you want to help people. Would you consider engineering? And I said to her, No, I've never considered it. I'll go find out more. And it probably wasn't that I constantly said, I you know, I wouldn't be an engineer, but I just didn't know anybody. I didn't know any previous, past pupils that I'd gone on to study engineering. I didn't know anybody's sister that had gone on the engineering I definitely knew some of my friends' brothers had gone on. And so maybe just on some level, I just hadn't considered it as a career path. And then when I got it, I applied to to a number of different colleges, and I got offered a place in UCD. And even when I got there, I wouldn't say it was a passion for it. You know, it's quite overwhelming when you start in engineering, because there's so many different subjects, it's a really broad area to study. But what I found was, in particular, there was this one project that really stood out for me. It was called biosystems for engineering, and it's quite different. And I know it just clicked it when I said I really like this, and I'd like to study more subjects like this. So I looked at what were my options you have to in second year, pick where you might go next. And I realized that the lecturers for those particular subjects were mostly in civil engineering in RSF, terrorists. So that's how I decided to pursue a career in civil engineering in particular. And even as I went through my studies in civil engineering, I kept going towards those subjects that are in the environment were around water hydrology, water treatment, around infrastructure, and that's what ignited that passion in me. So I really just kind of made sure that I kind of followed my own path through to come out with something that I was really interested in,

Dusty Rhodes  17:39 
And you were just exposing yourself to or you were being exposed to lots of different things, and you just followed what interested you. So what was it then that drew you into the energy space?

Louise O'Flanagan  17:49 
Well, initially I started in the water sector, and I spent nine years working as an engineering consultancy in the UK. In Ireland, I worked in with different local authorities around Ireland. I spent a year in Mayo, and me working on different projects of Wicklow and Waterford. And in about 2011 in 2010 I could see that there was really with the economic downturn, going to be a delay in a lot of those projects moving forward. And I was looking around what next is Ireland's biggest challenge? And that's when I happened to cross what Ireland, what ergrid were doing, and it just, once again, just resonated with me, this idea that engineers could bring about solutions and to be part of that solution that need for new infrastructure, and I had a lot of experience in delivering for the water sector, that I could bring their transferable skills over to the energy sector. And that's where I've stayed now for the last 13 years, and that's where my passion is, that idea that you can leave a very sustainable legacy, a very positive legacy, in what you're doing as an engineer.

Dusty Rhodes  18:50 
You mentioned that when engineering was suggested to you, you didn't know any of your own cohort who had gone for it, but you knew some people's brothers and whatever had gone for it, something that you're very passionate about is women in engineering, in your role at the moment, what is the important thing about the shortage of female engineers in Ireland?

Louise O'Flanagan  19:09 
I think firstly, there is a shortage of engineers in Ireland, and then there is definitely a shortage of female engineers in Ireland. I think this is just six hour that about 23% of engineers coming out of university are female, and that drops significantly to about 12% actually entering into the workforce. So but there's huge programs to try and encourage young girls and women into STEM subjects such as engineering. You know, employers such as EirGrid Take a very positive view of trying to encourage engineers to take to encourage women to take up engineering as a profession. In fact, we have a very active graduate program where you'd see, maybe, you know, 50% of our graduates are female, and to try and support that, but it is certainly a stark figure I'd like to. Think that you know other people might follow maybe a similar path that I have, or see that it can be done. I actually heard someone at a conference recently saying you can't be what you can't see. So if you don't see someone that has gone on to take up a more senior role in an organization or as an engineer, if you're maybe earlier in your career, it might not be such a clear path for you.

Dusty Rhodes  20:23 
Now, a lot of people might be looking at you because you're the first female as the Head of Engineering in EirGrid. What does that mean to you?

Louise O'Flanagan  20:30 
I'd like to think once again, there's a there's an opportunity to be a role model and to show that you can take up a senior level position, a senior leadership position within an organisation that is technical. I don't need to have all the technical experience. I need to make sure that I have technical experts in their field as part of that team, and that will be made up, you know, of people that have different disciplines, and diversity is key to it. It's not like you just want to say it's just gender. It's about really supporting diversity on a team, and that's where that collaboration and that different perspectives is really born out. But certainly, I think being female Head of Engineering and asset management does show that you know, this is something that is achievable. If you want to go down this route and go into a leadership role or go into a management role, but still have a technical aspect to to your to your career. And what

Dusty Rhodes  21:26 
Do you think holds women back from careers in engineering in general?

Louise O'Flanagan  21:29 
I think for maybe, maybe for some girls and women, it's like what I went back to at the start, if there isn't a significant number maybe going forward from your class, or that you don't know a lot of your peers that are going forward, you might not, maybe consider it as an obvious choice. So that's why I think the Steps program is really good. And then you know, when you go then through university, as to where do I go next? And I think that's really good if you're coming out of university, is go which employers are the ones that are actually promoting diversity, that are actually genuine and incredible about offering up diversity in the workplace, and the numbers speak for themselves. And as I said, it is challenging, with only 23% of graduates actually being female to make sure that then that organisation encourages female participation in the workplace. Then there's other stages of life that might become more difficult, with families, et cetera, or people having caring roles, and that can disproportionately affect women. But certainly, I'd like to think that if you've, you know you've if that's something that you want to achieve and you want to go on, then you will find the right balance, and there are good employers out there that will support you in that.

Dusty Rhodes  22:34 
I love how you use the word diversity, because you need people of different backgrounds, different skills, different education, different nationalities, different genders, is just another thing on that list. Like, you know, if you were speaking to a female engineer, and I'm sure you probably do, who's feeling a little stuck in her career, and it's kind of, what advice do you give them?

Louise O'Flanagan  22:58 
I think it's for me, it's by finding that passion, what do you enjoy doing, and then finding a balance to make it work for you, if you have a clearer idea where you want to go, and you can see a path, or maybe there's someone just that little bit ahead of you on that path, and then you can get they turn to them and ask them for advice, ask them for feedback. And also, it's not that men don't have a role to play. I think men are very supportive of encouraging diversity and current aging, encouraging gender diversity, and supporting women to going on further in their careers. And it's about normalizing the fact that in those caring roles, it might also be, you know, a man that has to take on his caring roles. And it's just normalizing it for everyone. I think that's a really positive part of it. But certainly, if, if there was a woman joining my team, and I do have a few, I would certainly say, go for what ignites the past in you. Go follow that. You might have to take a little break here and there as other commitments come up in your life, but just try and find a way back in if that's something that you want to do.

Dusty Rhodes  23:58 
And that's just brilliant advice in in general to anybody, I think is something that I've definitely found to be true in my own life, my own career. I want to get back to EirGrid, because I'm thinking about what you said earlier, about many of the projects that you're working on at the moment, or, sorry, many of the projects which are being worked on at the moment, because you don't generate the electricity. You just get it from A to B. There's a lot of wind, solar sites that are being located. And you've mentioned the west of Ireland a number of times. What plans does air grid have to improve how we're getting power from the west of Ireland to the east coast, where the majority of the population are, or to anywhere else in the country, you know what I mean?

Louise O'Flanagan  24:41 
Yeah, no. So, as I mentioned before, when we looked at what the government targets were initially of 70% and onto the 80% we knew that we needed to create a plan of how we were going to achieve that. And there was a roadmap put in place, which is called shaping our electricity future. As I mentioned previous. And we had a huge amount of engagement with industry, with stakeholders, with communities, with local authorities, to explain what the need was and how, what did they think we could do to achieve that? And part of that is what's called a plan led approach so that synergy between where do we have capacity on the grid and where could we place renewables? Or where do we where should we consider demand? So it's really, once again, using that grid in a smarter way than just saying, Okay, we'll just keep building in the one place and try and build more grid to get it from A to B. Is say, well, actually in location C, we have capacity there. And so why? You know that would be a really clear thing. Let's say, What about considering locating wind farms or solar farms or offshore wind in that location, because that's currently where we have capacity on our grid, and then also signaling that this area actually does need reinforcement. We will need to build grid here to support that. And that will take some time, and this is our timeline to do it. It's also about looking at the technologies that I mentioned previously and deploying them throughout different parts of the grid to try and make it work differently. So it's looking at the grid is one thing. It's not separate grids. It's one grid for the whole island, so to see how that operates all together. And so a huge amount of growth on the East Coast, and as you mentioned, we have renewables on the west coast, but what I see as a major step change is offshore wind, because that's now located on the east coast. And you know, there's, you know, maybe three to four gigawatts of offshore wind being planned at the moment for the east coast of Ireland, and that's right off the coast of Dublin. So I think that really is a big change of where we can see generation, renewable generation right on our doorstep. For those that live in Dublin, it's not going to mean that we don't need the other onshore wind that's going to be built in other locations, or the solar energy that's going to be built maybe in the south or other areas, such as the South Coast, for offshore which we need it all. But it's around that. How do we plan it out better in that systematic way?

Dusty Rhodes  27:01 
And it's a very doable thing, because you only have to go on your holidays and realize how big other countries are. And then you come back to our little rock just on the precipice of the Atlantic, and you kind of go, if I drive for more than three hours, I'm going to drown. So it's going to be, it sounds like a huge project. Go West Coast to East Coast, but when you think about it anyways, that's that's a whole other thing. Listen. Louise, I wanted to ask you about, like a lot of engineers, listen to the podcast, who are working in very various engineering firms around the country. You have their ear at the moment. What would you like to say to them in relation to their work and air grid and connecting with air grid, or planning to work with air grid, and what's coming in the next few years?

Louise O'Flanagan  27:50 
Well, I think probably what I've outlined to you just, you could probably imagine there's, there's quite a considerable amount of work in transforming air grids, power system, you know, for generations to come. And this isn't going to be something that's delivered tomorrow or the year after, so we need a huge number of professionals to join us in that challenge. So it could be engineers, ecologists, planners. So, you know, I think if anybody was listening and they wanted to be part of that story, that they're interested in that journey that we're going on look, that are interested in the like sustainability and leaving a very positive legacy. And actually, you know, I talk to people from around the world, and it's really interesting, the number of people that I talk to, of engineers, are saying, I want to make a positive difference, particularly around climate change, and they see this as one of the biggest global threats that we have. And they look at Ireland, they look at air grid, and they tell me, what you're doing there is so transformational that it's so different, that they want to come and join us and be part of that. So maybe that's what I would say. If anybody is listening and they think that's something that they'd like to contribute to or be part of that, I'd maybe suggest even check out our website. We've lots of lots of roles there that might be of interest. But even just to find out more about what we're doing and reach out, even if you're in a community that maybe sees one of our projects coming nearby, are there any particular qualities of skills that you're looking for. At the moment, we're certainly looking for lots of different skills, and it's not even just engineering, but certainly electrical engineering, mechanical, civil process, environmental. You know, I think engineers certainly have a way of thinking and problem solving that lends itself to what we're trying to do. So it's not just one type of engineering, one discipline, but also, as I mentioned, there's other professionals that we need, and then obviously there's other supporting professions that we have. You know, we've solicitors working for us. We have people that work in finance. Our IT sector is massive, and even when you look at where the grid of the future might go, you know, technology plays a massive part of that, of it and AI, so there's, there's plenty of opportunity there. It's not one profession that's ever going to deliver this on its own. You know, it's, it's going to be a whole diverse range of skills that we need.

Dusty Rhodes  29:50 
Looking back on your career, was there any particular incident or story where you learned, like, a big life lesson and just kind of. Wow, and it's stood to your benefit since,

Louise O'Flanagan  30:03 
That's a really good question. Dusty, I think, look, I think in my experience, over the last, you know, as I said, the last 30 years, particularly in project management, what I've learned is about planning for, you know, risks that are unplannable. It's, it's like, you can have a really good schedule, you know, you're going to deliver a project by x date, and then suddenly something comes out of the blue and it throws those plans into disarray. And I think what I've learned over time is just, you know, it's, it's planning for those maybe foreseeable risks, and then having that contingency for the unforeseeable, the unknown. And I think, you know, engineers and project managers tend to be more optimistic and are outlook. If we were pessimistic, we probably wouldn't try and do anything. So you tend to probably err on the side of optimism, and you need to get and that's part of the leadership, although project management is one part. But leadership is getting people to buy into what you want to deliver, and to want to help you and assist you in that. And you know, it's not that you're lying, is that you actually want to drive that on yourself and bring people along. So I think it's about what I've learned is probably having a certain amount of contingency and a plan B if you don't end up doing what Plan A was and being able to keep that momentum going without mentioning any names or places or years.

Dusty Rhodes  31:24 
What happened with that?

Louise O'Flanagan  31:30 

You learned that lesson, and I think it probably even goes back to that, that previous example that I gave you, because I would have thought that I would have gone in maybe with the with the exact plan that I had on paper in a very short period of time and come out with the decision from onboard canola in next many months. I probably would have, even at that stage, probably factored in even a more prolonged planning decision. You know, maybe would have gone to oral hearing. But actually, by doing it the other way around, by spending the time in that development phase prior to going for planning that took a lot longer, that took a year extra onto that project. Was just quite a long time. But actually, on the other side, it saved a huge amount of time because it gave certainty, and that was the point. We came out the other side with a decision that had no conditions, and it was able to go forward. So I think for me, it's about putting a lot of effort into the planning stage and leaving room for that contingency. So that's a project that I was thinking of in particular where, you know, it may set you back in one way, but you actually end up making the time up and giving that greater certainty for things to move forward.

Dusty Rhodes  32:39 
It's been absolutely fascinating and inspiring chatting with you Louise. If you'd like to find out more about Louise and some of the topics that we did speak about today, you'll find notes and link details in the description area of this podcast. But for now, Louise O'Flanagan, Head of Engineering and Asset management at EirGrid, thank you so much for joining us.

Louise O'Flanagan  32:55 
Thank you very much. Dusty.

Dusty Rhodes  32:58 
If you enjoyed our podcast today, please do share it with a friend in the business. Just tell them to search for Engineers Ireland in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. For advance episodes, more information on engineering across Ireland or career development opportunities, there are libraries of information on the website at engineersireland.ie.

Until next time for myself Dusty Rhodes, thank you so much for listening. Take care.

Connect with Sinéad on LinkedIn

MORE INFORMATION
Come meet the Engineers Ireland Team at the National Ploughing Championships from September 17th to 19th and have a blast at our Space Station.

We will have three incredible experiences at the Engineers Ireland 'Space Store', ran by former NASA Engineer Steve Ringler - who will be down at the Ploughing Championships with our team.

You can immerse yourself in the cosmos with virtual reality adventures using state-of-the-art headsets, try on a replica spacesuit, or get a hands-on experience with real space rocks, including pieces of the moon.

Join us at Block 2, Row 11, Stand 169 for an unforgettable journey through space and engineering.

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.

Sinead's book “Good Ideas and Power Moves” is due to be published in September 2025.

Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.

QUOTES
"I got to spend time with the engineers at NASA, and it just put this very kind of human, normal person face on this career that seemed totally inaccessible." - Sinéad O’Sullivan.

"There are a ton of really smart engineers that are solving these problems at any given time. But the problem really, I think, lies with the bureaucracy of how we fund science, how we create policy around that." - Sinéad O’Sullivan

"I feel like to be creative, you have to let that child part grow up with you, like if you really want to be good at doing these types of jobs, don't let people tell you they're dumb ideas." - Sinéad O’Sullivan

"To be a great engineer, you need to be around great engineers." - Sinéad O’Sullivan

"My entire career has been curiosity-driven for the simple reason that if I'm really interested in it, I'm going to work hard enough at it to be successful in it." - Sinéad O’Sullivan

"Engineering is really about learning a way of thinking, and it's one that allows you to understand nuance, complexity, and difficult challenges that you can apply to literally any other career." - Sinéad O’Sullivan

KEYWORDS
#engineering #nasa #career #space #mission #taylorswift #robots

TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription:

Dusty Rhodes  0:00 
Right now on Amplified, how ordinary engineers achieve extraordinary things.

Sinead O'Sullivan  0:06 
If you're an engineer, you can do anything else, and it nearly makes you a better thing. So for example, maybe I want to do law, but I really am excited about engineering. I would say, do engineering, because guess what, engineers ultimately make better lawyers. Learning engineering is really about learning a way of thinking, and it's one that allows you to understand nuance, complexity, difficult challenges that you can apply to literally any other career. I can do anything with my engineering degree.

Dusty Rhodes  0:37 
Hello there. My name is Dusty Rhodes. Welcome to Amplified, the Engineers Journal podcast. A lot of engineering is thinking about what is possible and then setting out to make it a reality. Our guest today is an expert at doing this because she has pushed the envelope of engineering literally to its limits. As a teenager in Armagh, she decided that she wanted to work with NASA and spent many years there working on models to understand which mission design from a possible million would be the one best one today. As well as working on AI and how some tech platforms are more powerful than countries, she's also found time to set up a record company, work in a two-star Michelin restaurant and study for a diploma and wine. So if you're thinking, ‘how do I make my career dreams come true’ I think our guest today is going to have a few answers and a little inspiration for you. It's a pleasure to welcome Sinead O'Sullivan. Sinead, how are you?

Sinead O'Sullivan  1:28 
I'm great. Thank you so much for having me

Dusty Rhodes  1:33 
Let me start off with I mean, your career is just a dazzling array of accomplishments. Can you just kind of bring me back to the start and tell me the story of how your journey began into aerospace engineering? 

Sinead O'Sullivan  1:46 
Yeah, I mean, I was really, really lucky when I was younger that I got to go to space camp in Houston. They have an international camp. And so it's, it's kind of, it's something like 4045, students from 3036 different countries attend every year, and I was lucky enough to go and represent Northern Ireland, and I got to spend time with the engineers at NASA. And it just put this very kind of human, normal person face on this career that seemed totally inaccessible. And I remember coming back and telling people that, yeah, I want to be a neuroscience engineer, and so I'm going to work at NASA. And they would look at me as if I had three heads, but I had met very normal people who had done it, and it was no big deal for them. So I kind of thought, Well, why can't I do that too?

Dusty Rhodes  2:40 
The following, with NASA. You get the gig with NASA. I mean, there's very, from my limited knowledge of NASA, they're either talking about going to the ISS the International Space Station, going to the moon or going to Mars. Which one of these were you involved in? 

Sinead O'Sullivan  2:54 
So I actually did human spaceflight mission design. So anything that involves, I mean, very simply, there's human and then non-human, you're kind of robotic mission design. I was involved in the planning of anything that was that involves humans in the loop. So if there was an astronaut involved in some capacity, that would have fallen into my my bracket. And, yeah, there were a couple. I mean, you know, any given time we were designing, you know, maybe upwards of 10 different missions. Now, not all of those missions would make it through to being fully funded and something that we would actually work on, but we would look at lots of, you know, kind of like, you know, ideate, lots of different types of missions, and then some would get further along. So for example, the mission to Mars is one that you know, is quite famous and has made it very far along in its trajectory. There were a couple that I worked on that unfortunately did not make it as far along. One of them is, is what was known as the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which is where a close fly by asteroid would be captured by this kind of robotic arm type thing as it went past the Earth's atmosphere, and it would be brought then into lunar lunar orbit, a retrograde orbit, so just an orbit around the moon, and we would then send humans back and forth to that asteroid for mining purposes. Now the reason for that being that we would get to test a lot of the mining equipment that we wanted to send to Mars in a much closer and safer way than sending it to Mars and hoping for the best, and because we also wanted to test some other human-related mission components that were safer done closer to Earth, on the moon rather than Mars. Yeah. I mean, very interesting set of projects. And NASA is doing a lot of very interesting work at any given time. And sorry, you mentioned earlier that I chose the best mission out of a million statistically. And so a lot of the work that I did. Was kind of looking at the statistics and the number of combinations of different types of missions, and trying to optimise for the overall mission design. And you're looking at hundreds of trillions, not a million. And so it becomes this, you know, we would use supercomputers to try and optimise one small part of this that and the code on that supercomputer might take five days to run, and then you realise you're a bug on day four, and you restart it. But yeah, very exciting types of work that NASA's doing, I got to play a very small role in.

Dusty Rhodes  5:35 
You mentioned mining on an asteroid a great distance away from us, and it kind of almost brings that back to engineering here on Earth, because, you know, you're thinking about Greenfield sites and brownfield sites, and nothing is more Greenfield than an asteroid. It's completely barren. I mean, do you have the same kind of problems, if you like, from a different perspective? But are they at the core of them? Are they the same problems that regular engineers have?

Sinead O'Sullivan  6:07 
Well, I mean, NASA engineers are regular engineers. We kind of put these people on pedestals and make it seem like it's impossible to do what they're doing. I mean, they're just regular people that went to university and got a job and have families and go to work nine to five. You know, now, the problems that they work on are a little more abstract, because they're not testing it every day. You know, they might test it once or twice in their career, if they're lucky. I mean, if you look at the Mars Rover, for example, curiosity and endeavour. I mean, you know, I got to spend time with those engineers as they were testing it live. I was in mission control as that landed. I mean, you know, seeing the face of engineers after they've worked on something 24/7, for eight years straight, and then it works. I mean, that's amazing. But these, I mean, they're still, these are very normal people doing normal engineering jobs. Um, one of the closest analogies I would have with, and I did a lot of kind of underwater robotics work for the US Navy. A lot of anyone that's working with water is essentially working with a very similar environment to space. You've got very high-pressure, temperature differentials. Stuff moves like just, it sounds simple but like, stuff just moves in ways that you kind of is hard to control. It's hard to see. Like, sensors don't work that well. So like, if you're you know, if you have this underwater robotic and you're trying to find something to shear, there's glean. Sensors just don't work that well. Everything gets wet, everything gets hot or really cold. So like the closest analogy to kind of an on-Earth environment would definitely be underwater, which is why so many of the astronauts that you see graduating from NASA's astronaut programs have come from institutions like Woods Hole, which is kind of ocean oceanographic research centre. But, yeah, no, these engineers are, are regular engineers. They're, they're building, they're building very normal stuff. And there's a reason that JCB is one of the larger lunar mining research kind of institutions, you know, these, these are not totally abstract. Some of it feels very abstract.

Dusty Rhodes  8:22 
Sure, but yeah, so engineers at NASA are like engineers all over the world. Okay, very intelligent, very curious. People always looking for a solution. The problems that get thrown at you are, as you say, abstract or unusual, but the problem processing, solving problems, your thought process, the method is the same. So can you give me an example, then, of a problem that you were given where you would have used the same method to figure it out?

Sinead O'Sullivan  8:49 
I can give you dozens. I mean, what, you know, what my specialisation was actually in. I came from a kind of world-renowned centre, Academic Centre which created engineering methodologies. And so the methodologies that we would use at NASA were exactly the same engineering methodologies that were used for Boeing, creating, designing aircraft. You know, I have classmates I went to Queen's University in Belfast, and I have classmates that went on to work for spirit of shorts in Belfast. They worked for Airbus. They would use the same methodologies, except the difference is that we would get to test ours slightly less often, and it would be a lot more kind of hypothetical, which is why, and sorry, the budgets for ours were extremely different. You know, the budget for a spaceflight program is infinitely larger than, I shouldn't say infinitely larger, but it's significantly larger than most kind of Earth-constrained problems. So you know, I'd say the big difference is that you have to get really, really creative in how you think about testing some of the. Stuff. You spend a lot of time modelling how you think things are going to react, the behaviour, the interaction between, you know, different levels of gravity, or, you know, you spend a lot of time modelling components and how they might interact. And then you hope to God that those models work because you've, you've just built a whole thing around that there's less of a feedback loop. So that's probably the big difference with a lot of the stuff.

Dusty Rhodes  10:26 
But what about that? You say you need to get creative. How do you get creative with these problems?

Sinead O'Sullivan  10:30 
Going back to this, the Space Camp thing, I went to mentor, and to be one of the kind of, yeah, the mentors at space camp, and you have these 16-year-olds, and they're kind of throwing out ideas like, why don't we just do some Hyperloop, kind of magnetic, you know, launch system? And you're thinking, or, I don't know if that's, you know, okay, sure. Why not? Or a space elevator or something like that, and you kind of think that doesn't seem very realistic or practical. But then several years later, you hear in the news that there is now a company that's being funded with hundreds of millions of dollars to do these things. And so one of the most amazing things about the space and the aerospace industry, I find, is that it actually really helps you to not lose that sense of anything is possible that you have at a young age, because it is literally and, you know, I spend so much time with people at NASA and the GERD propulsion lab and other really cool places and they spitball ideas as if they're five years Old. Like, why don't we just do this? And the adult in you says, well, budget, Paul, you know, there's a there's 10 million different reasons why that's not going to work. But you have to really, really restrain yourself and say, Actually that forget about all of those kind of other reasons the technology and that could actually work. So then you realise is the problem with a lot of our science R and D, actually, the inability to get the politicians on board, the financing on board, and that's kind of the direction that I moved in with my career because I realised that there are a ton of really smart engineers that are solving these problems at any given time that we have. But the problem, really, I think, lies with the bureaucracy of how we fund science, how we create policy around that. And it's like, if we could just give money to these people that are like, Let's build a space elevator without thinking about the technological or the other kind of constraints we would probably have 16-year-olds building really sophisticated solutions to problems that we've been trying to solve for a really long time. So I kind of feel like to be creative, you have to like as you get older, right? And you're gonna know this, everyone feels it the child, in you get smaller and smaller and smaller. The child that would have said, just do this or that, but you have to kind of let that child grow up with you, like if you really want to be good at doing these types of jobs, don't let people tell you they're dumb ideas.

Dusty Rhodes  13:18 
Another part of that is going to make a bigger impression, I think, in the future. And you must have had experience of this is robots and automation, because obviously you can't send humans to asteroids or to Mars or, you know, hopefully we're going back to the moon. But robot, and I've seen a lot of stuff where they're talking about building a base on the moon, but it will be built by automated robots before a single man or woman lands there. And I find that's amazing. Have you gotten involved in this? Have you?

Sinead O'Sullivan  13:47 
I haven't done anything specifically on lunar construction, but I did a lot of work on autonomous systems.

Dusty Rhodes  13:54 
Yeah, that's what I was talking about robots and automation. Yeah, tell me more.

Sinead O'Sullivan  13:58 
I mean, it's just, it's really incredible. I, you know, we live in an interesting period at the minute, because I spent many years working on kind of robotics and autonomous systems, um, and now we're at the stage where the difference between an autonomous system, the work that it can do, the constraints that there are in, in how we should expect these systems to work, and kind of societal expectations of an understanding of these systems are not that well understood. So, so. So, for example, there are two types of people generally, and people will kind of fall into one of these two categories. You're either somebody who thinks never gonna happen, how could, how could a robot do something that humans do? And even AI. But let's stick with robots and automation, autonomous systems for a minute, and then there are people who think these things are gonna do everything, and they're gonna kill us, and they're gonna kill everyone. And people typically fall very quickly into one of these two categories. You know, having built some of the most sophisticated autonomous systems for the Department of Defense, particularly as I mentioned underwater - I spent quite a bit of time working underwater, which is the hardest environment you could build a system in because it doesn't ever really know where it is because things move constantly under water. GPS, oh my god GPS does not work underwater. How do you locate yourself if you have a system of three different robots and they're trying to do something together, how do they know where each other is? Because of the refraction of water itself, it's actually very hard to do this quickly. One of the hardest things to do is to get underwater systems to communicate with each other. And there's a lot we can learn from underwater autonomous systems that can help us understand how autonomous cars communicate with each other when there's high traffic. There's a lot of really exciting stuff happening there. I want to ask people, whatever bucket they fall into, either 'Oh it's going to fix everything' or  'it's going to kill us all', to kind of have some restraint there and look at where they're really good at what they're doing and where they're just not as good. I kind of like to think of autonomous systems as a tool that humans use, never in a full replacement capacity, but that we can use to make our lives better and easier. That helps us in some capacity, but not in a full replacement mode and certainly not in a robot that has super-intelligence of itself that is going to kill us all. 

Dusty Rhodes  17:07 
I definitely want to dig into more about that because robots, automation, AI and all in that bucket is something I want to dig in with you about. But first, just a quick mention that if you're listening to the podcast and you're kind of thinking that this whole space exploration and everything just sounds amazing, and you're thinking to yourself what it would feel like to get into a rocket ship and go off to space, well, here's an invitation to come to the Engineers Ireland Team, at the National Ploughing Championships, September 17th-19th, because we have got our very own Engineers Ireland Space Station on-site! There's going to be three incredible experiences there for you in the Space Store, which is run by former NASA Engineer Steve Ringler, who will be down at the Ploughing Championships with out Team. Immerse yourself in the cosmos with virtual reality adventures using state-of-the-art VR headsets, you can try on a replica space suit - that's top of my list, or you can get a hands-on experience of real space rocks, including actual pieces of the moon. To do that, just join us at Block 2, Row 11, Stand 169 for an unforgettable journey through space and engineering. Find out more here!

Dusty Rhodes  18:19
Sinéad I can see you making a note, is it about the Ploughing Championships? 

Sinead O'Sullivan  18:23
It absolutely is. It's very exciting, it's very, very cool, the space suit in particular, I spent a long time working with Space Suit designers and material engineers, oh my god they're just unbelievably complicated. I remember trying on my first space suit when I was younger and that had probably the biggest impression on me because you forget how hard it is of an environment on humans and you've got this one thing that protects you and they're just so unbelievably cool, but complicated things. So definitely go and look at the space suit.

Dusty Rhodes  19:09
Sinéad I want to move on and just ask you about how you think about life, because working for NASA is a lofty ambition, and you were talking about the kid inside you and the kid goes 'yeah of course you can!' A lot of us lose that as we get older. But you've gone and done that and worked at NASA, and I'm sure a lot of us would be like 'we'll I'd love to be a wine expert', you've done all these things I mean you're writing books, let me know how is it that when your brain works when you get a creative idea in your head you go from crazy idea to actually doing it and achieving it?

Sinead O'Sullivan  19:48
Yeah, that's an interesting question, I mean, I think you've kind of answered it in your question. And I've kind of discussed it before but like I'd say if there was something I've learned when I was younger, maybe 16 / 17, when I feel like I was making career decisions that stayed with me, is that I met people who did extraordinary things and they were just ordinary people and I think there's something about that that made me internalise the idea that there's literally nothing that you cannot do. My friends have just done amazing stuff and I see them on their journey and they're not easy things to do like you have to have grit, determination and resiliency, but nothing feels like it's impossible for me. It's not necessarily an ego thing, I am never the smartest person in a room and I didn't get the best grades in school, and people probably laughed at me when I said I was going to NASA, because I was never the top of my class. And you know, normal people can do extraordinary things. At a young age if you develop agency like 'I can go and do those things', sure it might take you a while to figure out how to do them, but nothing feels impossible. One you realise that the hard part is actually figuring out what thing you want to do if you could do anything, because there are so many things to do. And so the hard part is waking up every day and thinking 'what do I really want to dedicate the next month, six months, year, five years, to doing what is the goal?' And once you've decided on the goal, I mean, it really is just a matter of going and doing it and sticking at it.

Dusty Rhodes  22:13 
A lot of a lot of engineers will have dreams, as we all do, and they say, I want to buy, build the first, you know, 50-story skyscraper in Ireland or I want to run my own firm, or I want to do something, you know, you know, crazy at the in the middle of the Atlantic, or whatever, and they have the you kind of just get stuck in a rut, and you don't move on. I've heard two things that I have found to be true, and I just want to ask you if you found them be true. Number one is, you have those crazy ideas and you think, okay, great, I'm going to do it. All right, you should try and hang out with the people that you want to be like. So if you want to be a millionaire, hang out with millionaires. All right? And the other thing is, is that when you start hanging out with the people that you want to be like they're more giving because they're ahead of you. And it's just a natural thing in life where kind of, you know, somebody who's climbing up the ladder doesn't want somebody in their way, but somebody who's behind is not important. So you're quite happy to go, oh yeah. Well, listen, if you want to do NASA, here's the thing. You go through the whole, whole steps of them, and you get all that. Have you found that also to be true in your career?

Sinead O'Sullivan  23:23 
Yeah, you've nailed it. I mean, so many people don't understand that 90% of trying to do something hard isn't about the sure you need the technical skills, right? So, like, for engineering is a great example. I can't be an engineer at NASA. If I don't understand maths, like there is a basic requirement, yeah, technically. But I think once you have that, like, how many engineers are there in the world? So many, but not everyone gets to work at NASA. You know, I say that these are ordinary people, but, you know, there are few of them, and it's a very prestigious job. But I think what people don't quite understand, and it took me a really, really long time to understand this, is that most of the stuff that you learn about how to actually get these jobs and do them, is like implicit learning. It's not in a textbook. It's not written down anywhere. It's the kind of stuff that you only pick up. It's a mentality, it's how to go about things, it's how you communicate that you only really learn when you spend time with the people that are doing it. And so there's this kind of insider, outsider perspective, which is hard like it is unbelievably hard to break through, but if you spend time with the people that are doing those things, you don't even realise that you're learning how to be one of those people, and then you wake up one day and you are one of them. And there's so much of the world is about implicit learning, which is why, during COVID, when people stopped going to offices, I felt really bad for younger people, because they're not implicitly learning these things. They might be sitting doing a spreadsheet or using CAD or something, but to be a great engineer, you need to be around great engineers. When you surround yourself with people that you want to be like and you find interesting and, you know it really it's not in a weird or superficial way. I mean, just people that you like, and you find interesting, and you aspire to be, you become one of them over time. I fully believe that we are, you know, we are the sum of the people that we spend the closest amount of time or the most amount of time with. And I'm lucky that I got to travel a lot and meet really cool people all over the world. And I would like to think that I'm a sum of these very cool, interesting people. That's not to say I am cool and interesting, but it's more likely that I will be if I spend time with people like that.

Dusty Rhodes  25:50 
Very, very true. I'm going to hit you now with the strangest twist in an interview that I've ever had in my entire career because we've been talking about career moves. We've been talking about NASA. We've been talking about building crazy things underwater and on remote asteroids and stuff like that. And now we're going to talk about Taylor Swift, oh my gosh. And it's all related to everything that we have been talking about. Okay, because you've written a book called 'Good Ideas and Power Moves'. Link is in the description of the podcast for you. But Taylor Swift almost embodies everything you've been talking about. Tell me about this.

Sinead O'Sullivan  26:29 
I just, I listened to a lot of Taylor Swift music, and I followed her quite closely. You know her kind of personal, unprofessional trials and tribulations. I've seen her as somebody who just does exactly the stuff that I've talked about, and I've always felt really amazed by by somebody like her.

Dusty Rhodes  26:49 
So give me, give me an example of something Taylor did that relates to what we were talking about.

Sinead O'Sullivan  26:53 
I mean, more recently, she re-recorded all of her albums, and literally every executive under the sun. Told her not to do that. She went against a private equity firm with more than a trillion dollars behind it, which told her not to do that, and she still did it. And she there was, I mean, statistically, it was much more likely than not that what she was doing was career suicide, but she just very strongly believed in it, and she had a gut instinct about it, and it worked in her favour for lots of various different reasons. It could easily not have been done, but I just feel like, you know, that is one example of somebody who she still has that child inside of her that says, actually, this is what I want to do, and this is what I'm going to do, and this is what I believe in. And I don't care if the spreadsheets or Wall Street or whoever these, these kind of childless, soulless people tell me that I'm wrong, I'm just gonna go and do it and see what happens. And this is a path that I'm gonna take. I just think she's just incredibly young, fun, courageous, and I just think she's done a lot of really, really interesting stuff. I mean, again, she is someone who against whom the odds have been completely stacked. And she, you know, she wasn't always as successful as she is today. And a lot of people probably don't remember the years when everyone hated her, and a lot of people would have given up and been like, Okay, well, I had a good career so far, I should be thankful for that. And you know, now I'm going to retire because I've made a ton of money, and the time, you know, the time in the limelight is over for me. She didn't do that. She kind of forged her own very, very atypical path. Any executive in the music industry would not have told any of their musicians to do what she did at any given stage of that.

Dusty Rhodes  28:45 
So, would it be true then that Taylor Swift's problem-solving in Taylor Swift, the brain of Taylor Swift, the way it solves problems and the way it makes decisions is something we should learn from.

Sinead O'Sullivan  28:56 
I definitely think so. I, you know, it kind of frustrates me. We were talking earlier about, you know, staying and being creative. And I think that, like not a lot of people for a very long time, took her seriously. I first started to write about Taylor Swift in a more business kind of professional finance capacity several years before, you know, kind of the mainstream, oh, she's amazing and oh, she's making so much money, started to happen. And I remember because I write for the Financial Times, having an argument with my editor there trying to get a piece published about her several years ago. And they said, No, I mean, she's just, you know, she's just a musician, you know, she's just so and so. But the reality is that, and we now know she was never just so and so. She was never just a musician. But getting back to my point, which is that you kind of have to look outside of the box in terms of who's doing something that's really interesting or unique. And don't you know there's in the same way that that adults, part of you will be like, oh, never gonna work bureaucracy, politics, finance, whatever? You have to have that same remove, that same mask when you look at who is inspiring you, or where you find your creativity, a lot of people would for for most of her career, did not take her, did not view her as a serious person, in the same way that most engineers don't go to art museums to try and find you know something that's going to inspire the next NASA mission. But if you want to be creative, you have to look at people just doing weird stuff that is not on this kind of escalator of a career and learn something from that.

Dusty Rhodes  30:42 
One of the things you said at the start of our conversation was it's ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and Taylor Swift is a great example of that because she's just a girl. Where was it Philadelphia, or the state of where she was from? Pennsylvania? Oh, Pennsylvania, that's it. Sorry. So she's from the state of Pennsylvania, small town, Pennsylvania, and, you know, she'd no major, like, you know, her dad wasn't a pop star and like that, but she just came from that, and she had the determination. And many people have seen the video of her sitting as a 14-year-old singing beside some river or whatever, and there was, like, nobody there, all right? And I think the same thing about Ed Sheeran, because he, again, was, he was, I mean, he was a red-headed kid, all right, not blessed with the looks blessing, all right. But he said, I want to be a pop star. And he was a terrible singer when he was a kid.

Sinead O'Sullivan  31:34 
So I love this, yes, I this is my favorite example, and I actually wrote about him in the book. And this is exactly what I refer to, and Taylor Swift writes about it in her lyrics frequently. Yeah, she was never born like this, she had to work so damn hard Yes, to get to where she is today. And I fully believe that, Oh, my God, I was never if you, if you would have asked my maths teacher when I was 15 if I was going to go to NASA, they would have laughed.

Dusty Rhodes  32:03 
Yes, honestly, but if you have that dream and you have that crazy idea, you will then do the work that takes to get there.

Sinead O'Sullivan  32:09 
I believe that, and that's why I, you know, I saw a professor of Aerospace Engineering, and I teach a lot of undergrad engineering, and they kind of all ask me for career advice at certain stages, even after they've kind of long graduated. It's, it's always really nice to hear from from previous students. And they're always kind of, there's, there's a choice that they have to make. Should I do this thing and it's stable, and I know what it and it's a great career, and, yeah, or this other thing. And I was going to say, like, you're asking me this question because you're interested in this other thing. Otherwise, you would have said, No, you would have taken the like, and it's this isn't great advice for everybody, and I acknowledge that you know this. This works for me and it works for a small number of people, but, like, my entire career has been curiosity driven for the simple reason that if I'm really interested in it, I'm going to work hard enough at it to be successful in it. If I'm not interested in it, like there's just no way I'm ever going to be good at it, because I just every there's nothing, nobody is born with a single talent that they're good enough at to get them to the top without trying. And so it's like, what are the things I'm excited about? Because those are the things that I'm going to get off at eight o'clock in the morning and be like, Oh, I can't wait to pick up where I left off yesterday. And so it's like, do the thing that you really love. And when I was younger, I remember, and in Ireland, you know, I think so many people might have experienced this, but if you get good grades, they try to, especially in science, they try to tell you, you should be a doctor, and that's a that's a great job for a lot of people. I just never it. Just never even entered like I just didn't even think about it because I knew I just very specifically. I decided I was going to go wherever NASA and I remember at the time of school being like, okay, cool, but just go and do medicine and I just had no interest. I would have failed. I just would have failed medical school. I just wouldn't have been able to pass it. It would have been too boring for me. Yeah, that it's boring. But for me, I just didn't find it interesting.

Dusty Rhodes  34:24 
But I think it's one of those things where you find the thing, or whatever you go, that's what I want to do. And very, very few people have that. A lot of people, as you say, they go to school and they go to numbers and they get the grades and they go, I'll go be a lawyer, be a doctor, you know, whatever. Be an accountant, you know, whatever. And they make great money, but our their hearts aren't in it. I find most of the engineers that I speak to are not like that, because there was always something about engineering where they kind of went. I love a really good problem. That's why they got into engineering.

Sinead O'Sullivan  34:56 
Yeah, and I worked with a lot of people in finance at the minute and have done for the last few years. And I remember when I went to Harvard Business School, I had gone from working at NASA, where people, I mean, it would be midnight on a Friday night, and I'd be running code, and people would grab a few beers and watch like, you know, it was like a hobby and a job all in one and everyone was super excited about what everyone else was doing. And then I remember going to Harvard Business School and being with a ton of kind of hedge fund, private equity, investment banking type people, and they hated their jobs, and there was no part of them that wanted to ever be in the office. And I remember thinking at the time like, wow, this is the difference between, I mean, an engineer has, like I said, has the ability to make a ton of money in so many different ways that are not engineering. So you can be you can go into accounting, you can go into banking, you can be a doctor, and a lot of the time you'll be pushed into those areas. But you kind of, the engineers are the people who kind of said, I actually don't want to do that. I want to do this other thing. And they're very specific about that thing being engineering. They've chosen engineering, which is why I love working with engineers, because they choose to be there every day when they have alternatives, people that work in finance. And I mean, this is not to say that they're bad or horrible or boring. A lot of people in finance, and they're very cool, but nobody wakes up in the morning as a 15-year-old, and I cannot wait to be an accountant with engineering. You have to, you have to choose that. And there's something so amazing with working with people who are passionate about what they're doing. You can't replace, like there's no there is nothing. There's no amount of money in the world, salary wise, that you can replace working with cool, interested people with.

Dusty Rhodes  36:52 
Describe to me the feeling you get when you're working with cool, interesting people, and you have this enormous problem, and then you come up with an idea. And then you fix it. What's that feeling like when you go it worked?

Sinead O'Sullivan  37:04 
It's priceless to see something that you've built. Work is priceless. And people feel this at a really young age, and this is the thing that they lose, I think, when they get older, this kind of problem solving, because problems get more complex and they get more kind of ethereal, and so many more people are involved in fixing it that no one really takes ownership over it. But when you're a kid, right? And you're building Lego, and the thing works, you know, like, Huh? You know, I've been working with chefs recently, like top chefs at a two-star mission restaurant, I see the same thing. It's engineering. They see it every they build something, and there's a reason that they work 18 hour days, every day, is because they get so much satisfaction from the thing that they made than going and working. There's something about that that just, it's just money. It's like, it's, it's like doing a hobby and getting paid for it. That just doesn't get replicated in finance when your spreadsheet tells you you're gonna make money. You know, there's, there's something so satisfying about building or designing, and even if it doesn't work, because 99% of the time it doesn't work, right? And no one talks about that.

Dusty Rhodes  38:16 
Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. Even if it doesn't work, you've always learned something so you know, it's not a failed exercise, by by any accounts. Listen, let me wrap up our conversation just kind of looking to the future, because I think you might have a better idea than most of us. AI and big tech is what everybody is talking about. I'm wondering where what you know of AI is going to help engineers with problem-solving and decision-making. What do you see coming down the line?

Sinead O'Sullivan  38:45 
I will give you a good example in biotech, which is where we kind of seen some of the impacts of AI, actually, even in terms of the type of work that I did at NASA, which is very statistically driven types of work. So let's say you have a needle and a haystack. A lot of the work at NASA that I did was trying to find the needle, which is a mission that was like the optimal mission in amongst the haystack. And we wrote a lot of code, and a lot of the stuff that I did was writing optimisation, and it's kind of a what would kind of now be considered like AI algorithms to try and find that that needle faster and faster and faster, in the same way, that in biotech, you're trying to find chemical solutions to health problems. So let's say that there, you know, there are a trillion different ways that enzymes can work together in a vaccine to do something. Well, it used to be that scientists would have to go through one by one, testing each of these to realise that it worked or didn't work. Now we have AI that can nearly do this in the blink of an eye, where we used to need supercomputers at NASA. I mean, one of my friends at the Jet Propulsion Lab has a side curiosity in in biology and run the code for the COVID vaccine the week that it was released, the week that the paper on that was released, he was able to do that on his home computer and validated that it worked. So we have this kind of shift in the computational ability to do some of the grunt work that people would have done. And I think right now that's where we are, that this has just become such an amazing tool that should, and I think will allow us to say, Okay, I used to spend 18 hours a day for four years trying to get to this point that I was able to get at in three and a half seconds using AI. Now that I'm there, the really hard stuff can start. The hard work really begins, of trying to figure out, how does this vaccine interact with complex systems? Um, how does this mission? How do we get this mission through Congress? How? I mean, the New Yorker just wrote an amazing piece on writing because people are convinced that it's going to kill the work of writers and journalists. And it's like writing is also this kind of combinatorial problem. There are 8 trillion different ways that you can write a sentence. A writer has to specifically choose one, and it's like, what are the constraints? Who is it writing for writing doesn't happen in a vacuum. You have to think about your readers and what emotions you're trying to convey. So there's this higher level of thinking that an engineer, a writer, a biotechnologist, has to make where they look at the complex world around them, the markets, financing, policy, and that's the part that I think a human is uniquely good at doing, and humans will uniquely do, but they'll just be doing it so much faster and better with the use of tools like AI.

Dusty Rhodes  42:00 
Yeah, so, AI is a good thing in a short sentence.

Sinead O'Sullivan  42:04 
Yes, I, you know, I there are, again, like, like, autonomous systems. People think it's either gonna kill us or make us redundant, or, no, it's a really great tool. And actually, I was giving a talk with the editor of The Economist recently, and he had a really good line, which I'm going to steal here, which is that, you know, chat GPT, for example, people, everyone's talking about chat GPT. Chat GPT is like having an intern. They do a lot of work for you, but you still have to go through to make sure that they didn't screw it off anywhere. Make sure to correct, but that intern is never going to replace the writer or the editor, but it certainly helps them so they're a tool. All of these things that we build are tools. We can decide what we want to do with them. Even, oh, my God, even if there was a runaway rogue AI that tried to kill us all, we can decide to do something about that, because we have agency, right? Like we're not stuck in a vacuum with this stuff happening to us. That's why we have policy and law and regulation. So I I'm not worried about it. I'm excited about it.

Dusty Rhodes  43:12 
I'm excited about it as well. I'm a little bit tin hat about it as well. And another third of me it just keeps thinking about the animal Schwarzenegger movie, The Terminator, where Skynet eventually, yeah, there you go. So, but it's the future, and nobody knows. Listen to wrap-up today. Sinead, it's been absolutely fascinating. Is there anything else, or any final thoughts that you would like to share on engineering and stuff like that with our audience?

Sinead O'Sullivan  43:37 
Yeah. I mean, here's the thing that, you know, I get a lot of younger people asking me if they should do engineering or something, or how to think about, like a career in engineering at that stage. And I guess my guiding principle, because I still make career decisions every day, like even adults have to think about them all the time. And I always think about a couple of things. One is like, am I going to have fun doing this? And I kind of optimise nearly all of my career decisions for fun, because I don't. I don't think jobs have to be boring. That's so dumb. You can having a boring job as a choice, but one that I've never made. The other thing is that I always try to choose something that gives me more optionality. So for example, medicine, my sister's a doctor. There are very few things that she can do that is not being a doctor. Now that she's done her 12 years of training, if you're an engineer, you can do anything else, and it only makes you a better thing. So for example, if you think down the line, maybe, maybe I want to do law like something totally different, right? Maybe I want to do law, but I really am excited about engineering. I would say do engineering because guess what? Engineers, it has been, literally make better lawyers. And I'll tell you one other thing, I'm a friend who was an engineer who went into law. They make way more money if they understand technology, way more money. So there's nearly, you know, I've worked with engineers that have become traders. I can tell you one thing, they're better traders. Engineering, learning. Engineering is really about learning a way of thinking, and it's one that allows you to understand nuance, complexity, and difficult challenges that you can apply to literally any other career. And so it's fun. You can be an engineer, or you can be literally anything else once you have it, but there's no way that you're not going to enjoy the process of becoming it. And I think, at the stage where you don't really know much about what you like and don't like, and careers and jobs and what I had no idea what engineers did like, none, none when I chose to do engineering. But I love the people and everyone fun that I met was always an engineer, and so baby steps, just do what you think is fun and the engineering you can use to double your success in any other career. Should you decide at a later stage that's not what you wanted to do? But yes, I there's, you know, people always ask me, if you could go back and do it again, what would you change? And like, absolutely nothing. I can do anything with my engineering degree.

Dusty Rhodes  46:30 
And on that note, I'm going to say it's been hugely inspirational chatting with you if you'd like to find out more about Sinead O'Sullivan and some of the topics that we spoke about today. You find notes and link details in the description area of this podcast, but for now, Sinead O'Sullivan, thank you so so much for being so giving.

Sinead O'Sullivan  46:47 
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a ton of fun.

Dusty Rhodes  46:51 
If you enjoyed our podcast today, do share with a friend in the business, just on the search for Engineers Ireland on their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io for Engineers Ireland. For pre-release episodes, more information on engineering across Ireland or career development opportunities, there are libraries of information on our website at www.engineersireland.ie 

Until next time for myself, Dusty Rhodes, thank you so much for listening.