Reflections on my year as Chair of the Cork Region of Engineers Ireland

I’m proud to say I had a tremendous year as Chair of the Cork Region of Engineers Ireland.

My year involved working with an excellent committee, comprised of those with many years’ experience in organising activities and also with some great new people who brought good energy to our group.

Our main committee and our sub-committees (which were involved in organising CPD events and our annual dinner) performed excellently in achieving the goals we set out for the year.

I think we effectively managed to showcase engineering excellence in the Cork area, bringing CPD events and information sessions relevant to our locality and beyond to an audience both inside and outside our county.

We managed to host and co-host, with other engineering sectors and divisions, a number of events comprising of lectures and site visits, including our series on sustainability, lectures on EV batteries, contract awareness, Irish Rail projects, computing applications in BikeShare, the Dursey Island cable car refurbishment, the Killaloe bypass and the GNI Female Engineer Development Programme.

I particularly enjoyed the historical elements of some of our talks such as the history of rail development in the Cork area, the history of the Dursey Island cable car, and the story of the original crossing of the Shannon at Killaloe.

I managed to have two site visits to the NMRI and NMCI Marine Institutes in Ringaskiddy, which are fabulous institutions and are deeply embedded in engineering that is happening now and will be happening in the future in the Cork harbour area and off the coast of Cork, never mind the influence these institutions have worldwide.

We had a stand at the STEM SW exhibition in City Hall and participated in Engineers Week events. Stellar work was also done by the Cork Region’s Young Engineers Society, a society which the main committee continues to support, and indeed learns from, as the enthusiasm of these individuals is infectious.

Personally, I enjoyed my year representing the Cork Region on the Engineers Ireland Council, which oversees the overall organisation, and I also took great pride in visiting other regions across Ireland where I could proudly wear the chain of office of the region with my own name etched on the latest bar of the chain. Meeting and working with officers from other regions and other sectors further increased the contributions I could make to my own region when we compared actions and lessons learned.

A major part of my year in office was focused on encouraging young people to consider engineering as a profession, and also in assisting members in their pursuit of professional titles within the organisation.

The culmination of my efforts to assist in achieving professional titles such as chartership is our annual conferring, at which the president of our organisation gives a presidential address and titles are conferred. We also use this event to present awards to engineering students in Cork third-level colleges for achievements in their engineering pursuits.

I’m proud to say that I applied the same efforts to myself and have just recently been transferred to Fellow (CEng FIEI) of Engineers Ireland. This is a high point of my career and it reflects what I hope has been a reasonably decent contribution to the engineering profession, and to which I hope I will continue to contribute.

My career to date has involved me in Cork projects such as the Port of Cork development at Ringaskiddy, the Haulbowline East Tip Remediation project, the Glandore Cancer Treatment Centre in Cork University Hospital, the reconstruction of the iconic Mizen Head Footbridge, Skibbereen Flood Relief Scheme, a number of healthcare projects in St Mary’s Health Campus and the Mercy University Hospital and the South West Local Authorities Public Lighting Energy Efficiency Project.

I look forward to seeing new projects come to life across Cork, such as the M28 Cork to Ringaskiddy Project, the Cork Northern Distributor Multi Modal Road, the Events Centre and the massive Docklands Development and in time, the Cork LUAS. These are projects that are planned to make Cork greener, more connected and more livable.

Our big social event of the year, in February, is our annual dinner. This was a major success again this year, particularly as we were delighted to have the presence of An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, as guest of honour to this annual black tie event which brought over 300 engineering professionals together at the Maryborough Hotel in Cork. Other high-profile guests on the evening included Laura Burke, President of Engineers Ireland, Councillor Patrick Donovan, Deputy Mayor of County Cork and Councillor Honore Kamegni, Deputy Lord Mayor of Cork.

It so happened that my own 60th birthday party was held on the evening following our annual dinner. That was an entirely different affair, for more reasons than just the absence of An Taoiseach.

I have found volunteering in this organisation to be very rewarding, be it as a committee member or as an officer.

At one function, I was discussing this with the head of one of our third-level institutions and we came to the conclusion that it’s not ‘giving back’, although it can be, but it’s more about ‘taking one’s turn’.