Conferring at the Helix

Last evening,  I presided over the annual conferring ceremony,  hosted at the DCU Helix.  The evening was a celebration,  and while a little formal was a happy occasion with friends and families attending.  About 160 people were conferred with Professional Titles,  including over a 100 new Chartered Engineers and about 20 new Fellows.   This year,  over 450 people nationwide have received Professional Titles.

As President,  I also have the privilege of inviting distinguished engineers to Fellowship.  As you may have read earlier in this blog,  I already did so for Deputy Prime Minister Hai of Vietnam last October.

Last evening,  I similarly awarded Fellowship to:

• Tim Chapman,  of Arup,  a leader in geotechnics;
• Bill Grimson,  of DIT,  a respected and a long time senior volunteer for Engineers Ireland;
• Dervilla Mitchell,  a director of Arup,  and who lead the design team of the Heathrow Terminal 5 project;
• Regina Moran,  who developed her career as an Engineering Technician to Chartered Engineer and is now the CEO of Fujitsu Ireland (and who spoke at our recent conference);  and
• Ray O'Rourke,  who is the founder,  CEO and Chairman of Laing O'Rourke,  now one of the world's largest construction firms.

Finally,  I was delighted to be able to give a special award to Malcolm O'Kelly,  of the Irish rugby team and who has freely given much of his time as an engineer to our STEPs programme.