A President's Blog

End of My Year

2010-05-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

Well, this evening was the end of my Presidential Year, and so this is my last post to this blog.

We had our Annual General Meeting this evening, and after presenting the annual reviews of the year, and financial report, I duly passed the chain of office to the incoming President, Martin Lowery.

Its been an extraordinary year for me, and one that I enjoyed tremendously. I've summarised it in my annual report to the members, which has been distributed electronically to them and which is also reproduced below.

Thanks for following me on this blog.

My annual report follows...

Introduction

I believe we have had a great start to our 175th anniversary year. I write this scarcely believing that my own 12 mnoths as President of Engineers Ireland is rapidly drawing to a conclusion. I have had the opportunity and privilege to meet many of the members of our institution, and to personally appreciate the wonderful work by our members in both their professional roles and as volunteer contributors. The huge pro bono commitment by our many regional and sectoral groups is a foundation for Engineers Ireland, and catalyses our growth in stature under the energetic leadership of our Director General, John Power, and the dedication of our team in Clyde Road.

I want to in particular thank those colleagues who served on the Council, the Executive, together with all of the Region, Division and Society committees and the many other very important committees and boards which enable Engineers Ireland to do it’s business so effectively. Your enthusiasm and in particular your willingness to give up your personal and family time to serve Engineers Ireland is inspiring to witness and is greatly appreciated. You have served, and continue to serve, Engineers Ireland well.

I have had the opportunity to participate in many events throughout the island of Ireland and in London. I have thoroughly enjoyed the hospitality offered, and always been impressed by the attendances of so many colleagues at these occasions. Their commitment is a testament to the strength and depth of Engineers Ireland.

During my inaugural speech on the 28th May 2009, I identified a number of issues and objectives for my year as President. I posted this online, and also kept an online diary of every event which I attended throughout the year this. As I write this review, there are 88 entries (actually, finally at the end it was 102..) for the events which I have attended so far this year. In reviewing the year, it seems appropriate to revisit my objectives which I listed in my inaugural speech.

The Economy

I took up this Presidency at a very interesting time for Engineering in Ireland. Our country has up until the recent past been the envy of many of our overseas colleagues as our Celtic Tiger economy surged ahead. Now however we are undoubtedly facing the most serious challenge to our economy, and to a sustainable prosperity, since the foundation of the State.

Since the 1960s, Ireland has chosen international trade as its key national focus, ultimately making our country one of the most openly traded economies in the world. However since 2004, we have changed some of our emphasis to domestic demand, driven by cheap debt financing in the euro zone. Our construction industry has underpinned our economic growth since 2004 but largely focused on domestic opportunity, in publicly funded infrastructure, commercial property and domestic housing. With the credit crunch, the construction sector has changed enormously and regretfully for the worst.

We are now currently, and unusually, faced with the demise of employment prospects for some of our members. During my year, Engineers Ireland further encouraged Continued Professional Development. We also took initiatives to assist unemployed members via our JobSeekers’ Network.

A sustained emphasis on innovation for the global market now has to be our highest national priority. Innovation need not only be as a result of scientific and technology research, but also arise from insights in process improvement and service delivery, and in many different sectors of our economy. Innovation for the global market will yield sustainable employment.

During my year, I was honoured to be asked to represent the engineering profession on the Taoiseach’s Innovation Taskforce. It duly reported in March 2010 and the report emphasizes the central and critical importance of engineers and Engineering in the future of the Irish economy.

CEng and MIEI

Throughout the history of Engineers Ireland, we have hitherto insisted that only graduates from accredited undergraduate degree courses in Engineering may become members. Nevertheless it is now commonplace that some Engineers work throughout the Irish economy despite graduating from degrees other than Engineering, but having undergone appropriate professional training from their employers.

During my year, Council decided to offer the full benefits of membership not only to level 7 as well as level 8 university graduates from accredited Engineering courses, but also to level 7 and 8 graduates from cognate undergraduate courses in the physical sciences, computing and mathematics, whose careers now in practical terms position them as Engineers.

Our changes to membership (opening it up to level 7 engineers, and to level 7 and 8 cognate graduates) together with our changes to the requirements for Chartered Engineering status (level 9 from 2013, a decision taken in May 2007) have presented Engineers Ireland to further engage with our Universities and Institutes of Technology. During my year, a co-ordination group with all heads of engineering schools, in all our higher education institutes, was established. In the light of the changes to our membership regulations, all faculty are encouraged to join Engineers Ireland.

Ethics and Regulation of the Profession

The Engineering profession is altruistic and conscious of its responsibility to society at large. It is important therefore that Engineers articulately voice any concerns to the public.

At this time, Ireland is facing a number of strategic challenges not just to our economy, but also to our infrastructure. Engineers must continue to ensure that these issues are raised and understood by the public and policy makers. The media and the public at large recognise that the quality of our water is vital for the health and welfare of our society, and indeed for our tourist industry. Coastal erosion together with rising sea levels, and changes to our flood plains, are of some media and public concern. A world class pervasive national broadband service is sorely absent, and is commented upon. The National Roads Authority have raised concerns about the maintenance of our road infrastructure, including our expensively developed new motorway and dual carriageway network. In addition to these challenges, there are others which perhaps have not yet widely reached public attention. For example, a national strategy for energy security, in the face of our increasing dependency on natural gas and wind together with the retirement of elderly plants, should be a national concern, particularly when investment capital for wind farms is increasingly difficult to obtain, and the controversy at the Corrib gas field project continues.

In some other jurisdictions, any works which may impact the safety, health and welfare of individuals or the society at large must by law be duly vetted by Professional Engineers - whether such works be civil, mechanical, electrical, electronic, pharmaceutical, software or indeed of any engineering discipline. In Ireland at this time, no such legislation exists and yet it surely must be in the interest of Irish society that all technology works are professionally evaluated and approved. Regulation of the Engineering profession in Ireland is an urgent issue. During my year, a working group was established by the Director General to study best practice and legislation overseas and to derive a draft working proposal. The Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government has expressed interest in championing the issue at Cabinet level. I am sure that the incoming President, Martin Lowery, will progress the issue in his Presidential year.

Unfortunately in Ireland, we have learnt of malpractice and ill judgment in other sectors - for example, in our health care, in our financial institutions, in the Roman Catholic Church, and in both our local and national governments. During my year, we reviewed and updated our Code of Ethics. While protecting the legitimate interests of his or her employer and clients, each of our members should not, above all else, engage in any activity which he or she knows, or has reasonable grounds for believing, is likely to result in a serious detriment to person or persons.

Engineers serve the public with very high standards for the safety, health and welfare of society. Engineers Ireland ensures that these standards are maintained and will where necessary defend any of its members who, in good faith, report concerns relating from any engineering works in any sector of engineering for the safety, health and welfare of society, and then are subsequently threatened with sanction.

Fostering interest in Engineering as a career

We continue to nurture interest in Engineering as a career. Engineers Ireland’s STEPS to engineering programme proceeded energetically throughout the year. We had Xperience Engineering for primary schools at DCU Helix in last June, well – and noisily! – supported. We were represented, and I spoke at, the national Graduate Careers Fair in the RDS. We recognised the Irish world champions of the Formula One in Schools competition (in which 31 teams from 20 countries participated). We were visible at the BT Young Scientists exhibition and I had the honour of representing Engineers Ireland at the associated dinner. Our Smart Futures seminar was also recently well attended, with many members volunteering their services for outreach nationwide. Finally, Engineers Week goes from strength to strength and was extremely well supported this year, with high media interest, and explicit personal support from the Taoiseach, Minister Harney and Minister Ryan.

One of our most important initiatives of my year was led by our incoming Senior Vice President, PJ Rudden. The taskforce which he led produced a very well received report on the teaching of Mathematics and Sciences in our school system. The report has been praised by both teachers unions and the Department of Education and Science, and indeed the former Minister Batt O’Keefe. An implementation group has been established to follow through on its recommendations.

Other highlights

There were many many highlights to my year. We hosted a number of briefings / seminars / forums on topics as diverse as the Spirit of Ireland proposal, nuclear energy, the construction sector, innovation and on water quality. We successfully implemented not only a new web site, but entirely re-worked our backend computer systems, considerably improving our members register and subscription processing. We celebrated the 40th anniversary of the 1969 Provisional Council. We hosted a meeting with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and signed mutual recognition agreements with Engineers Australia, Bahrain and the IEEE. We had a highly successful and widely reported CPD Company of the Year symposium, and separately the Chartered Engineer of the year and papers and awards presentations. We had a new members evening. I represented and spoke on behalf of Engineers Ireland, at the budget briefing by the Irish Institution of Taxation. I had the honour of awarding Fellowship to the Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam, on his visit to Ireland. I gave my Presidential Address, on the engineering safety of software development, on a number of occasions.

I also had the pleasure of attending both the Young Engineers (fancy dress!) Ball and our own Annual Ball at which I had the honour of presenting the Institution’s first ever Lifetime Achievement award to Domhnall Blair.

One of my personal highlights was the Army Corp of Engineers annual dinner, hearing of the experiences of young professional engineers in service overseas. I was also particularly delighted that some of our members volunteered to serve for the reconstruction of Haiti.

Finances

The management of our financial position has required careful diligence throughout the year. I am extremely grateful for the leadership of our Director General John Power, ably supported by the professionalism of our Financial Controller John Byrne and the rigorous oversight exercised by our Finance Committee chaired by Brian Kavanagh. This is Brian’s last year as Chair of the Finance Committee, and I wish him warmest appreciation for his wonderful commitment and steadfastness over many years.

While we have maintained a stable financial position, we are facing a decision to buy out the ground rent for 22 Clyde Road. Deferring this for any length of time will only ultimately cost more, and thus it seems prudent to proceed at this time. Negotiations with the land owner are continuing, and I am sure that this issue will be resolved in the coming months.

Conference 2010

At the time of writing, our 2010 conference has yet to be held. Our Cork region will be hosting the event, and it promises to be one of our best ever. We are honoured to have Craig Barrett, retired Chair of Intel Corporation, as a keynote speaker. We have many other interesting speakers, not least Bertrand Barre, Professor Emeritus of nuclear engineering at INSTN in Paris.

Conclusion

I have thoroughly and hugely enjoyed my year as President of Engineers Ireland.

I very much regret that the year has passed so quickly, and I wish Martin Lowery as incoming President the very best for his forthcoming year.

I could not have taken the responsibility without so much support from very many people – not least, Council and Executive. I sincerely and genuinely thank John Power, as Director General, for the highly professional, competent and wise leadership which he has provided the Institution over the last year. Engineers Ireland could not be in better hands.

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

2010-05-13T13:03:00.000-07:00

This evening we had a regularly scheduled Finance Committee meeting, followed by a meeting of the Executive.

It in fact was Brian Kavanagh's last meeting as Chair of the Finance Committee, after six years of voluntary leadership and oversight. It was also Jim Browne's last Finance and Executive meeting, as out-going Past President. I am very grateful to both for their enormous commitment and support for Engineers Ireland, and expressed our gratitude. In fact, it was also my last Finance and Executive meetings as the current President, and Martin Lowery takes over from me at the AGM on 27th next.

The Finance meeting, as usual, reviewed the finances to date for the year, after four months. We are managing our costs to budget extremely well, but are slightly behind in both subscription revenues and CPD income. John Power, our DG, noted that we are about to launch a radio campaign for new members, targetting in particular cognate degree holders and level 7 technicians. We also are going to place additional emphasis on the members benefit scheme, and will be announcing an "introduce a friend" scheme.

We also received an uptodate assessment of the continuing negotiations for the ground rent issue, and John Power has been asked to enter negotiations directly with the Pembroke Estate.

In the Executive meeting, John Power noted the meeting with the President of Ireland on June 23rd to celebrate our 175th year, and to which all members are invited but a quota system applies. He also noted a concert by the Nr. 1 Army band and others on 16th July next at the new National Conference Centre, to also celebrate the 175th year.

We received a report from the Finance Committee (as above), and then proceeded to review the very successful 2010 annual conference in Cork. We noted some lessons learned, and took a formal resolution to hold next year's conference in Galway.

In light of the report on the teaching of Mathematics, and the interest of the heads of engineering schools, we formally requested that John Power investigate the establishment of an Education Society, to advise on all aspects of education relating to Engineering, from primary school to post-graduate level.

We noted the Special General Meeting, immediately before the AGM, and already advertised to Members, on 27th May next.

Under AOB, John Power noted that the CEO of the IDA, Barry O'Leary, wishes to address a meeting of Engineers Ireland and to present the IDA's strategy, seeking reactions and advice. This meeting is likely to be June 1st, and will be advertised to members once the date is confirmed.

My Presidential Speech

2010-05-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

I have given my presidential speech a number of times throughout my year as President, and recently in Galway, for the last time. I've therefore (at last :-) posted the full text of it here.

Conferring at the Helix

2010-05-08T05:06:00.000-07:00

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.

Academy of Engineering: AGM

2010-05-08T04:48:00.000-07:00

I attended the AGM of the Academy last Thursday morning at the RDS, representing Engineers Ireland. Michael Hayden retired as President, after many years, and Jack Golden is the new President. The meeting was well attended, including a strong representation from Northern Ireland. It was followed by a lunch which I had to miss due to another commitment.

Western Region Conferring and Presidential Address

2010-04-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

This evening I was the kind guest of the Western Region at their professional conferring ceremony in the Clayton Hotel in Galway. I was particularly delighted that amongst the twenty members conferred tonight, three were to Fellowship. of registered status (Fellow, Chartered and Associate) on a number of their members. I also gave my Presidential Address, and took questions from the audience afterwards.

Midlands Region Conferring and Presidential Address

2010-04-29T05:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening I was the kind guest of the Midlands Region at their conferring of registered status (Chartered and Associate) on a number of their members, at the Clonmore House hotel in Tullamore. I also gave my Presidential Address which stimulated quite a lot of discussion and questions afterwards.

World Intellectual Property Day

2010-04-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

This evening, I gave a guest presentation as President of Engineers Ireland at an event organised by William Frys to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day. I spoke about some of my experiences and thoughts on intellectual property, arising from my career at IONA. There was also some discussion during the Q&A on the innovation taskforce.

DIT Bolton Street

2010-04-27T14:53:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, I gave a guest lecture via the kind invitation of Mike Murphy of DIT to about 350 engineering students at DIT Bolton Street. I spoke briefly about my own career, and then addressed the importance of Chartered Engineering status, and the role of Engineers Ireland. We had a pretty lively Q&A afterwards, with people interested in entrepreneurship, Chartered status, Jobseekers, and the transition in 2013 to Masters level for Chartered Engineers.

TCD-UCD Innovation Alliance

2010-04-27T14:49:00.000-07:00

TCD & UCD hosted an all-day design innovation today at Foster Place. As President of Engineers Ireland, I chaired a one hour discussion panel at lunch time with Mark Dyer, Tony Fagan, Eugene O'Brien, Gregory O'Hare, Feargal O'Morain and Richard Reilly. The main emphasis of the Q&A with the audience was on even more efficient mechanisms for technology transfer including intellectual property.

Bicentennial of Robert Mallet, the father of seismology

2010-04-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

This evening, I had the pleasure of chairing a meeting of the Heritage Society at Clyde Rd, and also streamed to the internet and will soon be available for playback on Engineers TV.

The presentation was by Dr Ron Cox, historical author and former Dean of the TCD Engineering School. His subject, Robert Mallet, 1810-1881, was an observationalist, experimentalist, polymath and engineering scientist. Amongst his many achievements, he is widely internationally regarded as the father of seismology, writing his seminal work on the dynamics of earthquakes in 1846 and coining both the terms "sesimology" and "epicentre". Three of his descendants travelled from the UK this evening to join us.

Launch of HSE Medical Device & Equipment Management Policy

2010-04-26T07:38:00.000-07:00

I attended by invitation and spoke at the launch this morning at the HSE Phoenix house building, of the HSE's new policy document on medical device and equipment, covering procurement, operation and maintenance. The event was hosted by Brian Gilroy of the HSE. Minister Mary Harney was the guest of honour and spoke of the importance of the new policy.

I used the opportunity to highlight the role of engineers in the medical profession, and how engineering mistakes can be more dangerous than medical ones. This of course gave me a segue to talk about registration and licensing of Chartered Engineers in Ireland.

Annual Conference

2010-04-25T03:37:00.000-07:00

Well, the dust has settled after a great annual conference in Cork last thursday and friday. Well over 300 people attended, and I suspect the final figure may be as high as 350.

Last monday (19th), I was very concerned since we had lost four featured speakers due to Eyjafjallajökull - Minister Conor Lenihan, Craig Barrett, Ian Quinn and Bertrand Barré. Conor was stuck in Dubai; Craig on US east coast; Ian on US west coast and Bertrand in Paris. Bertrand very kindly agreed to do a video conference instead. I approached Ian's CEO, Helen Ryan who happened to be in the country, and she very kindly agreed to take his place. But both Conor and Craig were completely unavailable.

So, tuesday was an intensely busy day on the phones.....

I was able to assemble - at very short notice - a panel to discuss the enterprise economy and the role of engineers. Roger Whatmore and John Mullins were already speakers at the conference, and kindly agreed to join me on the panel. John McGowan, a past President, kindly agreed to act as a moderator for the session. I approached Peter Clinch, special economic advisor to the Taoiseach and the driving force behind his smart economy initiatives including the Innovation Taskforce; and Regina Moran, CEO of Fujitsu, and having as inspirational career, having attended a convent school in Cork where honours mathematics was not offered, and rising via a Technician to become a Chartered Engineer and now CEO of one the major corporations in the country. I am very grateful indeed to Regina and Peter who cleared their diaries at short notice, and travelled to Cork for the panel.

James Ives, CEO of OpenHydro, also agreed at very short notice to give a talk on thursday afternoon - I thought his video animations and explanation of their novel tide flow turbines were inspirational.

In the event, Ian managed to make it back to Ireland with two back to back overnight red-eyes: west coast to New York, and then back to Shannon. I have done this myself in the past and know how exhausting it is: nevertheless Ian seemed to be full of energy, enthusiastic in his presentation and stressing how simple engineering done well has made Cregana such a globally successful firm.

Bertrand spoke passionately about the state of the global nuclear industry, by video link from Paris, and made some telling observations on the Irish energy sector. He was kind enough to remain on the link for the entire session and then take part in Q&A.

Roger Whatmore generated awe by his description of the advanced research work being undertaken at Tyndall.

John Mullins - as ever - gave a very powerful speech on Bord Gais's strategy and some telling observations on Government policy. Very unfortunately, we couldn't get John's presentation up while he spoke - a file corruption problem - but managed to resurrect it by the time of the Q&A.

Tom Costello of Sisks gave a measured analysis of the construction sector. Terry Nolan gave an update on the Corrib gas project, including some interesting videos. James Winter presented some impressive results of process re-engineering of the manufacturing operations at Depuy in Ireland.

In the evening, Minister Michael Martin spoke very positively before dinner about the increasingly important role that engineers must play in Ireland's recovery.

We started the friday morning with a speech by Minister John Gormley, who emphasised the Government's continued commitment to capital programmes and especially water. He also discussed water charges, and his interest in our proposals for regulation of Chartered Engineers. He was kind enough to take a few questions from the audience afterwards.

We then had parallel sessions. Kevin Murray, of the Cork region, chaired the session on leadership and innovation. Brian Cassidy, of the local government division, chaired Ireland's water challenges. Jim Gannon, of the energy and environment division, chaired the session on engineering and Ireland's energy future.

In the afternoon, we had a very interested session in which five resolutions were taken from Members. We had a strict five minute policy for the proposers, with a count down. We also limited the discussion to at most ten comments from the floor. Finally, we used electronic voting - each delegate had a hand held radio voting machine - to instantly conduct the polls.

I was frankly very disappointed that the Northern Region, having proposed one of the five resolutions, did not attend to present their resolution. I believe this was unacceptable.

I think the conference was highly successful, with good media coverage including RTE's "Morning Ireland". I believe that the mood was upbeat, and it was a wonderful opportunity to network, to be presented with insightful presentations and best practice, and to share experiences.

I am very grateful to all our sponsors, but in particular to Bord Gais as main sponsor; and to both Corrib Natural Gas and Roadbinders as platinum sponsors. Both the Cork Region and the team in 22 Clyde Rd made extraordinary effort to produce the conference.

The text of my own opening keynote is here.

ICE Presidential Address

2010-04-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

On Friday 16th last, we were honoured to have Prof. Paul Jowitt of the Institution of Civil Engineers, visit us and deliver his presidential address. I had previously met Paul in Belfast and he was kind enough to attend my own presidential address in London.

Paul and his wife June had a challenging time reaching us, leaving Glasgow at 9.30am, and travelling via Stranraer, Larne and Belfast, to reach us by 7pm. I am very grateful for their determination!

Joint Council & Executive Meeting

2010-04-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

This morning we held a scheduled joint meeting of Executive and Council at Clyde Rd, from 10am-1pm.

We opened the meeting by holding a minute's silence in memory of Tadhg Walshe, Council and Executive member who very tragically died recently.

After the most recent minutes of both groups, we reviewed the key engagements which the Director General has attended, and noted the increasing media coverage and profile of Engineers Ireland.

We then proceeded to consider the draft annual financial report, which had been examined in depth at last Thursday's Finance Committee. Because of changes in national accounting treatments relating to pensions, the accounts for last year are not directly comparable to those for 2008. After appropriate explanation, the accounts were accepted by Council and will go forward to the AGM.

We examined the financial results to the end of March 2010, and noted that our subscription revenues remain behind budget. We also considered the cash flow projection for the rest of the year, and noted that should revenues remain on their current trajectory, then further cost actions will be required if we are to break even. Finally, we had an update on the opportunity to buy out the ground rent on 22 Clyde Rd., and Council gave the authorisation to proceed with the negotiations.

This was in fact Brian Kavanagh's last report as Chair of the Finance Committee and after six years of leadership, he is stepping aside with Murt Coleman taking over in his stead.

We approved my proposal for the incoming new Vice President, who is Michael Phillips, Dublin Director of Traffic and City Engineer.

We have five nominations, and five positions open, to next years' Council. The incoming Council also has the ability to co-opt further participants should it so wish. Our bye-laws nevertheless require us to hold an election, which in turn costs us a considerable sum. Council therefore proposes to seek approval via an EGM, to be held immediately before the scheduled AGM on 27th May, to avoid the cost of running an election under the circumstances. Separately, a new working group is to be formed which will review all the bye-laws, with a view to proposing any changes and amendments via Council to the membership in due course.

We approved by nominations for fellowship by Presidential Invitation, who will all be conferred on 7th May next.

A further working group, to review and consider our CPD policy and strategy, is being formed under the Chairmanship of Bill Grimson, and will report in the next few months.

The report of the Liaison subcommittee was adopted.

A couple of ethics cases were duly noted.

John Power reported on the recent meeting he and I had had with the Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government over the regulation and licensing of Professional Engineers. The current draft whitepaper was circulated to Council, seeking further comments and input.

John Power reported on the status of the planning for the Annual Conference on 22nd/23rd April next. Both he and I stressed the urgent need to increase the number of registrations, which are so far disappointing in the light of the strength of the programme and our 175th year.

I gave a report on the work of the Taoiseach's Innovation Taskforce, at which I represented Engineers Ireland.

Under any other business, we noted the momentum building behind our new Middle East region, and some interest arising from Irish Engineers in forming a new region in Libya.

The joint meeting then concluded.

Finance Committee Meeting

2010-04-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening, we held a scheduled meeting of the Finance Committee at Clyde Rd.

We spend a considerable amount of time examining the draft annual accounts for 2009 together with our auditor. The main focus was understanding the details of the accounting treatment of the pension fund, since the accounting treatment has changed from the previous year, and so the two years' accounts are not directly comparable.

We also reviewed the accounts for March 2010. Revenues and costs are pretty much as expected, with the sole exception of membership subscription revenues. We are behind, but the management team fully expects to be able to catch up in the months ahead.

The ground rent situation continues to be progressed, and a barrister has been chosen to give us appropriate advice.

The annual conference sponsorship has progressed reasonably well and with a great deal of effort. Registrations for conference are progressing.

Tadhg Walshe

2010-03-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

It was with great sadness that I attended the funeral mass for Tadhg Walshe this morning, along with other members of Executive and Council. Tadhg attended our Executive meeting just last Thursday evening and was in fine form as usual! He died suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, the next afternoon and as a relatively young man.

He is survived by his partner Pauline, daughter Mary-Liz and son-in-law JP, together with his large family of brothers and sisters.

He served Engineers Ireland, and his colleagues and students at Bolton St. extraordinarily well.

May his soul rest in gentle peace.

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

2010-03-11T15:53:00.000-08:00

This evening, we held our regular Finance Committee Meeting, followed by Executive, at Clyde Road.

In the Finance meeting, we reviewed our management accounts for February. Revenues and costs to date are reasonably as expected, with the sole exception of our membership revenue to date. At this point, it is causing a little concern, since we are behind in this revenue against our expectations. March will be an important month for us, and we probably have yet to see the positive impact of the new and improved Membership Benefits scheme, which should add as a further incentive for subscription renewals.

Regular readers of the Finance Committee posts to this blog will be aware that we have been reviewing the ground rent situation for Clyde Road for some time. In the past few weeks, this has thrown up a challenging situation which may have further cost expectations than we initially expected, although ultimately clearly in the long term beneficial to the Institution. The Finance Committee is investigating the situation in detail, with outside professional advisors, before being in a position to make a specific recommendation to the Executive and thence Council.

The sponsorship of the Annual Conference is off to a reasonable start, but we have some way to go before reaching our target.

We followed the Finance meeting with Executive. After minutes and a summary of key engagements, John Power updated Executive on plans for the celebration of our 175th anniversary, including a meeting in the Aras in the summer.

Brian Kavanagh reported to the Executive on behalf of the Finance Committee.

I then personally announced the name of the candidate whom we would like to propose at our next Council meeting as the incoming Junior Vice-President (and who would then be President in 2012-13). Executive were enthusiastic about the candidate, and his name will go forward to Council accordingly.

We then had a 25 minute presentation and discussion on our CPD strategy, as a further update to the presentation and discussion on the topic at our last meeting. As an outcome, John Power is seeking volunteers to head up a CPD task force, with a view to analysing and proposing a CPD strategy back to Executive (and thence Council) within a three month period.

John Power then updated Executive on the planning for the Annual Conference.

A number of items were raised under AOB. In particular it was agreed to seek volunteers for a second new task force, which would oversee the implementation of the recommendations in the recent report on Mathematics and Science teaching in our schools.

Presidential Address - London

2010-03-04T15:24:00.000-08:00

I gave my Presidential Address as a guest of our GB region this evening under the leadership of Catherine O'Sullivan, at the Institution of Civil Engineers headquarters in Westminster. About 50 people attended. In my presentation, which I have previously given in Clyde Road, I consciously try to address both non software specialists in the audience as well as software practitioners - in the event, only 2 of the 50 were software engineers.
Afterwards, a wonderful dinner was hosted for me by Paul Jowitt, President of ICE, and whom I have previously met in Belfast.

Smart Futures Seminar

2010-03-01T10:57:00.000-08:00

This evening, I spoke at the Smart Futures Seminar being hosted at Clyde Rd, in conjunction with our STEPS team, ICT Ireland, Discover Science and Engineering, and Fasttrack to IT. The main purpose of the evening was to launch the Irish participation in the European wide eSkills week, and in particular to brief and assist new volunteers from the Engineering profession who are interested in participating in our schools outreach programme via STEPS. About 80 people attended.

The event was hosted by Paul Sweetman of ICT Ireland. Minister Conor Lenihan was our chief guest speaker, and spoke passionately without notes, on the Government thinking behind the smart economy, and the progress to date.

A number of senior managers and CEOs then spoke about their own personal experiences in career choice, and the current opportunities in the profession. They were:

Denis Canty, Alps Electric;
Jim Glennon, Chairman Edelman;
Austin McCabe, VP Symantec;
Regina Moran, CEO Fujitsu Ireland;
Paul O'Riordan, country leader of Oracle; and
Liam Ryan, SAP Ireland MD

I was absolutely delighted to see so many people volunteering to get involved in promoting the profession, and hope in due course we will get many more.

Northern Region Annual Dinner Dance

2010-02-27T00:56:00.000-08:00

Rounding off a busy week, I attended the Northern Region annual dinner dance in the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge, Belfast.

Gerry Cawley, chair of the Northern Region, presided and about 250 people attended.

An unusual innovation, which proved to be extremely popular, was two blackjack tables and a roulette table! Every guest was given "pretend" 100 pound vouchers, to cash in as chips. At one stage, the tables were certainly busier than the dance floor!

A collection was made to raise funds for the emergency shelter box programme of Rotary International, which has provided over 70,000 such boxes to the people of Haiti.

Atlantic Corridor Conference 2010

2010-02-27T00:50:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, I attended and spoke at the 2010 Atlantic Corridor conference in the Tullamore Court Hotel. Funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, the organisation has built links between Ireland, and in particular the east coasts of Canada and the USA. The main theme of the conference this year was the education of Science and Mathematics.
About 150 adults attended part of the conference, while concurrently about 150 4th, 5th and 6th year secondary school students had their own conference. After lunch, the two groups came together to hear the students recommendations for improvements in the teaching of Science and Mathematics.

The Taoiseach opened both parts of the conference. Leo Enright acted as the compere for the adults part of the conference. Michael John Gorman gave a perspective on the first two years of the Science Gallery (which I also chair). Padraig McManus told of his difficulties in finding Engineering schools in Ireland willing to engage with the ESB on increasing the numbers of students undertaking engineering, with the notable exception of the Cork Institute of Technology. Andrew Parish gave an overview of Wavebob and spoke about the wave energy section in Ireland.

Eucharia Meehan of the HEA gave numerous statistics on the uptake of engineering and mathematics by students, and especially focussed on gender differences. I spoke on the role of the internet in teaching, drawing largely from some of my blog posts, and gave live illustrations of some specific websites.

After lunch, the students joined us for a panel session. Some of the themes which emerged were a strong desire to make maths and science teaching more interesting by having live practical examples in the classroom; concerns that Project Maths may disadvantage those who take it because they will not have covered the breadth of topics compared to the regular course; and a desire for more inclusive team based and social inclusion teaching.

Jean Marc Soustre of Ericssons Ireland discussed technology changed, drawing on some of the themes of Shift Happens. John Mighton of the Fields Institute in Toronto gave a talk by recorded video on his JUMP approach to teaching maths. Jeff Evans from Georgia Tech discussed his experiences of internet based teaching approaches, particularly in rural areas.

A final panel discussion, in which I also participated, was then held.

Sir Bernard Crossland Lecture

2010-02-23T15:55:00.000-08:00

I had the honour of being one of four keynote speakers and panellists at the 9th Sir Bernard Crossland Lecture series, in Queens University Belfast this evening, on the theme of "Engineering Innovation - re-inventing business".

About 150 people attended. Sir Bernard introduced the series, and Gerry Cawley (Chair of the Northern Region) was our host for the evening.

Each of the four speakers spoke for about 10-15 minutes. The first speaker was Mark Nodder of the Wright Group. Mark gave a brief history of this independent supplier of accessible buses, for the UK and export market. The Group went through severe challenges in the recent economic downturn, but has managed to re-build its business through innovation.

I then spoke about the work of the Innovation Taskforce and its current status.

Mandy Chessell of IBM then spoke about the challenges of innovation in large organisations, and the cultural issues arising.

Peter Russo (who had spoken at Clyde Road yesterday) of the EBS then spoke about Germany's re-emergence after the second world war, and the challenges which Germany had faced in commercially exploiting many interesting inventions, including the MP3 standard and the fax machine.

There followed a short session of Q&A.

Innovation Forum

2010-02-23T15:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening I chaired the Innovation Forum at Clyde Rd.

Just over 100 people attended, with several more webex'ing in. The webex is available for playback here at Engineers TV.

Our first speaker was Peter Russo, Director and Chairman of the Executive Board of the Strascheg Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Euroepan Business School at Frankfurt, Germany. Peter presented an interesting analysis of German economic policy as regards innovation since the World War II, noting successes and failures. He highlighted the re-position of Audi with the Quattro series and how that came about. He also noted the failure to commercialise in Germany the MP3 audio compression technology invented by the Fraunhofer Institute, that in due course became the underpinning technology of the Apple iPod and Player. He summarised with a SWOT analysis of Germany's innovation policy.

Anna Scally, of KPMG, then gave a presentation on the process and work of the Innovation Taskforce, and its progress to date. She highlighted some of the key themes if its work before focussing on taxation policy, including as relates to Intellectual Policy.

Damien Callaghan, of Intel Venture Capital, spoke on enabling entrepreneurs to be successful, and the role that Venture Capital can and cannot play. As a member of the Innovation Taskforce, he reinforced some of Anna's comments, and discussed the role of risk capital in re-building the economy.

A lively Q&A session followed, with about 15 questions taken overall.

West Region Annual Dinner

2010-02-20T16:24:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure of attending the annual dinner for the West Region, in the Ardilaun Hotel in Galway, hosted by the regional chairman John Colleran.

The Mayor of Galway Declan McDonnell also attended, along with past president and NUIG president Jim Browne; the Chairs of the North-West Region Michael O'Halloran, North-East John Brannigan, Midlands Paul Devaney and Thormond Seamus Lynch. About 170 people attended in all.

I was truly surprised to be given a wonderful personal gift of bound copies of the papers from the TCD Philosophical Society from 1683-1709, as a memento of the evening!

Water Research Facility at Tuam

2010-02-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, I spent a few hours visiting the recently opened Water Research Facilit y at Tuam this afternoon, hosted by Dr Michael Rodgers and Dr Eoghan Clifford, both of the Department of Civil Engineering at NUI Galway.

The WRF is co-funded by NUI Galway and the EPA and with critical support from Galway County Council. The research plant can treat waste water for a town's population equivalent of up to 400 people.

The WRF is based on pumped flow biofilm, developed and patented at NUI Galway. Aeration is achieved by alternatively exposing the biofilm in each of two reactor tanks to atmospheric air. The system has extremely low running costs, and very easy maintenance. It has low sludge yield and easily exceeds the mandated EU waste water discharge limits.

Alongside the WRF there is a demonstration unit of a horizontal flow biofilm system, suitable for domestic or farm use. There is also an impressive remote monitoring and mobile control unit - a self contained enclosed trailer enabling remote sampling and monitoring of water quality, for commercial and research use by local authorities and other agencies.

It is interesting to see novel innovation in waste water management, with both low capital and (extremely low) operational expenditures, and I trust the commercialisation of the technology will be highly fruitful.

Innovation Connections Programme Launch

2010-02-18T08:49:00.000-08:00

I had the honour yesterday of representing Engineers Ireland, and speaking, at the launch of the InterTradeIreland Innovation Connections Programme, at the EU buildings in Dawson St, Dublin.

Also speaking were Minister Billy Kelleher; John Fitzgerald and Aidan Gough from InterTradeIreland; Sean McNulty of Innovator; and Sadhbh McCarthy of the Centre for Irish and European Security. About 70 people attended.

The general aim of the programme is to identify a reasonable number of specific unmet issues in the general market of civilian security; and then to bring these to SMEs operating anywhere within the island of Ireland with a view to them developing innovative solutions for the particular market opportunities.

During my own talk, I mentioned the Criminal Assets Bureau as an outstanding example of innovation in civilian security in Ireland, which has become a model which other jurisdictions have followed and adopted. The technology underlying the CAB system is from an Irish SME.

Cork Region Annual Dinner

2010-02-12T17:32:00.000-08:00

I had the immense pleasure of attending the Cork Region Annual Dinner this evening, at the Maryborough Hotel.

About 130 people attended. The evening was hosted by Kevin Murray, Chair of the Cork Region. I was delighted that the Minister of Education and Science, Batt O'Keefe, attended: chatting over dinner, he expressed admiration, support and appreciation for our recent report on mathematics and science education.

We were also honoured by the Mayor of the County of Cork, Derry Canty; and Deputy Lord Mayor of Cork City Laura McGonigle.

I was also delighted to meet the retired RTE marine journalist, Tom McSweeney, who gave a passionate "call to arms" on the continued importance of the maritime industry and the role of maritime and fisheries in our economic recovery.

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

2010-02-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening we had scheduled meetings of the Finance Committee and Executive Committee.

For the first time in my time at Engineers Ireland, John Power missed much of the two meetings. He was being interviewed live by George Hook for Newstalk 106 about our mathematics and science education report.

Murt Coleman joined us for the first time as a new member of the Finance Committee. The Finance meeting was fairly short, because it is the start of the financial year and thus we had operational figures only for January. We're off to a reasonable start, and our subscription income will obviously require careful monitoring as the year progresses. We are also about to launch a new Members benefit scheme which I previously reported here.

The Executive meeting followed.

Preparations for the annual conference in April are well under way, and several keynote speakers have been confirmed. We are awaiting confirmation of one or two more, and hope to be able to launch the conference website next week.

We had a lengthy presentation led by John Butler and Sean Mehigan (independent consultant) of work in progress to assess our entire Continued Professional Development (CPD) strategy and business. Members of Executive will provide further feedback on the assessment over the next couple of weeks, and John Power hopes to be able to bring a fully considered proposal for improving our CPD business at the March meeting of the Executive.

Jim Robinson has volunteered to bring a position paper on the 30km/hr speed limits for certain cities for consideration. We also discussed proposals for recognising and rewarding high achievers amongst engineering students.

Launch of Mathematics and Science education report

2010-02-11T07:08:00.000-08:00

The work of our taskforce, led by PJ Rudden, was published today and is available on our web site here. Very considerable work and effort, and an inspiration to us all.

Considerable media interest, including being the very first item on RTE's "Morning Ireland" this morning ay 7am; also Matt Cooper, George Hook and others...

Minister Ryan and Engineers Week

2010-02-10T09:41:00.000-08:00

Attended a photo-shoot this morning at Clyde Road, with Minister Ryan. Photo here.

Taoiseach launches Engineers' Week

2010-02-08T07:42:00.000-08:00

We were honoured by the Taoiseach at lunchtime today to launch Engineers' Week from Clyde Road.

John Power opened the event by emphasising the role which the engineering profession can play in restoring the economy, including infrastructure investment. He also noted the role which engineering can play in the innovation economy by ensuring that new products, services and processes are safely designed and implemented. He observed that Engineers Ireland is promoting the highest standards of engineering, and he called for further regulation and licensing of professional engineering so that health and safety issues, environmental and cost are all competently addressed in all engineering projects across all engineering disciplines in the economy.

The Taoiseach then spoke. He was delighted to return to Engineers Ireland again, and to launch Engineers Week. He observed that prosperity can only sustainably return to the economy is skills are cultivated and deployed. He noted how the smart economy will lead to people working more effectively and productively. He highlighted the important role of Science Foundation Ireland and the R&D investment within the economy. The opportunity now is to commercialise this R&D and he has been impressed by the level of success by the IDA in attracting R&D investment into the economy. He noted the role of Engineers, and delighted to learn that CAO applications in engineering are recently increasing. He felt that numerically literacy and fluency in mathematics are critical to the economy, and he looks forward to improvements in this regard.

I then spoke briefly to thank the Taoiseach for launching Engineers Week, in our 175th year. I noted the roles that engineers are already playing, and can play, in restoring a sustainable and innovative economy. I remarked that we are launching our report on the teaching of mathematics and science at second level next thursday. I also thanked Discover Science and Engineering for their excellent work in promoting our profession, and their close co-operation with out STEPS programme. I also noted linkages to sister organisations such as the IEEE.

I was delighted that the Taoiseach took time to speak to a number of people, and stayed to have a pot of tea and informal chat afterwards.

www.CareersPortal.ie

2010-02-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

I'ld like to bring to your attention the new Careers Portal website and specifically its presentation of careers in engineering.

An initiative by Discover Science and Engineering, the website interviews (with video clips) heads of departments, faculty staff, undergraduate students and recent graduates on careers in engineering and technology - amongst other careers.

It has links to job recruitment sites so that you can see what jobs and employers - and payscales - are currently being advertised. It brings in employment data to show trends.

It includes guidance for parents and teachers/counsellors including materials, powerpoints presentations and worksheets.

It also includes personal psychology analysis and profiling (if you create your own account and follow the questionnaire) to match character traits to career opportunities.

A really excellent resource for career planning -- not just for students, but also those considering a mid-career change.

I am delighted to see the content relating to engineering and technology, and am very grateful to those who have voluntarily allowed themselves to be interviewed. If you (or your employer, or your higher education institute) would like to get involved and add further content to the web site, please contact Eimear Sinnott

BT Business of Science and Technology Programme

2010-02-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

This year, BT have extended the Young Scientists Exhibition to take the top 50 (actually, 53:-)) students and offer them a three month programme to extend their projects using insights from entrepreneurs and innovators. Hopefully some of these students will be inspired and guided not only to successfully conclude their academic careers, but also to consider founding and launching their own innovative businesses in due course.

This morning I was invited by William McAuliffe of BT to give my personal experiences as an entrepreneur to the students in the Science Gallery (which, coincidently, I chair). It was quite a humbling experience, with insightful questions from the audience!

The Place of Mathematics Education in Ireland’s Future

2010-02-02T13:30:00.000-08:00

I had the privilege today of being asked to chair a national symposium on mathematics teaching, organised by Professor Clive Williams and the TCD Faculty of Engineering, Mathematics and Science and hosted at the RIA. The full programme of speakers is here, and about 90 people nationwide attended - third level academics, second and primary level teachers and associations, business associations and public servants - and, for part of this afternoon, the Minister for Education and Science, Batt O'Keefe.

PJ Rudden has led a wonderful and insightful review of the education of mathematics and science a second level, and we will be launching the study and its recommendations next week during Engineers Week.

I have some personal views on the subject, and have posted these separately here.

Bill Lynch of the NCCA opened the presentations by giving a summary of the Project Maths initiative, and its current status. Elizabeth Oldham then gave a perspective on behalf of the Mathematics Teachers' Association, noting the central role of mathematics in the recovery of the economy and the critical importance of developing teachers' fluency and competence.

I unfortunately then had to leave the symposium for an hour to speak to the BT Business of Science and Technology programme. Clive Williams took over as Chair, and then filled me in afterwards, noting that Patricia Callaghan, TCD Academic Secretary, had expressed strong opinions on the rewarding of the effort required for honours level Leaving Certificate Mathematics. Maria Meehan, of the UCD School of Mathematics, reported in particular on the role of undergraduate volunteers in secondary schools, and noted that the feedback from some secondary school students undertaking honours level Leaving Certificate Mathematics was a strong desire for additional recognition for the effort required.

I returned from my talk to the BT Young Scientists to hear PJ give a summary of our draft report (which he had also given to Council last saturday).

After lunch, Paul Sweetman of ICT Ireland and the ISA, gave an international perspective on the current ranking of Ireland as regards mathematics competency.

We then had three volunteer rapporteurs: Ronnie Breen of DETE, Tom Brazil of UCD and the RIA, and Sean Gannon of TCD. The audience divided into three and I challenged each group to come back (after an hour) and deliver at least one and not more than three recommendations of who should do what by when and why!

The Minister Batt O'Keefe then duly arrived and gave a short presentation on the status of Project Maths, and the priorities which he is setting to develop the competence and confidence of mathematics teachers with the new syllabus. He also noted his announcement to establish and advisory group, including industry and academia, to review the progress of Project Maths to date and to advise on whether or not to re-introduce "bonus points" for honours level Leaving Certificate mathematics. I then invited him to stay and listen to the key top recommendations from the three rapporteurs, and was delighted that he agreed to do so.

Tom Brazil spoke first, and emphasised his group's strong support for the Project Maths initiative. He noted that resources to support the initiative were still insufficient. His group very strongly urged that all stakeholders - industry, professional associations and especially Engineers Ireland, government agencies and academia - should proactively support Project Maths. His group also strongly felt that the effort required for honours level Leaving Certificate Mathematics should be rewarded by all the Universities and Institutes of Technology by awarding double CAO points.

Sean Gannon then took the floor and reported that his group strongly felt that school mathematics teachers needed support and encouragement to upskill for mathematics, including Project Maths. His group felt that the Teachers Council should show flexibility and recognise those who had taken additional courses in mathematics, beyond their primary degree, should be accepted as competent to teach mathematics.

Ronnie Breen reported that his group also strongly supported Project Maths, and that it is critical that the Teachers Council remove any doubt that postgraduate courses to enable mathematics teaching are explicitly recognised as sufficient to teach mathematics. His group also noted that professionals with strong mathematics skills, and in particular unemployed professional civil engineers, who wished to switch their careers to become mathematics teachers should be automatically accommodated by the Teachers Council.

The Minister then returned to the podium and expressed delight that all three rapporteurs had expressed strong support for Project Maths. He noted the resourcing issues, and concerns about the Teachers Council. He did not wish to comment on the explicit recognition of the additional effort for honours level Leaving Certificate Mathematics, but would defer to the advisory group which he was appointing.

Council

2010-01-31T08:41:00.000-08:00

We held our January Council meeting yesterday in Clyde Rd. It was extremely well attended and, although there are occasional Liaison meetings after Council including yesterday, I think it was the largest Council participation I've seen to date.

The Finance Committee had met last week and, I as noted, the 2009 year has turned out to be fiscally reasonably positive, especially considering our concerns last summer about a possible loss for the year.

In recent weeks, Engineers Ireland has had a higher and, I believe, good profile in the media in the light of the weather conditions and water management issues. John Power has both requested, and directly approached, a number of spokespeople who can knowledgeably discuss specific issues in a professional manner. We are keen to build a portfolio of spokespeople across the full range of engineering disciplines, and appropriate media training and briefings are of course provided.

John also gave an update on the work of the regulation and licensing working group, which met again recently. While the work continues, submissions to the working group would be very welcome. John hopes to be in a position to put a specific paper on the issue to Council at our next meeting in April.

The Ethics Committee recommended that one of our Members be excluded from our institution after reputed plagiarism in an application for Chartered status. Council, after satisfying itself to the nature of the case, duly accepted the recommendation and a notice will appear in the Journal in due course.

John also gave an update on the plans for the Annual Conference in Cork in April, including a provisional list of key speakers. These should be confirmed soon and the conference web site launched in about a fortnight.

PJ Rudden gave an in-depth presentation of the proposed final report from the subcommittee on education of mathematics and science at second level. In my view, and I believe in the view of everyone on Council, this has been an outstanding and insightful piece of work. Some of the findings are, to me at least, slightly startling and the group has produced a pragmatic set of proposals and recommendations. A national mathematics symposium is being co-hosted by the RIA and TCD next tuesday (apologies: I cannot find a web reference to it...) and PJ will be presenting aspects of our findings there. The formal launch of the report will occur during Engineers Week 8th-13th February next.

The Taoiseach will formally launch Engineers Week at Clyde Rd on the morning of 8th February next.

A number of our Members have offered to travel to Haiti to assist in the reconstruction work, and two are imminently travelling: we hope it may be possible to send more in due course.

This was, in fact, my second last Council meeting as President. My last such meeting will be next April.

Academy of Engineering: New Fellows Dinner

2010-01-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

I was delighted to represent Engineers Ireland at the dinner this evening in the RDS Dublin to honour the election to the Academy of Engineering of five new highly distinguished members.

Membership of the Academy is limited to at most 125 elected members, who are normally Chartered Engineers or Fellows of Engineers Ireland.

This evening, the following Engineers were elected and welcomed as members:

Lionel Alexander: Vice President and General Manager of Hewlett Packard (Manufacturing) Ltd;
Thomas Brazil: Professor of Electronic Engineering, UCD and Hon. Secretary RIA;
Martin Naughton: Founder and Chairman of Glen Dimplex;
Eoin O'Driscoll: Managing Director Aderra Ltd and Chairman of Forfas; and
Jim O'Hara: Vice President and General Manager Operations Intel Ireland

The evening was hosted by Michael Hayden, President of the Academy, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Regulation and Licensing of Professional Engineers

2010-01-27T14:39:00.000-08:00

I attended a meeting this evening at Clyde Road hosted by John Power to discuss regulation and licensing of professional engineers. This was a part of a series of meetings, first started in October as I previously reported.

John has a working "strawman" document which we discussed this evening. The fundamentals of the document are, I believe we all agreed, good. Our main debate this evening is whether to adopt an incremental approach to legislation to extend the number of functions reserved to Chartered Engineers - ie requiring, by Irish law, authorisation by suitably skilled CEngs. - ; or, by contrast, whether instead to approach the issue using a "blanket approach" similar to current Canadian law, in which all engineering works which may impact on public heath and safety, including environmental impact, and/or material damage to assets, should require such authorisation.

We also noted that a pragmatic, and high quality, approach in Ireland on this issue could set a bar which would make Ireland even more attractive for foreign direct investment due to its legislated quality approach to all Engineering disciplines, thus enhancing Ireland's international competitiveness.

It was agreed to focus on the "blanket approach", and further work is accordingly required to build upon the strawman document.

John will update Council at its next meeting (on Saturday next) and in due course bring recommendations from the group to Council for approval.

Science and Technology in Action; Spirit of Enterprise

2010-01-27T14:28:00.000-08:00

I attended and spoke at the launch this afternoon of the fifth year of the Science and Technology in Action and Spirit of Enterprise initiatives, and the opening meeting of the EU Framework Programme 7 supported ESTABLISH project, at the EU Parliament Office in Dublin this afternoon, along with Batt O'Keefe Minister for Education and Science, and Anna Gethings, the driving force behind the initiatives.

About 150 people attended, included representatives from 11 Member States and 12 institutions. A number of commercial supporters of the initiatives were there, together with representatives of some teaching associations, the NCCA and WITS, amongst others.

I am very impressed by both STIA and SOE. Both, through their commercial partners, provide practical examples of how science and engineering principles are applied in industry and the public service, and set practical examples - and challenges - for students to follow. The quality of the resources for teachers also appeared to me to be high.

I myself spoke about the fusion of science, engineering and business to create innovation for the global market. I also pointed to mathematics as a core discipline which establishes skills to identify patterns, generalise, extrapolate, and then apply principles in new situations.

Anna and I were then interviewed live by Mary Wilson on RTE's Drivetime radio show about the role of science and engineering teaching in the school system.

Engineers volunteer for Haiti

2010-01-22T02:29:00.000-08:00

In response to an email from John Power, our DG, to our unemployed Members, I was very pleased to learn this morning that six of our members have volunteered to travel to Haiti immediately to aid in the re-construction work. Their CVs have been forwarded accordingly via Goal.

We also have had a number of expressions of interest, and will submitted these to any of the NGOs as and when needed.

Finance Committee Meeting

2010-01-22T02:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon we had a scheduled meeting of the Finance Committee at Clyde Road, chaired as usual by Brian Kavanagh.

Our preliminary un-audited accounts for the full year 2009 indicate a very satisfactory result, given the pressure on the economy. Some of earlier meetings in the year, as I posted at the time, expressed concern about the likely year end outcome, and so it is very pleasing that the year appears now to have turned out with a reasonable result. The details will be presented at our imminent Council meeting at the end of this month.

We also considered the appointment of additional Trustees to our pension schemes; the status of what appears to be a good new Member Benefits scheme, which we intend to launch for all Members in the very near term; some pragmatic revisions to the benevolent fund levy, which will now be proposed to Council for consideration; an update on the ground rent negotiations for Clyde Road, and finally agreeing metrics for the performance of the organisation in 2010.

BT Young Scientists Gala Dinner

2010-01-16T17:02:00.000-08:00

I had the honour of representing Engineers Ireland at the celebration black-tie dinner this evening for the Young Scientist and Technology competition at the RDS. I was privileged to sit at the table for the winner, Richard O'Shea, a wonderfully articulate and confident young man who not only spoke so well about his project but who also is determined that as many people as possible may benefit from his innovative biomass stove. I also met Richard's very proud parents, together with his supportive and close brother.

I was fortunate in sitting beside Tony and Pauline Scott, who initiated the very first Young Scientists exhibition in the Mansion House Dublin 46 years ago, and who have been deeply involved every since.

Professor Luke O'Neill of TCD gave an entertaining talk on the four key inspirations in being a scientist. Chris Clark of BT was our host, together with Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, also on our table. Beside me was Brigid MacManus, from Department of Education and Science, and a fellow member of the Innovation Taskforce.

Annual Ball, and first ever Lifetime Achievement Award.

2010-01-16T02:37:00.000-08:00

We held our annual ball last night in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, with about 650 people attending. A special occasion in our 175th year, and I was particularly delighted that Dermot McCarthy Secretary General Taoiseach's Office, and his wife Rosemary, were able to join us, along with past Presidents, and the Presidents of our regions and societies.

I was also grateful to our many sponsors of the raffle which was, as usual, quite extensive. Domhnall Blair and Rita Pollard together did excellent work in organising the event, and I felt that the staff of the Burlington - not least the kitchen staff - did a wonderful job in their hospitality, catering and care for us on the evening.

I had the privilege yesterday evening of doing something that no other President has done in 175 years: that is to honour one of our members with a Lifetime Achievement Award. This particular individual graduated from UCD in 1968, joining T Garland and Partners, and then Clondalkin Concrete (owned by Roadstone) in September 1969. He then served for Clondalkin/Roadstone/CRH for 40 years, retiring just last November. He was a specialist in concrete technology and was quality and technical problems specialist, before turning to a high successful sales representative and manager in 1970s.

This individual has a long association with our Institution. His father was involved in the purchase of 22 Clyde Road, and as child for his father, one of his first services to the Institution was to clean the fireplaces of our new headquarters! He served with the Young Engineers Society, during and immediately after College, and was one of the youngest ever members of Council in 1970. He has since served many times on Council and Executive. He has been involved in both the Civils and Structures Division; a member of the Ethics Board; a member of the Benevolent Fund; a member of the Membership and Qualifications Board; and a member of various task forces including membership, transactions, marketing and corporate plan. He has also been the organiser of our annual ball for many years, including last night.

So, for 55 years of service with Engineers Ireland, we awarded Domhnall Blair the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award!

I also gave a short speech on the occasion of our 175th year, as follows:

On Thursday, August 6, 1835, a meeting of civil engineers was held at the offices of the Board of Public Works, then located in the Custom House, Dublin, presided over by Colonel John Fox Burgoyne (1782-1871), chairman of the Board. At that meeting, a society was founded, having as its objective ‘the promotion of science in general, but more particularly as connected with the profession of Civil Engineers’. Over 175 years, that society has evolved to become Engineers Ireland, the voice of the engineering profession representing 24,000 members across all disciplines.

This is a particularly appropriate time to mark the profession’s outstanding heritage of service and achievement. In the nineteenth century, the professional engineer had a highly visible role in society and in the re-shaping of a landscape that had been largely unchanged for centuries. We are now entering a period when recognition of engineering is on the rise again, but this time it is our economic landscape that must be changed.

In the formative era of the organised profession in Ireland, the Irish public witnessed railways, roads and bridges appear across the country, often where none had existed before. These engineering accomplishments were imposing and hard to miss. Not surprisingly, awareness of the profession and a respect for the contribution of engineers was widespread in those years.

In recent decades, the achievements of the profession have been no less distinguished but their visibility frequently has not been as high. There have been groundbreaking engineering advances in biomedicine, in software and computing, in pharmaceuticals and medical devices, to name just a few sectors vital to the Irish economy. While underpinning the economy, the role of the professional engineer often has not achieved the broad, public recognition it had in the past. Even professional civil and transport engineers, whose achievements in the last two decades arguably rival those of their pioneering nineteenth century forerunners, have not received the credit their accomplishments deserve.

Now, as we mark 175 years of engineering achievement, there are signs that professional engineers and their value to society are becoming visible to the broader public, once again.

The great challenges of this new decade are many. Very much at the forefront are economic recovery, climate change, energy security and environmental management. As has been all too evident in recent months, these are no longer issues that we can dismiss as topics for international conferences and the technology pages of our newspapers. They are now confronting the public with an alarming immediacy. A weak economy, unprecedented floods, record snowfalls and breakdowns in water supply across the country, have caused misery for households and undermined already hard-hit businesses. While our energy supply has not yet experienced serious shortages (and for this no small credit is due to our members who manage supplies at our leading energy utilities) nevertheless, as the recent experience of disruption in gas supply to industry in the UK shows, we cannot afford to be complacent.

Clearly, society needs solutions urgently. It needs innovative thinkers. It needs problem solvers. It needs professional engineers.

In our leadership role, our profession assumes responsibilities. Professional engineers understand the critical importance of health and safety in all aspects of engineering works and projects. It is vital that we have the highest standards when engaging with the public, including consultancy work. We have recently updated our code of ethics, and I would encourage you to consult this if you are unfamiliar with its details (it is available on the Engineers Ireland web site). We must make sure and certain that the public’s trust in professional engineers and engineering is not shaken, as it arguably has been in other professions.

Our profession has a vital position to play in re-building the Irish economy and indeed re-energizing national pride. Sustainable high-end employment, creating wealth and also support for the more vulnerable members of our society, is just not going to happen without engineers in Ireland delivering new and innovative offerings – products, services, processes and re-designs – for the international market.

I believe that it is one duty of each Chartered Engineer to actively outreach to society at large. It is important that the public at large understand the leadership and responsibility inherent in professional engineering. Each one of us should consider how we can actively promote the profession: this can be for example via volunteer work via Engineers Ireland; media work, including both local and national media channels; schools and the STEPS programme; and influencing local and national policy.

This year there will be many events to mark the illustrious history of Engineers Ireland, including a three-part series of articles in the Journal to mark key milestones. It is a history of endurance and achievement, survival and growth, in the face of past adversities including sporadic periods of economic deprivation, famine, and war.

As we look back and celebrate the story of a remarkable national institution of which we are all proud to call ourselves members, we know that the continuation of that story - the future of the Irish Engineering - is in our hands.

BSTAI Awards

2010-01-06T10:08:00.000-08:00

A Happy New Year - and sincere Happy New Decade - to you.

My first engagement of the New Year was to speak and present the Business Studies Achievement awards at the annual Business Studies Teachers' Association of Ireland earlier this afternoon in Dublin, sponsored by the Irish Bankers Federation.

These are annual awards presented for the national best results in certain Leaving Certificate and Junior Certificate examinations. The IBF have been sponsoring the awards for at least 20 years, apparently.

The winners this year, and present today in Dublin despite the challenging weather conditions, were:

LC Accounting: Simon Doran, Gorey Community School, Gorey, Co. Wexford. Teacher Marie O'Donohue
LC Economics: Rebecca Bourke, Villiers School, North Circular Road, Limerick. Teacher Maeve O'Brien
LC Business: Laraine Creed, An Gairm Scoil Ghobnatan, Bailie Bhuirne, Maigh Cromtha. Teacher Sinead Ni Chathasaigh
JC Business Studies: Rachel O'Sullivan, Ardscoil Phobal, Bheanntrai, Co. Cork. Teacher Imelda Mulhall

I was delighted to meet the winners, their families, and the teachers involved. Also I met with Mary O'Sullivan from the BSTAI, and Felix O'Regan from the IBF.

I had not come across the BSTAI before, and they appear to be an excellent national resource for secondary school teachers in the business studies area. It obviously set me thinking..... :-)

RTE "This Week" radio programme

2009-12-13T06:21:00.000-08:00

A short interview with Paraic White, former head of the IDA, and myself was broadcast at lunch time on the RTE Radio 1 "This Week" programme, giving our reaction to the recent budget.

The piece was recorded yesterday afternoon with Colm O'Mongain. In the broadcast, I focussed on the reduction in 1Beuro infrastructure commitment in the budget and its impact on the construction sector. I noted that the Solidarity Bond, announced in the budget, could be used to "back-fill" the shortfall. In the context of the 'smart economy', I felt that infrastructure investment not only in broadband, but also educational facilities at all levels, and transportation - including freight logistics - continued to be important. I also noted that fundamental infrastructure, such as water quality, flood management and coastal defences, were often taken for granted but were clearly key. Finally I noted the irony of a carbon tax on fuel combined with a reduction in investment in improving roads and railways: better transport infrastructure could reduce our carbon footprint by improving traffic flows.

The actual broadcast interview was shorter than the recording: I had also made some comments about international competitiveness, which were not broadcast.

Accreditation Parchments Presentation

2009-12-12T06:58:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, I attended the ceremony at Clyde Rd for the presentation of accreditation parchments to a number of Institutes of Technology and Universities, in respect of various of their courses which have been accredited during the year.

Cyril Burkley, Chair of the Accreditation Committee presided, accompanied by Denis McGrath, Registrar, and Debbie O'Sullivan. Athlone, Carlow, Dublin, Dundalk, Galway-Mayo, Letterkenny, Limerick, Sligo, and Tralee Institutes of Technology all attended, together with DCU, UL, NUIG, NUIM, and UCC. Various courses were accredited for Engineering Technician, Associate Engineer, and Chartered Engineer.

The ceremony was followed by an interesting invited lecture on the teaching of engineering ethics, by Prof. Raffaella Ocone, followed by Q&A. The lecture will be available on our Engineers TV early next week.

Institution of Civil Engineers, NI Region Annual Dinner

2009-12-10T16:18:00.000-08:00

This evening, I had the great pleasure of attending the annual dinner of the ICE NI Region, at the Europa Hotel in Belfast.

The dining room was full, with about 550 guests. The host was Jonathan Hegan, Chairman of ICE NI, and a past Chairman of the Engineers Ireland NI Region.

The guest of honour was the Rt. Hon. The Lord Major, Councillor Naomi Long, who is herself a civil engineer before entering politics about six years ago. She spoke passionately about the role engineers and engineering is increasingly playing in national politics and policy.

The second guest of honour was Prof. Paul Jowitt, who is the current President of the ICE. Paul spoke about a renaissance of civil engineering, to tackle the twin issues of climate change and third world infrastructure.

A very pleasant evening!

Irish Taxation Institute: Budget Breakfast Briefing

2009-12-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

This morning, I joined a panel discussion hosted by the Irish Taxation Institute (ITI) on the morning after the national budget. The discussion was moderated by Bryan Dobson of RTE, and included Liam Grimes (KPMG), Danny McCoy (IBEC), Olivia Lynch (ITI) and Colm McCarthy (UCD), as well as myself representing Engineers Ireland. About 270 people attended.

After a brief overview of the main provisions of the budget by Liam Grimes, each of the panellists was asked to give a brief reaction to the budget. There then followed about an hour of questions and answers dialogue with the audience.

During my own initial presentation, and during the Q&A session, I stressed the importance of continued investment in infrastructure, contradicting Colm McCarthy's view that infrastructure spend can and should be cut back. In response to his comments about Dublin Airport's Terminal-2 project, I emphasised the need to invest in our water infrastructure, transportation and logistics infrastructures, broadband infrastructure, and educational infrastructures. In laying a foundation for the smart economy, infrastructure is critical; I also believe that inadequate roads infrastructure leads to unnecessary carbon emissions, and ironic in the light of the carbon tax. I also noted that the CIC report for the construction sector remains un-implemented, and I expressed hope that the new "solidarity bond" might be used to plug the gap left by the announced 1Beuro shortfall in infrastructure spend.

I also discussed the international reaction to the budget (positive, from what I have seen on the internet) and how a return to our competitiveness of a few years ago may be insufficient; the world economy has moved on, and both the USA and UK economies are in difficulty while Asia is bouncing back - however Asia has not been a traditional trading market for us.

I also gave a short update on the Taoiseach's Innovation Taskforce, of which I am a member, and which intends to report to Cabinet imminently.

F1 in Schools World Championships: Winners Celebration

2009-12-10T09:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening in the Science Gallery, I had the pleasure of meeting and giving an award on behalf of Engineer Ireland to the world championship winners of the F1 in Schools Championships, St David's secondary school in Greystones. Thirty one teams from 20 countries participated in the world finals in London, at which the racing driver Lewis Hamilton presented the Greystones team with their prize.

The winning team were Sean Cleary, Conor Daly, Adam Gammell and Eoin O'Connell. Their teachers were Triona Brosnan and Tom Reynolds. The principal at the school is Mary O'Doherty. All were present last night, along with our STEPS team from Clyde Road, and together with family and friends.

The Irish Computer Society have been organising the Irish participation in the annual championships, since 2006. The competition is to design the fastest compressed air balsa wood based racing car, using CAD/CAM software.

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

2009-12-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

We had our last Finance and Executive Committee meetings of 2009 this afternoon at Clyde Road.

At our Finance meeting, we were pleasantly surprised that our projections for the full year now appear that we will make a small profit, rather than the break even position which had earlier been predicted. While the year has yet to finish, there has been very careful management of costs, together with slightly better incomes than predicted from both corporate supporters and membership revenues.

We also are in the process of reviewing our "group schemes" by which our membership can benefit from reduced fees and costs from third party suppliers, such as insurers, retailers, banks and so on. We hope we may be able to bring some further such benefits to Members early in 2010, subject to the outcome of some further due diligence work which we are carrying out.

We are also intending to offer additional incentives to our Members for CPD training in 2010 to celebrate our 175th anniversary. Finally, we are also reviewing the contributions to our Benevolent Fund, and the Finance Committee may bring some suggestions to Executive and Council in this respect in due course.

Our Executive meeting followed.

In the report from the Director General, John Power, we noted the two highly successful and very high quality Forums we have held, on Energy and on the Construction Sector (both are available for playback on Engineers TV). We also noted the re-launch of the Chemical Division, with a new leadership team. Finally, the meeting with the heads of the Engineering Schools of the Higher Education Institutes had also been long overdue, and the process of a deeper engagement with these schools will continue.

Brian Kavanagh then reported on behalf of the Finance Committee, to the Executive on the meeting which it had just held.

We deferred our next item, an update from our Taskforce on Education of Mathematics and Science, until the end of the meeting, so as to create sufficient time for its presentation and discussion.

John Power, and Jim Robinson, then updated us on the plans for the 2010 Annual Conference in Cork in April, which are proceeding very well.

We had had a note of thanks from Vietnam for the honorary fellowship which we had recently awarded to their Deputy Prime Minister. We have an invitation from the Oireachtais Committee on Education and Science to present our deliberations, from our own Taskforce, in due course.

PJ Rudden, as Taskforce Chair, then presented in reasonable detail the status of the work of the Taskforce since its inception at our September meeting to study the teaching of mathematics in our schools, as a prerequisite to Engineering courses, and to make recommendations to Government accordingly. The work has turned out to be considerably more complex than first anticipated, but it appears clear that there are some fundamental and deep issues which reach right back into the Primary school system. The "Project Maths" initiative does not appear to be proceeding as smoothly as many had hoped. PJ expects to be able to provide a complete report, with recommendations, to the Executive in early 2010. A vigourous discussion ensued, with a number of observations which are being fed into the Taskforce process.

The meeting then concluded.

New Members Evening

2009-12-04T03:11:00.000-08:00

We hosted an information event and informal reception yesterday evening at Clyde Road, for new members.

Evelyn Casey acted as our hostess for the evening. John Power gave an overview of our work and ethos; Paul Sheridan presented an overview of the STEPS programme and outreach to schools; Roberta Keaney presented, using a live connection to our web sites, our regions, societies and divisions, and online community and blogging support; Evelyn herself presented on our CPD programme and on the process to becoming a Chartered Engineer; and finally I myself said a few short words.

In the event, the turn out was a little low. We had 8 people who were interested in joining, and signed up on the evening. We also had a further 7 members, 5 of whom are preparing their applications for Chartered membership by the next deadline, in January. The other 2 members were interested in volunteering, for the Water and Environmental Society, and for the STEPS programme.

Afterwards, I had an interesting discussion with one of the attendees, Tom, on the consequences of the recent flooding for Bord Na Mona and its peat stocks..

Heads of Schools Meeting

2009-11-24T14:27:00.000-08:00

Today from 10am to 3pm, John Power (DG), Denis McGrath (Registrar) and myself hosted a meeting to which all heads of engineering schools nationwide, both from Universities and Institutes of Technology, were invited to discuss deeper co-ordination and co-operation between us all.

Despite the poor travelling conditions, and a national public sector strike, we had representatives from the Institutes of Technology of Carlow, Sligo and Tallaght; and from Dublin City University, NUI Maynooth, University College Dublin, University College Cork, and the University of Limerick.

After introductions, John Power and I took the opportunity to brief the meeting on changes to our membership rules, including for level 7, cognate degrees and the requirement from 2013 for Masters level achievement as the normal route to Chartered Engineer; also on the rising profile of the profession in the media and amongst policies makers; revisions to our code of ethics; and finally on work on regulation and licensing of the profession.

We then had an extensive - an intensive - discussion on a range of topics. These included promotion of the profession to students, parents and career counsellors; the challenges of leaving certificate mathematics, including the "project maths" initiative; the role of volunteering in teaching, both at third but also second level; the opportunities for co-operation on structured PhD programmes; the implications to the third level sector of the membership rule changes for Engineers Ireland; support from Engineers Ireland in access to practising Engineers as role models; presentation opportunities by Officers from Engineers Ireland at graduation ceremonies; the Young Engineers Society within the third level institutes, and the role of "champions"; continued professional development for academic engineering staff; the role of Chartered Engineering status amongst academic engineering staff; and the influence of Engineers Ireland on third level policy decisions.

A number of specific suggestions and actions arose, which will be circulated to those attending in due course.

Further meetings are planned, at approximately six month intervals.

Overall, the meeting provided a wonderful opportunity for greater co-operation amongst the engineering schools themselves, with Engineers Ireland, and the engineering profession.

Executive and Council meetings

2009-11-22T01:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning we had a short, one hour, Executive meeting followed immediately by Council.

The sole agenda item for the Executive meeting was to consider and approve the budget for 2010. The budget has been through a number of iteration. We have decided to take a conservative view of both sponsorship and Government support. We are obviously keen to retain services to our members, but in particular wish to augment the level and quality of our CPD activities in the coming year. Given our changes in membership regulations, we also expect our membership to grow, at least modestly. We are also being as cautious as possible about our cost base. Finally we want to celebrate our 175th year next year in an appropriate fashion, and are also negotiating buying out our ground rent for Clyde Road. Putting all these facets together, we approved a conservative budget which would in effect see a cash flow neutral year for 2010.

The Council meeting followed, and was very well attended despite the dreadful flooding in the West and South of the country.

The 2010 budget, recommended by the Executive, was approved by Council.

The National Standards Association of Ireland presented their work to us arising from a suggestion from Conor Hoey at our previous Council meeting, during a half hour session with Q&A. They observed that participation in the standards process can not only ensure that situations particular to the Irish economy can be defended, but also that participation can be used offensively and strategically: in fact I have blogged about this using standards as a business strategy here. We are keen to participate even more deeply with the NSAI and ensure that Engineers strongly influence all relevant standards activities in Ireland.

Michael Hayden, President of the Irish Academy of Engineering, then gave a half hour presentation on the work of the Academy. Michael sees the primary role of the Academy as an influence on national policy, including in particular infrastructure in its widest context. He sees Engineers Ireland primarily concerned with operations and execution, ensuring that best practice is fostered and implemented. Naturally the two activities strongly overlap, and some of the analysis and reporting activities being undertaken by the Academy are being done jointly.

Revisions to our code of ethics, which have recently been reviewed, were approved. At the time of writing, these are not yet posted on our public website, but I would expect them to be very imminently. We will also be bringing them to the attention of our membership and indeed the public at large.

Martin Lowery (incoming President next year) reported on the recent Liaison Committee meeting with our Regions, Societies and Divisions.

PJ Rudden (incoming President after Martin) proposed, on the basis of a recent visit he himself had undertaken, to form a new Middle East Region for Engineers Ireland. Council so approved. There are a number of our members operating in the Middle East and I am truly delighted that we are forming this new region: it is our first region ever formed (as far as I know) outside of the British Isles.

We received an update on the planning for the 2010 Annual Conference in Cork. We have one major sponsor so far. As I have noted previously, we are introducing a session at conference next year on resolutions tabled from our membership. 13 such resolutions have been proposed, and 6 of these are being selected Council (by ballot) to debate at Conference.

Under AOB, John Power (DG) read a synopsis of a small number of emails which he had received from certain members who had been unhappy with the position which Council had taken on the Lisbon referendum.

We also noted the great success of the Energy Forum which we had hosted earlier this week (unfortunately I missed it, being away in Vietnam), with high participation in Clyde Road and by webex, as well as high media interest. We have a Construction Industry Forum planned for 7th December next.

Finance Committee Meeting

2009-11-20T23:36:00.000-08:00

We had an additional finance committee meeting at lunch-time, to finalise a difficult budget for 2010. There are a few "known unknowns" relating to income next year, so we will need to remain flexible in our prudent management of the financial resources during 2010, whilst striving at all times to further improve our key benefits of membership with what will almost certainly be less overall income.

The budget will be presented to Executive tomorrow morning and, if approved, given to Council later on in the morning.

North-East Region Annual Dinner Dance

2009-11-14T17:44:00.000-08:00

I attended the north-east region's event this evening in the Crystal Hotel, Cavan. John Brannigan was the hosting President, and the Chair of Cavan County Council, Winston Bennett, and County Manager, Jack Keyes also attended. There were about 90 people altogether.

Cavan County Council have just achieved a 3-year CPD accreditation, and so I had the honour of presenting Jack Keyes with the associated certificate. There are now 11 county councils nationwide which have achieved CPD accreditation.

Michelle Day, a Mechanical Engineering Student at Dundalk IT won the Peter Rice memorial medal for her project on water pumps in Uganda.

I took the opportunity in my short after dinner speech to briefly mention some of our recent initiatives and news, including our 175th anniversary next year; the annual conference in Cork; the expansion of our membership rules; our initiatives for unemployed members; our budget submission; our initiative on licensing and regulation of professional engineers; our initiative on mathematics teaching in schools; and the continuing importance of CPD.

A pleasant evening, with very good food and great company..

Software Industry Awards 2009

2009-11-13T16:24:00.000-08:00

This evening I represented Engineers Ireland at the Software Industry Awards in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin. About 400 people attended, with Des Cahill as an excellent host for the evening. Minister Conor Lenihan was the guest of honour, and spoke passionately about the opportunity for the software industry and the smart economy.

Sean Baker, Chair of the Irish Software Association, spoke articulately and to the point on the industry's need for more mathematics and science students from secondary schools. He also noted the improvements in the public sector's approach to procurement from indigenous software companies. He argued that the Business Expansion Scheme should have the per company limit raised. He noted a deeper working relationship with Enterprise Ireland.

The undergraduate student award went to Yuandong Zhu, of UCD, for his work on a forensics tool for Windows. Norkom won the Corporate Social Responsibility award, for their focus and work on education. Local Social, an initiative between Rococo Software and the NDRC, won the Collaboration award. Percana won the Sales Achievement award, based in part on a recent 28M$ contract. ITab won the Technical Innovation award.

Avego was the Emerging Software Business of the Year, and the Company of the Year was Openet.

Paul Kerly, a colleague in the industry for many years, won the Software Industry Person of the Year award.

The evening was great fun, and I was delighted to see the event to well supported by so many companies and guests. Those I spoke to in general felt that the indigenous software industry was bearing the recession well, and several seeing significant growth opportunities in export markets.

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

2009-11-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

This afternoon at Clyde Road we had our November Finance Committee meeting, followed immediately by a meeting of the Cafe Clyde Committee, and then by the Executive.

At the Finance meeting, we received an update on the current finances for the year so far. We are tracking reasonably well to break even for 2009, which we believe would be a fair result given the current general environment. Our recent promotional campaign for new members has achieved some early uptake, but there is much more to do.

Most of our meeting was spent reviewing the analysis for our budget for 2010, which we anticipate to be challenging. We are currently assuming that no support at all will be available from the Government for our activities, and our budgetary planning is thus fairly conservative as a result. In practice, there may in fact be some Government support available to us, although we will not know one way or the other until early next year, and after our 2010 budget has been adopted. We are reviewing our offering to our membership, including in particular the nature of our continuing professional development (CPD) activities, and indeed our facilities at Clyde Road for members. We aim to ensure that we can offer the most attractive services, given our fiscal constraints, to facilitate our existing membership and attract even more members to our Institution.

Our Cafe Clyde Committee reviewed the general operation of our food and drink facilities.

The Executive Committee then met. Much of the meeting was spent discussing the current assessment from the Finance Committee on next year's budget. However the Finance Committee noted that it was not yet in a position to recommend a budget to the Executive Committee for 2010, and that it wanted to use the next week to further review the situation. The assumption of zero Government funding next year, together with a probable buy-out of ground rent for Clyde Road, presented challenges to the cash reserves. The Finance Committee intends to be in a position to recommend a budget for 2010 by the end of next week, and in time for the scheduled Council meeting the saturday after next.

We also discussed and reviewed a number of ongoing activities. These included our support for unemployed members; the 2010 annual conference in Cork; the benevolent fund status and contribution both for 2009 and likely for 2010; secondary school issues including the Junior Certificate programme and honours mathematics teaching; the imminent Energy forum; our budget submission to the Minister of Finance; our 175th anniversary celebrations next year; and the cost of publicly funded civil works in Ireland compared to other jurisdictions.

Overall, our main concern at this time is to continue to re-position the criticality of the Engineering profession to the public, the media and policy makers; as well as enhancing even further our services to existing members, and so in addition attracting further practising (and student) Engineers to join us.

Chartered Engineer of the Year Award; Paper and Presentation Awards

2009-11-12T01:48:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening at Clyde Road we had standing room only - about 200 people in all - for the finalists of the C.Eng. of the Year award, and for the awards for best papers. This was the 13th year of the C.Eng of the Year competition. Last year (June '08-'09), 450 people achieved C.Eng. status, and the six of these became finalists last evening.

The event was presided over by Jim Robinson, who has won the C.Eng. of the Year on a previous occasion. The event was very kindly sponsored by Beale & Co., and by Griffiths & Armour. The adjucation panel was chaired by Michael Higgins, and comprised of Richard Crowe, John Lombard, Mary Sharp and Dr Don Menzies.

The six C.Eng. of the year finalists were:

Paolo Carbone, "Delivering Light Rail: Project Management and Engineering" - Paolo, as the Railway Procurement Agency Power and Systems Manager, is overseeing the propose Luas line extension for Lucan, as part of the Transport 21 initiative;
Brian Kelly, "Petrochemical Tankfarms in Saudi Arabia" - now country manager for Kentz Australia, Brian described his supervision of design, procurement and execution of a large installation in Saudi;
Declan Leonard, "Cliffs of Moher Visitors Interpretive Centre" - Declan described his involvement with the Moher Heritage Centre, including in particular his careful design of the heating, cooling and air circulation plants unobtrusively placed below ground;
Maria Long, "Redevelopment of Penneys Department Store, Tralee" - Maria described the challenges in managing this project, including the challenges of poor condition adjacent buildings and late requirements changes;
Michael Quilligan, "Extending the Life of Historic Assets" - Michael described his involvement in the careful analysis of the Newcastle High Level bridge, designed and built by Stephenson in 1847-49, and a category 1 listed structure in the UK.
Michael Wardick, "Developing a New Island Community: The Red Cross Maldives Tsunami Construction Project" - Michael described his supervision of the development from virgin state of an island in Maldives, including civic centres, schools and housing, for a community of 4,000 people after the Asian tsunami.

Each finalist gave a short 5 minute presentation on their project. I was very impressed by the articulation and intelligence - and inspiration - of the presentations, and felt that they together represented what is the very best of young Irish engineers.

After a break for the adjucation panel, John Power announced the awards from our sectors, divisions and societies for their top papers in the last season. These were:

Dervilla Mitchell, of the GB Region, for her paper on Heathrow Terminal 5
Ken Leahy and Luke Ballantyne, of the Cork Region, for their paper on the Design and Implementation of the Mallow Flood Relief Scheme
Tom Cosgrove of the Thormond Region, for his paper on the Redevelopment of Thormond Park
David Beadman, Geotechnical Society, for his paper on the Design and Construction of Metro Stations and Underground Structure to Eurocode 7, with case histories
Fintan Buggy, Mike McGuire, Michael O'Shea and Andrew Smith, jointly also of the Geotechnical Society, for their description of the Limerick Tunnel Project
Annraoi de Paor, of an Roth, whose paper as Gaelige was on Deep Brain Stimulation provides relief in Parkinson's Disease
Liam Gaffney, of the Project Management Society, for his paper Management of the Dublin Airport Capital Investment Programme
Christy O'Sullivan, of the Roads and Transportation Society, for his paper on the Adamstown Planning Scheme
John Shine, of the Electrical and Electronic Division, on a Roadmap for Smart Networks
Tom Cosgrove and Seamus Hanrahan, of the Structures and Construction Division, for their paper on the Redevelopment of Thormond Park

Jim then called upon Michael Higgins, chair of the Adjucation Panel, to announce the winner of the Chartered Engineer of the Year award, who was Michael Quilligan.

The evening then concluded, but not before I said a few words to congratulate all the finalists and award winners, and to thank Michael Higgins for his tremendous voluntary work on behalf of Engineers Ireland as Chair of the Board of Examiners and Adjucation Panel for many years: this is his last year in these roles.

JobSeekers Network

2009-11-06T03:39:00.000-08:00

I briefly sat in for part of this morning's JobSeekers Network meeting in Dublin, organised by Sean Maguire and Jimmy Kinahan, and chatted to people at a few of the tables. Unfortunately I then had another meeting at 10am to get to for the innovation taskforce.

There were about 50 people present. As Sean explained, the main purpose of the network is to provide mutual assistance, and share good ideas and experience. I was able to stay for the first session, led by Kevin O'Loughlin, who gave us his war stories about founding his company three years ago. He had several messages, including that now was a great time to start a company, given the fall in the cost of business services including rent; and the desire by customers in general to identify opportunities to be more efficient. His view was that the word "recession" is outlawed in his company: until his company has 100% market share in its niche, then there was always more market to capture and the recession wasn't damaging his business.

I wish I could have stayed to hear the other speakers and take part in the discussions, but I know that Kevin Dolan - one of the other speakers this morning - has some specific ideas about building on an online jobseekers network via the Engineers Ireland website, which I hope will help spread the support and help.

There is also an Engineers Ireland linkedin group here (you must sign up to linkedin to be able to access it, but its free registration) at which jobs are advertised.

Officers Meeting

2009-11-03T15:05:00.000-08:00

This evening, John Power (DG), Jim Browne (Past President), PJ Rudden (Junior VP) and myself met in Clyde Road, followed by dinner together, to have a general review across a range of topics. Martin Lowery (Senior VP) had hoped to be able to join us in time from a meeting of the Urban Forum in Limerick, which he chairs on behalf of Engineers Ireland, but became caught in traffic.

We discussed our general financial situation and the likely parameters for our 2010 budget. We also discussed the status of our CPD programme, and improvements that can be made. John updated us on some organisational developments in the Clyde Road team. We also used the opportunity to brief each other on specific projects in which some of us are involved, such as the regulation/licensing initiative; the subcommittee on teaching of mathematics and science in the schools; the STEPs programme; and our relationship with the International Centre for Graduate Education Engineering (ICGEE).

It is our intention that the Officers should routinely meet together on a quarterly basis.

Our IT systems

2009-10-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

Joined a meeting at Clyde Road this afternoon chaired by Damien Owens, with John Power, John Byrne and Richard Seaver, to review the current architecture of IT systems, in the light of our investments over the summer, and to consider how these might be further developed in a cost effective and resilient manner for the future.

Our new systems - web site, membership, register, and meeting organisation - are working well, together of course with our Engineers TV, and are delivering benefits perhaps beyond what we initially had planned. However it is prudent to consider a medium term vision - say over the next 5 years or so - on how we expect our systems to be carried forward.

Damien and Richard have been asked to prepare a report for our forthcoming Executive meeting.

Regulation and Licensing of Professional Engineers

2009-10-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

One of my stated personal objectives for my Presidency this year was to advance the regulation and licensing of Professional Engineers in Ireland. I reflected on this issue, as affects Software Engineering, in my presidential address.

Over the summer months, John Power (our Director General) has had an extensive series of meetings with policy makers, politicians from various parties, senior civil servants, representatives from the insurance industry, and some of our own members, to gain feedback and reaction to the initiative. He has also collected input from our sister organisations around the world as to the objectives and philosophy of their national regulation schemes, if any.

This evening John hosted a meeting of a small number of our Chartered Members who have experience in this issue, and who will report to Council in due course. On the basis of feedback from John's discussions over the summer, we are now preparing a formal submission to Government for later this year on how legislation might be brought forward in Ireland to regularise the role and responsibilities of Chartered Engineers in the economy and society at large. Our current thinking is that such regulation and licensing would apply to all engineering domains (ie beyond the traditional civil and construction sectors) whenever, and where ever, the health and safety of the public, and/or the value of material assets, could be placed at risk.

If you have any suggestions on the issue, please feel free to contact John or myself.

Mutual Recognition Agreement with Engineers Australia

2009-10-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

Earlier this afternoon, we had a short ceremony in Clyde Rd to sign a mutual recognition agreement with Engineers Australia (EA), thus enabling Chartered Engineers from Engineers Ireland to practice in Australia, and vice versa.

EA were represented by their President Peter Godfrey and Chief Executive Peter Taylor. The Australian Ambassador to Ireland, Ms Anne Plunkett, also attended. EA are celebrating their 90th year this year: we celebrate our 175th anniversary next.

Members who are considered working in Australia should contact Clyde Road, so that we can facilitate their introduction and registration with EA.

Fellowship for Deputy Prime Minister Hai, of Vietnam

2009-10-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

At lunch today, I had the honour of awarding Fellowship by Presidential Invitation to the Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam, Houng Trung Hai.

Deputy Prime Minister Hai is an electrical engineer, graduating from Hanoi Polytechnique in 1981. He subsequently completed an MBA at Trinity College Dublin in 1994.

His initial career was at the Pha Lai thermal coal fired plant about 65km north east of Hanoi, rising to become Chief Engineer, and managing four 110MW Russian built turbines. He then became international cooperation manager at Power Company 1, a unit of Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), handling 15 provinces in the north of the country.

In 1993 he joined the Ministry of Energy, and subsequently was placed on the Board of Electricity of Vietnam (EVN). By 1998 he was President and CEO of EVN.

He became Vice Minister and then Minister of Industry from 2000, and has been Deputy Prime Minister since 2007.

He has been very active on behalf of Vietnam, visiting President Nathan in Singapore this summer; Premier Wen Jaibao in Dalian recently at the East Asia World Economic Forum, which will now be held in Vietnam next year; and just last week signing trade co-operation agreements with Belaruss, before visiting UK, Northern Ireland and ourselves.

The lunch was hosted by ESB International, and in particular by Padraig MacManus (ESB CEO) and Ollie Brogan (ESBI).

Deputy Prime Minister Hai has excellent English, and the lunch was quite an informal affair. We even had singing from both delegations, including an incredibly powerful rendition of "Old Man River" by David Farrell of ESBI - I subsequently discovered he is a trained opera singer!

It is clear that the Vietnamese have a fondness for the Irish, and Irish Engineers, built up over many years by ESBI, and John Gunning and others. I myself will be visiting Hanoi for the first time in three weeks time, in conjunction with a project for Irish Aid and Enterprise Ireland (not directly connected with Engineers Ireland).

Graduate Careers Fair, RDS

2009-10-21T07:05:00.000-07:00

The gradireland graduate careers fair is on today at the RDS in Dublin. Engineers Ireland has a stand, manned by Alec McAllister from the Clyde Road team. I gave a one hour invited seminar.

It was my first time attending the fair, and I was a little unsure what to expect. The room allocated to me was quite small, and only about 35 people could fit in, including having to sit on the floor. Meanwhile, people were having to be turned away outside the door in the corridor, because we just didn't have enough space..

Next door, Tim Hynes of Microsoft, was giving a talk on opportunities in the IT industry: I think it strange that gradireland chose to put both Engineering and IT talks concurrently. There are clearly other slots on the seminar timetable which could have been used to ensure that two overlapping professions were not presented at the same time.

So, I think gradireland could have organised the seminars a little better - much larger rooms, and care with the seminar timetable.

Anyway.

Because of the small and intimate audience, on the spur of the moment I thought my prepared powerpoint presentation inappropriate. So instead, after a short introduction about myself and my own career, I then went around the room and asked each person "what was the top question on your mind, what do you want to ask me ?". Collecting all these responses, I then answered them as best as I could. They related to what Engineers Ireland is all about, what are the advantages in joining, how can we help with careers, paths to Chartered Engineering, CPD, our Engineers TV webex series, and relationship to our sister organisations overseas. There were questions on job opportunities across a range of Engineering sectors. We discussed whether or not a Masters degree can help a career. We talked about the pros and cons of joining a large multinational as a first job, rather than a smaller company. We talked about the importance or otherwise of having already had job experience, perhaps over summer vacations. We talked about international experience, and the importance of learning another language - I suggested that short intensive courses can be beneficial while one is searching for a job. We talked about the relationship between business and engineering, and how many engineers naturally move into project management and business organisation during their careers. Most of all I emphasised the likelihood of multiple jobs during a typical career, and the need to keep current with professional development.

It was obviously an intensive Q&A session, and I hope those who came along got some benefit.

Meanwhile, out in the exhibition area, Bord Gais Eireann, SITA, Unilever, GE Energy, SAP, Colgate Palmolive, Stryker Instruments, Microsoft, NYSE Euronext, PayPal Europe and Ericsson were all amongst the employers seeking engineers of one category or another. I briefly visited each of their stands before my seminar session, to get a sense of their offerings to graduate engineers.

Executive and Finance committee meeting

2009-10-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

We had our regularly scheduled Executive meeting this evening at Clyde Road, preceded by a Finance subcommittee meeting.

Under matters arising, John Power updated us on the initiative to meet the NAMA team, including via the CIF. We noted too the ongoing subcommittee led by PJ Rudden on honours mathematics in the secondary school system.

Our finances, as ever, remain tight. The finance subcommittee and the executive team are reasonably confident that we will make a small profit, or at least break even, by the end of the fiscal/calendar year. At this stage, there are few remaining cost reduction items that could make an immediate impact in the current year, and so it is important that our outstanding revenues, primarily outstanding membership income and CPD training, come in as we expect between now and December.

John Power and I noted the various engagements which we have participated since the last Executive meeting, and as I have reported in my own case in this blog.

John Power reported on our continuing support for unemployed members, stressing again a willingness to consider any further suggestions and actions. A further Jobseekers event had been held recently which had then been oversubscribed, and overran its allotted time. There had been some favourable comments from attendees on the social networks, and one of the attendees had volunteered to leverage social networking via blogs and twitter to further to assist unemployed members. Further events are planned.

John Power reported on feedback, and read the emails, from a small number of members to him, concerning the email which he was asked to write by the unanimous decision of Council, on the Lisbon Treaty Referendum. Some members had complemented Engineers Ireland on taking a public position and exhorting members to vote in favour of the Treaty, whilst some others had expressed a varying set of concerns. These in turn will be reported at the next Council meeting.

John Power and Jim Robinson gave a summary of preparations for the 2010 annual conference, in Cork. There is an extensive social programme planned around the conference. There have been 7 proposed resolutions to date from our societies and divisions, for conference to consider. Further resolutions are expected, and Council will select a short list at its next meeting.

John Power solicited further suggestions for speakers to participate in the Engineers Forum series. It is likely that the first forum, imminently in November, will be focussed on a national energy strategy.

Under AOB, we reviewed our invitation policy for the forthcoming annual Ball. We noted interest from Irish Engineers in the United Arab Emirates in forming a division of Engineers Ireland there, and widened the scope to consider the prerequisites to form new regional divisions on any part of the globe.

Young Engineers Society Annual Ball

2009-10-10T02:32:00.000-07:00

The Young Engineers Society Ball was held last night at the Hilton Hotel in Dublin, kindly sponsored by ESBI and AIB.

About 120 people attended, most looking wonderful in 1920's Manhattan themes, flappers and all! By prior private agreement as "old engineers", John Power and I chickened out and turned up in our regular tuxes.

A very pleasant evening, thanks to Katie O'Neill, Caroline Butler, Caroline Rocks, Barry Stokes and many others whose effort made it successful.

Separately, I heard from Barry Stokes and Kevin Dolan that last week's Engineers Ireland Jobseekers event had been very good, in fact severely running over time, with some positive feedback on Boards.ie. Some online social networking follow up is also planned.

Beyond the Recession: what can science and innovation partnerships do for you ?

2009-10-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

This evening, I represented Engineers Ireland at the Foundation for Science and Technology discussion on "Beyond the Recession: what can science and innovation partnerships do for you?", at Queens University in Belfast, by kind invitation of Gerry Cawley of our Northern Ireland Region and Council member.

The Chairman was the Earl of Selbourne. The panellists were Prof. Peter Gregson, Vice-Chancellor of Queens; Eoin O'Driscoll, Chair of Forfas; and Dr Iain Gray, CEO of the UK Technology Strategy Board. The event was sponsored by Intertrade Ireland and Queens University.

About 120 attended, including many from the Republic agency ad academic community. Michael Hayden, President of the Engineering Academy, also attended.

There was quite an extensive Q&A session, for which I have formally been asked to pose a point of view and ask a few questions.

I did so of the panel, focussing on an entrepreneur-centric and innovator-centric approach for the agencies, noting that in the US only 8% of all venture backed start ups in fact come from academia. I also noted that the key engine of a sustainable smart economy is company exits: innovators start and build companies to sell them, so re-cycling human and fiscal resources for the next technology wave, whilst providing a pool of acquisition targets from which large companies can emerge by acquisition. I noted that a smart economy requires smart government thinking, and I highlighted the Taiwanese Government's decision to invest to disrupt the entire global semiconductor industry via TSMC, from which a cluster of small Taiwanese chip design companies successfully emerged to globally compete. I thus questioned the role of State aid, and the role of the State in building an innovation culture. These are all considerations within the Taoiseach's Innovation Taskforce of which I am a member..

CPD Companies of the Year

2009-10-07T15:27:00.000-07:00

This morning in the D4 Ballsbridge hotel (the old Berkeley Court) we held the finals of the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) companies of the year and a CPD symposium. The overall theme was "Low-cost, high-impact CPD to strategically adapt and innovate".

The winners were as follows:

Small-sized company: Malachy Walsh & Partners
Medium-sized company: Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Manufacturing
Large-sized company: Pfizer Biotechnologies
Public-Sector award: Dublin City Council
Overall CPD Company of the Year: DePuy Ireland

Michael Hayden, chair of the judging panel and President of the Academy of Engineers, also received an award to recognise his hugely influential work over the last ten years in helping build the CPD programme.

In addition to the awards, we had a key note speech by Dr. Paul Duffy, of Pfizer and the American Chamber of Commerce. Paul emphasised the role of CPD in the smart economy, and then answered an extensive list of questions from audience about his commercial experiences and recommendations on CPD.

Morgan Kilgallen, of Kilgallen & Partners, presented a case study on how his consulting company had invested in CPD, and diversified his business to survive the recession. Joe Horan, of the South Dublin County Council, then gave an overview of the tactics he had used to re-enegerise his public sector organisation, gradually changing culture and effectiveness, including by extensive use of IT.

Gary Clerkin, of DePuy Ireland, described the processes used within DePuy to manage innovation, including filtering out ideas which although exciting may not always have been executable. David Moran, of Changing Worlds & Amdocs, likewise gave an overview of how he had used CPD to derive new products for the global market in his company.

I then concluded the event. For the record, my speech is below.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I remind you that the theme of this symposium has been 'Low-cost, high-impact CPD to strategically adapt and innovate'.

I'ld like us all to again congratulate our winners: Malachy Walsh & Partners; Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics and Manufacturing; Pfizer Biotechnologies; Dublin City Council; Dublin City Council; and DePuy Ireland.

I'ld also like us to thank the Clyde Road team: Aidan Harney and the CPD accreditation team; Jimmy Kinahan and the CPD training team; Michael Hayden and the panel of judges; and PJ Rudden and the CPD Governance Committee.

I was pleased to note that Gary Clerkin, in his address, observed that innovation can be much more than innovation of new products, but also of new services, of new business processes and practices, and of brand. I was also pleased by the emphasis on client focus and engagement. If I may, I would like to add one further point: innovation can come via insightful design, and I believe that there is a strong role for design to play in helping us position ur products and services best for the international market.

I want to emphasise the very successful partnership between Engineers Ireland and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in promoting CPD since 2000, through the National Training Fund. As Aidan Harney has already observed, the targets jointly set between the Department and ourselves have been consistently beaten, with now 117 organisations accredited, employing some 15,000 engineering professionals.

One of our audience questions related to the potential impact of the McCarthy report recommendations on potentially reducing State support for CPD. I would like to respond by repeating Paul Duffy's remark: 'There are no more safe jobs.' My view is that even if we do manage to restore our national competitiveness as an economy, perhaps to what it was a decade ago, that is insufficient for recovery: the world has moved on, and restoration of the status quo will be insufficient for Ireland.

Joe Horan noted that in his County Council, he always asks the question 'are we spending money for yesterday, or for tomorrow ?' Joe's question is really also one for the nation: it pains me that with NAMA and our public sector costs, we are currently borrowing 100euro every week for each man, woman and child in Ireland - is this spending for yesterday, or for tomorrow ?

The McCarthy report says much about cutbacks, but I have yet to hear much from our political leaders about a strategic vision, strategic objectives and a strategic plan. It is easy to identify cut backs. But where are going to invest ?

One questioner asked our panel whether we would ever reach a saturation point for commercial innovation ? I sometimes wonder have our political leaders and policy makers reached a saturation point in their own ability to think innovatively and to lead.

A smart economy requires smart people: do we have enough smart people in our economy to lead us and rebuild our nation ?

If we are to have a smart economy, than we must invest in skills and innovation. The theme of this conference was, I remind you, 'Low-cost, high-impact CPD, to strategically adapt and innovate'. I believe that Engineers Ireland has absolutely delivered on this: with relatively little, but very gratefully received, State aid, we in Engineers Ireland have delivered a low cost (from the State's perspective), high-impact CPD programme, to strategically adapt and innovate across the entire economy, as represented not only by our prize winners today but also by our 117 accredited organisations. We ask that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment continue their support to us."

IEEE and Engineers Ireland National Society Agreement

2009-10-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

I attended the official ceremony in London today, along with John Power and Catherine O'Sullivan (head of our UK region and Council member), of a co-operation agreement with the IEEE. The co-signatory with me was John Vig, President of the IEEE.

Both Engineers Ireland and the IEEE (via the US Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) were founding signatories of the Washington Accord in 1989, which now covers 13 nations with a further 4 on provisional status. The Accord achieves mutual recognition of accredited academic degree programmes necessary as a prerequisite, in each signatory territory, for professional engineering status. Nevertheless, a direct link and co-operation agreement with the IEEE should provide a basis for further co-operation. The Agreement signed today was rather general in scope, but we will both be following through to seek advantages for our members. I am also particularly thankful to Dr John McLoone, of NUIM Maynooth, and who is the current IEEE President for region comprising the Republic of Ireland and the UK, who catalysed the co-operation agreement.

The ceremony was hosted at the Royal Institution, which includes the laboratories where Michael Faraday conducted his experiments. There is a fascinating museum of scientific exhibits in the basement, including work by John Tyndall, after whom the Tyndall Institute in Cork is of course named.

The IEEE celebrated its 125th anniversary on May 13th last, and John Vig was in London to celebrate with the EMEA region of the IEEE. But as John himself noted, it is of course Engineers Ireland's 175th anniversary next year...

For the record, I attach my short speech below:

"Dr Vig, members of the IEEE and of Engineers Ireland, ladies and gentlemen,

It is a sincere honour for me to represent Engineers Ireland this afternoon at this National Society Agreement. I warmly congratulate the IEEE on their 125^th anniversary on May 13^th last. Although this is a National Society Agreement, I do note that in fact the IEEE represents itself as a global organization, and so perhaps this is in some sense a Worldwide Society Agreement.

I am also particularly pleased to meet John Vig, who not only has been awarded 55 patents, published more than 100 papers, and nine book chapters, but also was deeply influential in establishing the IEEE Sensors Council, and its associated journal. And, as I have observed courtesy of the internet, John is also a very accomplished ballroom dancer!

Unlike the IEEE, Engineers Ireland represents in a single organization all facets of professional engineering. We have a number of divisions, including electrical and electronic, and – separately – information and communication technologies. We also have a number of societies, working across multiple technology sectors, such as project management, and water and the environment. As John noted, we celebrate our 175^th anniversary next year.

Both Engineers Ireland and the US Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology were founding signatories of the Washington Accord in 1989. As I understand it, the US ABET is an umbrella organization for accrediting engineering courses within the USA, and includes the IEEE as a founding member in 1932. The Washington Accord is now signed by Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States. Germany, India, Russia and Sri Lanka are also provisional members. Graduates of accredited programs in any of the signatory countries are recognized by the other signatory countries, as having met the academic requirements for entry to the practice of professional engineering. The Agreement between the IEEE and Engineers Ireland today extends our friendship beyond the provisions of the Washington Accord, and fosters further collaboration between us.

At a time when technology is becoming more complex and intricate, and when our global society faces new challenges in sustainable environments, it is particularly important that professional engineers take a strong lead and are recognized by governments and society at large for safe design, and careful operation, of technology systems. Unprofessional and poorly skilled engineers can place the public at risk. High professional standards are required and, in a global world, mutual recognition of those high standards demanded by national engineering organizations, such as the IEEE and Engineers Ireland, facilitate engagement and true international teamwork.

I am delighted that the IEEE and Engineers Ireland are initiating a stronger and further co-operative relationship between us, and I look forward to highly fruitful friendship."

Army Corp of Engineers annual dinner

2009-10-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

At the kind invitation of the Army Engineering Corps, I attended their annual dinner at Cathal Brugha Barracks this evening. Also in attendance were Major-General Ashe, Brigadier-General Paul Pakenham, and Director of Engineering Colonel Jim Foley.

There are currently 57 Engineering Officers, male and female, in the Corps, with a number currently on duty in Kosovo and Chad. There about 400 members of the Corps in all. The Army Corps of Engineering is responsible for all army combat engineering, but also all general engineering across the defence forces, including maintenance of buildings.

The evening was also attended by retired Officers. There were many reminiscences and stories about tours of duty and various engineering projects. I sensed a wonderful esprit de corps, and despite talk of the McCarthy report and Government cutbacks, the enthusiasm and professionalism was contagious. A wonderful evening.

Irish Property & Facility Management Association Conference "Seeing Through the MUD"

2009-10-01T06:08:00.000-07:00

At the kind invitation of the Irish Property and Facility Management Association (IPFMA), I attended their conference in Croke Park this morning, with the intriguing title of "Seeing Through the MUD".

The MUD in question is the Multi-Unit Development bill 2009, currently before the Oireachtas. The Law Reform Commission made recommendations on the regulation and legislation pertaining to the Property Services industry, and in particular to the role of management operating companies for apartment complexes. The IPFMA have been extensively engaged throughout the process, and the main purpose of today's conference is to consider a number of issues with the current draft legislation, with a view to making a further submission to the Departments of Justice, Equality and Law Reform; and of the Environment.

I unfortunately could only attend the opening session in the morning, and not the full day.

The morning opened with a presentation by Tom Lynch, the CEO (Designate) of the new Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA). The PRSA has been established to operate a licensing system for auctioneers, letting agents, and any services relating to the management of apartment complexes, housing estates and so on. It also will operate a complaints procedure, including a compensation fund to recompense clients of the agents, companies, partnerships and individuals whom it regulates, in the case of fraud. The new legislation has quite strong sanctions against wrong doing, but in addition the PRSA also has the ability under the legislation to itself introduce yet further procedures and regulations for the industry which then carry the full authority of law. Licensees will require a qualification, and the PRSA is working with the Dublin Institute of Technology to clearly set out the precise requirements. Licensees will also require professional indemnity insurance, although as yet the precise requirements have still yet to be clarified. Interestingly, all employees of all licensee holders (eg a body corporate) will also have to be individually licensed.

Patricia Rickard-Clarke, of the Law Reform Commission, gave an overview of the draft legislation, and noted there remains a major issue in the drafting in defining the procedures and responsibilities for completion of multi-unit developments.

Pat McGovern, a Chartered Building Surveyor, amply reinforced Patricia's concerns by clearly identifying issues relating to "snag" lists during the transition from the developer to the apartment owners and their management operating company. He noted that poor workmanship on behalf of a builder may sometimes in practice only come to notice after a year or so after occupancy. He noted that certificates of compliance submitted during the conveyancing procedure may not always accurately reflect the actual state of a building. The current draft MUD legislation does not at all sufficiently address completion issues.

Colm Traynor, CEng and a Fellow of our Institution, then gave a presentation about the fire safety compliance. Like Pat and Patricia, he noted serious issues with the completion procedures as drafted by the MUD legislation. He noted that a Fire Safety Certificate only confirms that a building has been safely designed, and not that the actual construction and completion of the building in fact is in full compliance with the design. He noted that in a multi-unit facility, individual property owners may undertake internal work (eg removing an internal wall to make an apartment more "open plan") which sometimes can compromise the fire safety of the building as a whole, thus impacting the safety not just of themselves but of their neighbouring owners. He noted that while there are onerous obligations on property owners for fire safety, including criminal penalties, the current legislation does not clearly identify who in fact has this obligation in a multi-unit building with private owners and with a management operating company. As of today, there are new categories of fire safety certificates, and as of January next there is also a new Disability Access Certificate. In all these cases, the current draft MUD legislation, while aiming to protect the consumer, does not in fact clearly establish the requirements for compliance of certification.

The conference continues today. I sensed that while almost all present greatly welcomed the regulation of their profession, and the establishment of a common set of industry standards, there clearly remained some detailed legislative drafting to "see through the mud" and articulate details. There are also concerns about the legal responsibilities and liabilities of those who act as Directors of management operating companies, including in cases where owners' subscription fees are used to make good unfinished snags and poor workmanship, rather than ongoing maintenance of a shared building.

Quality of Life Exhibition, Design Thinking in Sweden and Ireland

2009-09-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

At the invitation of DIT and the Swedish Embassy this evening I attended the opening of the Quality of Life exhibition at DIT Bolton Street, together with a seminar on Design Thinking in Ireland and Sweden.

The guests of honour were HE the Swedish Ambassador Claes Ljundahl and Sean Haughey TD, Junior Minister at the Department of Education and Science. I was delighted that Minister Haughey stayed throughout the event for over 90 minutes, including the seminar presentations.

On arrival, I had to run the gauntlet of some of the DIT students preparing to stage a peaceful and dignified protest to the Minister over funding cuts and in particular for the DIT gymnasium and sports facilities!

John Lawlor, Head of the School of Manufacturing and Design Engineering acted as host for the evening. The Ambassador welcomed everyone, noting the the role of Sweden in international design and the current Swedish Presidency of the EU. Minister Haughey expressed his interest in the role of design and of SMEs in rebuilding the Irish economy. Mike Murphy, Director and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering also gave a short presentation on the role of innovation throughout history, and highlighting some of DIT's recent student engineering and design successes.

Robert Bau, of Swedish design consultancy Ergonomidesign, gave a presentation on the current state of the design profession in Sweden, highlighting design philosophies and in particular how design ethos trumps management consultancy.

Sean McNulty, of Dolmen Design and of Innovator, gave a presentation on the role the design industry could play in helping reshape the economy. He gave an overview of some of the key points of his written submission to the Taoiseach's Innovation Taskforce, of which coincidentally I am a member: I had in fact read Sean's submission before this evening, one out of 92 submissions we have received. He stressed the path from design as styling, to design as process improvement, to design as innovation.

In quite a lively discussion session after the formal presentations, the opportunity for new thinking about design, particularly for Ireland's 270,000 existing SMEs, was explored in the context of limited State resources.

Irish Academy of Engineering

2009-09-30T06:39:00.000-07:00

John Power and I had a co-ordination meeting with the Academy of Engineering this morning at Clyde Road. Michael Hayden, the Academy President, and Michael Higgins, the Academy Secretary attended.

The Academy has moved its premises to Clyde Road, from DIT Bolton Street.

The Academy currently has six committees, studying energy; climate change response; spatial strategy and planning; encouraging students to take up engineering; effectiveness of State investment in R&D; and bio-engineering issues. On average, the Academy produces 3 or 4 major reports each year, as a focal point for discussion and debate for issues pertaining to national economic policy.

The Academy is primarily funded at this time through members subscriptions. There are currently about 175 (elected) members, including members in Northern Ireland and the UK.

Our main focus of discussion was to ensure co-ordination of activities and objectives. John and I also suggested that the Academy might usefully present to Council, and our Liaison Committee, in the near future so as to promote their activities and work.

1969 Provisional Council 40th reunion lunch

2009-09-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

I hosted a lunch today at 22 Clyde Rd for the members of the 1969 Provisional Council - Finbar Callanan, Ron Cox, Thomas Desmond, Donal Downes, Jim Dooge, Martin Hally, Bryan Hardwick, Patrick Hennigan, Jimmy Martin, Kevin Madden, Colm McLoughlin, Risteard O'Colmain, Vincent O'Doherty, Hugh Pollock, Brian Tansey and James Walsh. Martin Lowery, PJ Rudden, and John Power attended with me to represent Engineers Ireland.

As Prof Dooge reminded us, the Civil Engineers Society in Ireland, (later renamed the Institution of Civil Engineers in Ireland) was established in 1835, with its chief aim to promote the "acquisition of knowledge". In 1928, the Cumann na Ninnealtoiri was founded, to improve and advance the status and remuneration of qualified members of the engineering profession. The two organisations then ran in parallel, and it was not unusual for some Engineers to in fact be members of both organisations.

In 1968, the majority of members in both organisations approved exploratory discussions to merge the two. There were apparently however some in each organisation who believed that this might not be prudent. Despite these reservations, an Oireachtas subcommittee consisting of 4 Deputies - Gerry Sweetman (ex Minister Finance), Vivien De Valera (academic Chemist), Des O'Malley (whose father Donough had been an Engineer and member of the Cumann), and John O'Connell - together with 3 Senators - Eoin Ryan (a lawyer and member of FF), Ben O'Quigley (a barrister and member of FG) and Bill Sheldon (TCD Senator) - worked together to produce a report in November 1968 which established the regulatory framework to merge the two organisations. A Provisional Council was then convened, with representatives of both organisations and whose surviving members were at the lunch today - to give effect to the report and in particular to draw up a combined set of By-Laws for the new organisation and the profession. Thus the Institution of Engineers of Ireland (Cumman na Ninnealtoiri) was formed by a private Act of the Oireachtas in 1969.

One important consequence of the new organisation was granting it responsibility for the title of Chartered Engineer. Another was to build a single organisation for all categories of Engineers in Ireland, rather than for example the situation in the UK and USA in which different engineering organisations operate for different categories of engineering professionals. A third was to extend membership to both technicians and student engineers.

At the time of the amalgamation, we learnt today that the ICE in Ireland was about 900 members, and the Cumann was about 2,200 members, with about 600 members in common in both organisations.

Prof Dooge proposed a toast after the lunch to remember all those who since 1835 have overseen the profession of Engineering in Ireland, to those who oversee it today, and to those who in future will serve Engineers in Ireland.

September Council meeting

2009-09-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

On Saturday morning last we had our September Council meeting.

Council is now using basecamp to help organise our meetings, including posting of documents and papers in advance of the meetings. I encourage you to consider using basecamp for the organisation of any meetings with which you many be involved for our organisation.

Brian Kavanagh, as head of the Finance Committee, reported that finances remain extremely tight, but we are currently still on course to break even for the full year. Our main source of income is our subscriptions from members.

The Executive recommended to Council, and Council agreed, our membership subscription rates for the forthcoming year. There are no changes to the rates, including no change to the 35euro rate for unemployed members, except for existing associate members who are now entitled to be full members of the organisation as a result of our rule changes over the summer. Subscription rates for this category of existing members will be gradually increased to bring them in line with the normal membership rates, since they now have the benefits of full membership.

Our registrar, Denis McGrath, gave a lucid presentation on the routes to Chartered Engineer, in light of the membership rule changes over the summer, including for those members whose primary academic degree was cognate and thus not an accredited engineering degree. Denis also has a webex presentation on our Engineers TV web site on the topic.

Jim Gannon is the chair of the Energy-Environment Division, and gave a presentation on the work of the Division on behalf of Engineers Ireland in collaboration with some our peer organisations worldwide, in the run up to the forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. It is likely that we will host a half day seminar on the topic.

As part of process of continuous improvement of Council, over a period of Council meeting we are inviting each Division and Society to present their current work and status to Council.

John Power, our DG, presented on the work to date of the Regulation taskforce, who are lobbying Government on changes in Irish legislation so as to regulate the profession to the highest world class norms. A number of media interviews have also taken place. A register of incidents which cause concern for health and safety is also being accumulated.

Engineers Ireland does not normally take positions on referenda nor elections. However the Executive unanimously recommended to Council, and Council unanimously agreed, to request all our of members to vote "yes" to the Lisbon Referendum next friday in the light of the benefits to the economy if the Referendum is passed.

John Power updated us on the activities to support unemployed members. Representatives from the Civil Division in particular suggested that he inform not just Council as he did, but also members of activities and lobbying undertaken by the Institution to try and protect jobs in the construction sector.

Damien Owens reported on the status of the management information systems project, which is now live and working well with the new systems. A number of specific business benefits were identified, including the numbers of online membership renewals and new applications, and online shop purchases.

Three members of Council volunteered to join the Officers in searching for a new incoming Junior Vice-President, whose term as President will be 2012-13.

A decision was adopted on an on-going ethics case. In addition, some revisions and updates to our Code of Ethics were discussed: the new Code will be published in a few weeks, subject to email approval by Council.

John Power reported on the campaign to advise stakeholders and the public at large about the changes to our membership rules, in particular for cognate degree holders.

Planning for the annual conference in 2010 is proceeding well, and it will have a theme of leadership.

Conor Hoey, of our Electrical Division urged that we formally engage with the National Standards Authority to ensure that every new standard, or revision, has input from Engineers Ireland, particularly when health and safety are potentially involved. John Power agreed to follow up.

Our next meeting is in November.

Presidential Address

2009-09-24T00:20:00.000-07:00

I gave my first address as President yesterday evening, at Clyde Road and via Webex. I'll be giving a small number of invited repeat performances throughout the remainder of the year.

My main theme was the technical challenges in certifying software design and development as safe - safe from harming humans or damaging property.

Regulation of Engineering in Ireland is a key issue for Engineers Ireland. Currently, the profession is weakly regulated as compared to certain other jurisdictions. Elsewhere, all engineering works which may impact the health and safety of the public, or may give rise to material harm to property, must by law be duly certified by a professional Engineer.

As a further example, regulatory authorities are introducing policies which require safe software. For example, the EU Medical Devices Directive in effect requires most medical devices to be certified as safe - not just the plugs, connectors and hardware but also any embedded software.

In my presentation, I consciously tried to address both non software specialists in the audience, as well as practitioners. I summarised the advances in software engineering and methodologies since the first software programmes, and gave a review of the current state of the art.

I observed that as software engineers, we are getting better than we were a decade ago at capturing the specification for a system; we are getting better at designing an implementation of that specification; we are getting better at predicting the performance response of that implementation; we are getting better at building that implementation by re-using other components; and we are getting better at describing our implementation so that other software engineers after us can maintain and extend what we have done.

But nevertheless we still lack a tractable physics of software that allows our profession to reason and predict how complex assemblies of varieties of software components will interact and behave under all the potential operating conditions which they may encounter during their lifetime. Other engineering disciplines do have an underlying physics. Without such a physics for software, it appears difficult to analytically evaluate alternative designs; without such a physics, it appears difficult to understand our systems, how they actually operate and sometimes why they fail; without such a physics, it appears difficult to confidently provide design guidelines; and until we have such a physics, software engineering may continue to be a creative undertaking based on heuristics and experience, rather than an applied science with a sound analytical base.

I illustrated my talk with a number of software disasters. In particular I highlighted Lt. Col. Petrov's bravery in 1983 in the USSR in recognising that a multi-ICBM missile salvo from the USA at the height of the Cold War (shortly after the shoot-down of KAL 007) was probably a false positive.

The webex recording of the talk is available on our web site here: but, be warned, it is almost 90 minutes long..

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

2009-09-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

Hope you had a great August!

We had a Finance Committee meeting, followed by Executive, at Clyde Road this afternoon.

Our finances remain tight, although we remain on target for a small profit for the year. Our main focus remains on our subscription revenues, both for existing members and new members. These are reasonably where we expect them to be at this time of year, are we are hoping for an uplift of new members joining in the light of our recent changes to our membership criteria for MIEI.

We had a first consideration of the annual budget for 2010, including member subscription rates for 2010. Executive's recommendations on subscription rates will be brought to our imminent Council meeting on 26th next.

We continue to seek initiatives to help our unemployed members, and some members have been very generous in offering their time and expertise in this regard.

Our new web site, membership and registrar system is operational since mid July. It has been well received, and has also greatly improved our business processes at Clyde Road. As President, and on behalf of the Executive, I am sincerely grateful to Damien Owens, member of the Executive, and to Roberta Keaney at Clyde Rd, who both oversaw and managed the project, together with everyone in Clyde Rd, and the contractors IQContent and Version-1.

The Executive, together with certain members, have expressed concern over the continuing deterioration in the interest level and quality of Mathematics and Science teaching in schools. PJ Rudden is established a working group to consider the response that we should make, including any supporting actions we can take at a local level to help using voluntary expertise, and report back to Executive by December next.

The Tanaiste made a number of comments about the costs of Engineers over the summer. More recently the National Competitiveness Council also commented about the relatively high cost of Engineers, although on a closer inspection of their draft report in fact only reported on Engineering Technicians. John Power reported on the work which had proactively been carried out directly with both the civil service and certain Ministers on correcting the situation.

The annual conference is well on track. In particular, on the occasion of our 175th anniversary, conference is being extended to a full second day. On the afternoon of the second day, sectors and divisions are being invited to bring resolutions to conference for debate. John Power is writing to all Chairs, with follow up at the imminent Liaison Committee meeting on 26th September.

John Power updated the Executive on recent correspondence and work with An Bord Pleanala, and meetings with both Departments of Education and Science, and Enterprise Trade and Employment. This also included work on regulation of the profession, which in turn had received recent national media interest in the light of the Broadmeadow rail viaduct collapse.

Our next Executive, and Finance, meeting will be in October.

Presidential Address

2009-07-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

I'm planning my presidential address, which I will give a number of times during my year as President, with the first one being in Clyde Road in September.

I'm planning to discuss why it is so challenging to engineer software safely, and hope the talk can be of interest to non-software engineers, and specialists, alike.

I met with Prof. Mike Hinchey this afternoon for a coffee, to get a briefing from him on some of the latest trends in safety critical software.

Mike has extensive experience at NASA, and is currently working in the University of Limerick Lero software engineering research entre. He is commercially developing technology to exploit US patents he holds in the area, as Silicon Republic recently reported.

Mike walked me through some the case work with the planned automated repair of the Hubble telescope, and how that has helped define the technology with which he is now working.

Leadership 4 Growth: Construction Industry

2009-07-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

I had a coffee today with Liam O'Donohue, of Enterprise Ireland, and responsible for the Leadership 4 Growth programme for the construction industry.

Liam was previously involved in the earlier variant of this programme for the software and bio-medical sectors, and I was one of the business mentors on this programme.

The construction industry programme is reaching the end of its year with a cohort 29 Irish CEOs from civil engineering, architecture and consultancy firms, and has been run in conjunction with Duke University in North Carolina.

Liam briefed me on the operation of the programme of the last twelve months, and some of the feedback from the participants, all of whom aspire to develop their international markets. The tension between short term sheer survival in the industry, and more medium term trends towards energy management in the industry, creates both interesting opportunities and challenges.

I understand that Enterprise Ireland intend to run a second tranche of the programme, starting next spring, with a further set of about 30 Irish CEOs.

Carlow IT & WISE; CPD, and Waste Management

2009-07-28T15:02:00.001-07:00

Had an informal lunch today at the science gallery with PJ Rudden of the RPS Group, and who will be our President in 2011-2012. PJ, as a current Vice President, has now taken over the chairmanship of our Continuing Professional Development (CPD) committee at Clyde Rd from me, and so I was briefing him on my experiences and thoughts about the CPD work and the committee over the last year.

In addition, PJ took the opportunity to brief me on some interesting developments in the Waste Management area and I look forward to Engineers Ireland making a further contributions to national policy in this area.

I then drove to Carlow, to officially open and launch the "Wales Ireland Sustainable Enterprise" (WISE) project, a co-operation between Carlow Institute of Technology and the Welsh division of the UK Engineering Construction Industry Training Board. This is a 3 year project during which 20 Irish SME engineering companies (in the south east) and 20 Welsh SME engineering companies (in Pembrokeshire) will be selected, and then each receive a free in depth business analysis followed by 10 days free mentoring and coaching as appropriate to their businesses - for example on innovation, marketing, financial management, human resources, design issues, diversification, energy efficiency etc. The project will also look for opportunities and synergies for the combined portfolio of companies to partner together on a bilateral basis. The project is sponsored by the EU Interreg programme.

As a footnote, Carlow Institute of Technology is the first and currently only third level education institution in the country to be an accredited organisation of our CPD programme.

2010 Conference, and debate series

2009-07-27T07:21:00.000-07:00

I met with John Power (DG) and Fionnuala Kilbane (marketing & comms. director) this morning at Clyde Rd., to review the plans to date for next years conference, and a new debate series.

Our conference will be hosted by the Cork Region on 22nd April and 23rd April next, and will celebrate out 175th anniversary. In discussions with the Cork Region, and in particular with its Chair Kevin Murray, we are planning to extend the conference to a full two days, including in particular a new session on the afternoon of the friday. This new plenary session will consider a number of specific resolutions, which will be proposed by the Regions, Divisions and Societies this autumn. Six of these will then be debated at Conference in the new afternoon session, with a proposing delegation (from a Region, Society or Division as appropriate).

There also a number of social activities around the conference being planned by the Cork Region.

In discussions this morning, we also examined the conference fees for 2010, and hope to be soon able to announce a modest reduction in conference fees, despite the longer conference (of two full days, rather than a day and a half).

In addition to the Conference, we are also planning a series of evening debates throughout the autumn, winter and spring, culminating in the Conference itself. Topics for debate could include national water policy; national energy strategy; the future of the construction industry; innovation; job creation, and regulation of the profession. The exact topics will be chosen in consultation with the Regions, Divisions and Societies in early autumn.

I believe that the new plenary session at Conference, and the debate series, should both provide an excellent way to further engage the Regions, Divisions and Societies; as well as provide further visibility of Engineers Ireland with the public at large.

Chinese Academy of Engineering

2009-07-20T05:40:00.000-07:00

We had a visit from the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) this morning at Clyde Road, led by their Vice President, Prof. Pan Yunhe who in turn was a software academic and prior head of Zhejiang University. From our side, we had Jack Golden, representing the Irish Academy of Engineering and its Vice-President; John Power, Director General; Damien Owens, from the ICT Division, and myself.

The CAE was formed in 1994 in Beijing as an independent, not-for-profit organisation to represent Engineering perspectives to the Chinese Government. It is limited to 1,000 elected & nominated members: it currently has 711 domestic members, and 32 foreign honorary members (no Irish at this time). It has a secretariat of 70. Its general assembly meets every 2 years. It has a Governing Board, 9 Divisions and 7 Committees. The Divisions and Committees are somewhat similar to our own in focus, but unlike us it does have a Division on Agriculture (ie Engineering in Agriculture), and on Medical Systems.

It conducts strategic studies which influence national Chinese technology policy and to vet and review major engineering projects. Recent major national studies include water infrastructure; renewable energy; population trends and the consequences for urbanisation; environmental protection; and disaster management (in the light of the Wuchen earthquake and separately the Guangdong snows, both in 2008).

It has 20 international co-operation agreements with Engineering Academies worldwide. Mr Cheng, deputy DG of international co-operation, noted a particularly longstanding and mutually fruitful co-operation with the Swedish Academy which has included joint study groups on renewable energy, and environmental protection. There have been student exchanges, and bilateral secondment of student engineers into industry positions for work experience. In oher cases - the UK and USA - there have been Young Engineer seminars on a bilateral basis.

We expressed a strong desire to put a formal agreement in place between Ireland and China which could support such activities, but noted that in the current national fiscal environment it may be very difficult to finding Government funding pro rata equivalent to the support of the Chinese government to the CAE. Jack Golden, as VP of the IAE, will be leading a delegation to Beijing next year.

IT Project Steering Meeting

2009-07-10T06:07:00.001-07:00

Had lunch time meeting for the Steering Group, with representatives from our vendors and consultants Version 1 and IQ Content.

We're still looking good for the launch of the new website and new internal backend systems, for 20th July next. We'll make a final go/no-go decision in the middle of next week.

Migration of our old data and records into the new systems is a very substantial task, but we believe that it is progressing well enough that the 20th July launch should still be viable.

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

2009-07-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

We had a scheduled meeting of the Finance Committee, and then the Executive Committee this afternoon.

As I noted at our previous Finance meeting, our finances in general remain tight for the remainder of the year. I am pleased to see the entire Clyde Road team focussed on the issue, and although much of our resourcing is currently being invested in completing the internal IT systems project, including in particular data cleansing of our records, nevertheless the team are very committed to bringing in the financial year on a break even or even better.

Our Executive Committee had a long agenda but we managed to get through it reasonably efficiently. In addition to our usual reports, we spent some time:

summarising the general intentions for next year's annual conference;
reviewing the process we used to select a supplier for the Engineers Ireland journal for the next 3 year contract, and empowering the DG to negotiate an appropriate contract, especially in the light of pressures on advertising revenues;
adopting the general revisions to the text defining our Membership criteria in the light of the opening of membership to level 7 graduates, and to cognate degrees, and the implications of the 2013 changes to the requirements for C.Eng;
a progress report on our support for unemployed engineers, and an imminent meeting of our UK region in that regard;
an update on the improvements to our internal management systems, which imminently go live;
and a note from Jim Robinson, of our Cork region, on a recent meeting of the RIA reviewing the interest and education levels of 3rd level science students, which we will bring to the attention of our Membership Qualification Board and Accreditation Board.

Engineering in Context Symposium

2009-07-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

I spoke this afternoon at this symposium, on the topic of "Engineering Engineers". I reproduce my text below.

I set the speech in the context of the "Shift Happens" videos, and you'll see some text in italics from those slidesets. Also, the content of some of the talk has come from some of my earlier presentations.

There were many non professional engineers in the audience, and amongst the other speakers. So, my contents were (deliberately :-) controversial and stimulated debate....

-----
"The ancient Masters didn't try to educate the people, but patiently taught them to not-know. When they think they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don't know, people can then find their way"--- from Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" - the Book of the Way.

Teaching is about not-knowing. Educating is about fostering self-awareness. Learning is about finding.

Being an educator is the most privileged profession. In knowing herself, an educator imprints on the next generation a way to understand themselves and thus to find their way.

Today, the most well known, most recognised internationally, most loved engineer in the public eye must surely be....Homer Simpson. It is clear that in many western societies, including Ireland, that the engineering professional has lost control of the title "engineer". Instead, in my view, we should focus on the title "professional engineer".

There are 31 billion searches every month on Google: to whom where these questions asked before Google ?

I went to (high) school here in Dublin, finishing in 1974. I was so fortunate to have many fine teachers. And I believe in every case, all those years ago, I viewed each of these teachers as a prime source of information and knowledge. They knew, and I didn't.

Today, I think many of us accept that the situation has irrevocably changed. Teachers are of course still fine people, but many students no longer accept their teachers as the prime source of information and knowledge. The internet, and in particular Google, is now the primary way to find out and learn. Wikipedia - an online encyclopedia - is a chief reference and authority. Twitter - an online headline broadcast service - is a rapid access to what's happening. Facebook and Bebo - online social communities - are a quick way to find and share what's cool. Youtube - an online video clip service - is a quick way to humour. iTunes - an online music and "podcasting" service - is a quick way to music and interesting interviews.

Ten years ago, I used to worry about the 'digital divide' -- that the wealthy had access to the internet, and those of limited means did not. I remember the Ennis Information Age project here in Ireland in which we asked ourselves what would happen if an entire community was trained on how to use a PC and had access to the internet. Over the last decade I believe that, in Ireland at least, there is considerably greater uptake and affordable access to the internet. There are of course still digitally impoverished communities in Ireland, but the situation is improving. The convergence of mobile phone technology with broadband internet access, is a further catalyst.

Matthew Wisnioski noted in his speed that technology and society move at different rates, and mentioned Simon Ramo's work. Now I worry, maybe unnecessarily, about the separate rate of adoption of technology within and across the society, for example the digital divide of the generations. Most of us know how to book an airline seat online. Most of us know how to send an email, or access our bank account. But how many of us know how to upload a video to Youtube, or to make a podcast, or how to contribute to the wisdom of the crowd ? Meanwhile, for the younger generation there is no divide between virtual reality and the real world: for them this would be an unnecessary and unnatural distinction, and for them the internet is an intrinsic part of the real world as much as the telephone, the radio or even the weather.

Therefore today, what role should a teacher and educator now play ? It's now clear to many students that their teachers don't know as much about their chosen subject as Google or Wolfram-Alpha or Bing do. Louis Bucciarelli in his talk this morning noted that "we teach students the correct equations to plug into" - but I content that now perhaps Wolfram-Alpha does this for them. It's also clear to many students that traditional classroom teaching isn't particularly interesting or stimulating. Instead, on the internet, you can quickly browse from headline to headline, quickly learn, quickly find out what's happening, quickly participate and quickly share with your friends and community. It's not that today's students have attention deficit, and are incapable of absorption or focus: on the contrary, they immerse themselves deeply - for hours sometimes - in what they find interesting, such as specific games and challenges. The difference today is that students have found a way - the internet - to so much more easily quickly find out what is really interesting for them, and to rapidly filter out and discard what they find mundane.

The amount of unique information created this year (about 4 x 10^19 bytes) exceeds the total amount of information created over the last 5,000 years - including last year.

Our young people should be able to reason, to deduce and derive, to correlate and spot patterns, to explore and to be inquisitive, and to be articulate and confident. In my humble view, these are more life centric skills than learning facts and perspectives by rote: knowing something off by heart, but not understanding why, why not, and so what. Skills taught in schools should be for life. There are many things which can be learnt during adulthood, but some skills which are difficult to learn without a solid foundation during the teens and 20s.

In my view, and I admit as an elderly grey traditionalist, mathematics is a critical catalyst to careful reasoning and deduction. Mathematics is too vast to be learnt by rote and instead requires insightful thinking and intellectual clarity. Taught well, it enables core intellectual skills for life. It also makes learning easier, not just for mathematics, but many other subjects, since understanding comes from reasoning, rather than learning by rote.

The decline in the Irish attainment of mathematics and core sciences has been gradual. It has perhaps gone unnoticed by many, but major employers across a range of business sectors of strategic importance to Ireland are seriously concerned to see substantial decreases in the number of our students taking technology courses, and in particular the fall off in those taking mathematics. If we all aspire to build a future for our young people as outlined above, then competence in mathematics is a cornerstone. Competence in mathematics underpins not just engineering and the physical sciences, but also sectors such as alternative energy and green systems, financial services, medical research, and cross disciplinary areas such as bio-engineering. For so many areas of our potential national prosperity and quality of society, competence in mathematics is critical.

With further government budget cuts imminent, there is a very serious risk that teaching in mathematics and the core sciences will dramatically suffer further. This is especially so at secondary school (high school, in Ireland) level, since these subjects are perceived as resource intensive and difficult to teach. The Principals of eleven secondary schools of one Irish county have recently jointly written an open letter to all the parents of all their students stating that in view of Government cutbacks, they may no longer be in a position to teach honours mathematics and sciences at all in their schools. Incredibly, almost 20% of the secondary schools in Ireland no longer offer honours mathematics to their students. In 2007, only 14% of Irish university applicants to honours degrees had achieved honours mathematics capability in school.

Teachers should be encouraged to foster reasoning, deduction, derivation, correlation, exploration and curiosity, intellectual clarity and insight, fluency and confidence. Mathematics and the core sciences are clear catalysts. Teachers who achieve consistent success in their students in these subjects should not only be acclaimed but also receive fiscal reward - if this cannot be done through Government pay, it may be possible to do via industry sponsored competitions. Teachers whose own core skills are weak should be offered re-skilling and professional development. Considerably more use should be made of the web - including podcasts and vidcasts to complement the music on students' personal players - to cultivate dynamic, current, interesting course material: social free educational networking can compensate to some extent weaknesses in any specific teacher in a particular school.

Our country needs to get back to basics: core skills taught well, rather than nebulous "up skills". Mathematics and the core sciences are one critical foundation.

The former US Secretary of Education Richard Riley has claimed that the top ten in-demand job categories next year in 2010 didn't exist in 2004. We're preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist using technologies that haven't been invented in order to solve problems that we don't even know are problems yet.

In my own career with computers and software, my industry not only changes its technologies, but also rapidly changes its perspective as new applications appear. A professional engineer today, regardless of his or her background, must have a multi-disciplinary philosophy. That has two complementary aspects: the intra-engineering and external. Multi-discipline, in the intra-engineering sense, implies an understanding and training across multiple engineering specializations, understanding the application of mathematical and scientific results to civil, mechanical, electrical, electronic, software, manufacturing engineering, and so on. By the external multi-disciplinary aspect, I mean the ability to discuss articulately with line of business managers, product marketing, corporate marketing, corporate lawyers, human resource professionals, and of course financial analysts.

But today, forgive me, in this country, I wonder have our colleagues in our engineering academies – both universities and institutes of technology – lost the plot ? One of their concerns I guess – and I speak as a past university lecturer – is the usually desperate quest to achieve recognition by their peer academics in other departments across the rest of the organisation. As an engineering department struggles to achieve recognition, and of course financial resources, amongst perhaps stronger groups in the pure sciences, the medics, the department of law, the business studies department, all of the various departments of humanities and so on, there is a natural tendency to play the game: “publish or perish”. And in publishing, and researching, more and more esoteric niched topics are addressed, in which one may have a reasonable chance of obtaining international recognition as an accomplished researcher but in what may be a very narrow field indeed.

However a consequence of this may be a tendency to over-specialise undergraduate courses. In a national market in Ireland, where there are few enough Leaving Certificate students obtaining honours standards in mathematics – which of course is the usual standard for entrance into courses leading to professional engineering accreditation – does it really make sense to have proliferation of undergraduate courses ? Let me give you some idea, from the list of undergraduate courses nationwide which are accredited by Engineers Ireland as giving a foundation to become a Member of our organization: Chemical and Process Engineering; Electronic Engineering; Electrical Engineering; Microelectronic Engineering; Mechanical Engineering; Materials Engineering; Process Engineering; Process and Chemical Engineering; Structural Engineering; Civil Engineering; Environmental Engineering; Civil, Structural and Environment Engineering; Manufacturing Engineering; Production Engineering; Computer-Aided and Manufacturing Engineering; Industrial Engineering and Information Systems; Aeronautical Engineering; Digital Media Engineering; Information and Communication Engineering; Manufacturing Engineering with Business Studies; Mechatronic Engineering; Medical Mechanical Engineering; Biosystems Engineering; Computer Engineering; Building Services Engineering; Agricultural and Food Engineering. I know that all the academics involved in offering this wonderful diversity are sincere in their disciplines, but isn’t it time we stood back and asked ourselves is there a better way to help students select Engineering as a profession ? And ensure that they have a very solid, multi-disciplinary approach to Engineering as a profession ? And leave at least some of the specialization, when and as necessary, to their continued professional development during their career ?

Before 1990, there was no such thing as surfing the web. Before 2000, a phone was something attached to a cable in your house. The first commercial text message was sent in December 1992: now the total number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet. It took radio 38 years to get to a market audience of 50 million; TV 13 years; internet 4 years; iPod 3 years; Facebook 2 years.

Yesterday at this symposium, Bill Grimson stated that "life does not change that rapidly" - my contention is in fact the opposite. Today, email is dying as a tool for many of the younger generation: is is prone to spam, is poor for collaboration and sharing of documents and works, and is not a good tool for building conversations and discourse. Twitter and Facebook provide a better basis, along with shared documents such as Google documents, Flickr and Slideshare.

In the face of such rapid technology change, how should we improve the preparation of young engineers to manage their careers ?

If one of my family ever were to pursue a career in surgery, I and they would expect to learn from practicing surgeons. If I were ever to take lessons to become an aircraft pilot, I would like lessons from a qualified professional pilot. In my business career, whenever requiring professional legal or financial advice, I have sought the necessary qualified professional individuals.

In each of these professions, mentoring by an established and accredited professional is critical. Young surgeons are coached by established consultants. Young pilots are watched over by experienced captains who monitor the flight. Senior lawyers instruct their juniors.

In each of these professions, regular training throughout a career is critical. Surgeons are trained in new operations. Pilots are regularly re-certified on the aircraft they wish to fly. Lawyers are required to track the evolution of laws and case histories.

And so, surely we would expect our young aspiring engineers to be taught by professionals. Professional Engineers. And surely we would expect, no require, that our young engineers would be mentored and coached by established professional engineers. And surely we would expect, no require, that professional engineers remain current with changes in engineering practice.

Professional engineers engage with many people outside of their profession: HR professionals, senior executives, financiers, public relations, business development, regulators, the media, policy makers and politicians. To my knowledge, few academics do so.

In preparing today’s talk, I browsed the web sites of the Irish universities and institutes offering those courses I alluded to above, and examined the credentials of the academics of the various engineering departments concerned – at least, as published on their web sites. It was very very interesting, and I encourage you to try the exercise yourself.

For example: one department: six full time academic staff, only one of them – the head of Department – listed C.Eng. as amongst his accomplishments. Another: four academics, no C.Eng listed. Another: twenty academics, one Fellow, four C.Engs. And so on.

Now there are many PhDs. And a few Professors. But why so few Chartered Engineers (or Fellows) ? I suspect that perhaps the various web pages aren’t always accurate, and C.Eng qualifications aren’t always listed. However, that in turn is indicative: why would an Engineering academic not be much more proud of the fact that he or she was a Chartered Engineer, or Fellow, and advertise that fact, ahead of being a Dr. or Professor ??...

In the medical profession, a simple Mr, Ms or Mrs as a title commands great respect: the individual in question is likely to be a highly qualified surgeon or consultant, rather than a simple General Practitioner Doctor, or an esoteric academic Professor. A highly qualified practitioner gains respect. Why are our own Engineering academics not as proud of practical professional experiences ? Why is it acceptable to have a majority of non Chartered Engineer teaching professional engineering ? Should it be acceptable ? Why do engineering departments not insist on a C.Eng. recruitment policy for most of their staff, and why do they not demand that the majority of their younger staff achieve C.Eng. status as rapidly as possible, if necessary ahead of achieving professorial status ? Why do our engineering students not question – no, demand – that the majority of their teaching comes from professional engineers ?

Why are our junior engineers, at the start of their professional careers, not required to have a professional engineer as a mentor and coach - or rather, why is it that our professional engineers are not required by nature of their status and title, to coach and mentor at least one junior ? Anders Buchs this morning observed the anxiety that a student may have on "who is capable of judging my work?". Thus in fact, a mentor may provide more value and be more important than any academic with whom a young engineer encounters at university. Professional engineers routinely engage with people outside the profession of engineering: many academics do not need to do so. Professional engineers frequently track changes in practice in technology and regulation in their areas f expertise: many academics do not need to do so.

Perhaps the tenure system which operates in most western universities is detrimental to the teaching of engineering. If the majority of engineering academics had to continue to practice in order to maintain their status as professional engineers, perhaps the teaching of engineering would improve. Rotation between academia and practice, and continued professional development of professional engineering academics both may be enhancements to the teaching of engineering.

"The ancient Masters didn't try to educate the people, but patiently taught them to not-know. When they think they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don't know, people can then find their way"--- from Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" - the Book of the Way.

2010 Annual Conference, DIT Symposium, and Veolia Transport

2009-07-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

Met over a working lunch today to debrief with John Jordan and Sean Keohane, both of the Midlands Region, on our recent annual conference in Tullamore - what worked, what didn't work, if we could do it again what would we do better, etc.

Also with us were Kevin Murray and Jim Robertson, from the Cork region and next year's hosts, together with John Power and Fionnuala Kilbane. We put a lot of ideas on to the table on how next year's conference can be even better - how should we engage the sectors, divisions and societies in the conference ? How should we engage more proactively with the national media ? Did our sponsors get sufficient value and how can we increase this ? Does the format of the conference work, could it be improved ? How about the duration ? How can we encourage greater participation ? What can we do for student members, and currently un-employed members ?

We're distilling many ideas at the moment, and will solidify these in the coming weeks - feel free to post a comment here if you've any specific suggestions.

I then spent the afternoon sitting in on the Engineering in Context conference, at Clyde Road, and hosted by DIT. I am speaking at the conference tomorrow afternoon. The conference is promoting a book of the same name, which arose from a European-American research project launched in Colorado in April 2008, and exploring the various contexts (societal, environmental, fiscal, regulatory...) in which engineering takes place.

It was interesting and stimulating to hear a presentation from a metaphysicist, Prof. Peter Simons, Chair of Moral Philosophy at TCD; followed by a presentation on the influence of science fiction on engineering by Prof. Joe Pitt from Virginia Tech! More to follow tomorrow, and good for the intellect!

Finished up this evening accepting, on behalf of Engineers Ireland, a kind invitation from Liam Connellan, ex-President and Chairman of Veolia Transport in Ireland, to a reception and dinner hosted at TCD for 200 of the top management from Veolia Transport worldwide, including their global CEO Cyrille du Peloux. A pleasant evening, a chance to revisit investor relations policies from my days at IONA, and to discuss the Ryanair business model over dinner!

Spirit of Ireland seminar

2009-06-23T06:37:00.000-07:00

We hosted a seminar by the Spirit of Ireland team this morming at Clyde Road. We had about 180 people, split over two conference rooms. We also had about 80 members following us live on our Webex-cast: playback will be available for our members at the usual Webex site. We also experimented with tweeting it live at #sptirl and displaying the tweet stream live to the audience.

Engineers Ireland neither supports nor condemns the specifics of the Spirit of Ireland proposal. Our objective this morning was to facilitate an open and honest debate amongst the professional engineering community in Ireland, and we would hope to continue and follow up this in due course.

There were numerous presenters on behalf of the Spirit of Ireland team, including in particular its two primary promoters, Graham O'Donnell and Igor Schvets. We also had presentations from the IWEA and Eirgrid on their assessments of some technical aspects of the proposal.

What I took away from the presentations are the following aspects of the proposal, but it is of course wiser to examine the Spirit of Ireland website and/or watch the presentations on webex:

⁃ The team intend to work with as many professionals as possible to derive a publicly reviewable proposal by the end of September next, which would be of sufficient depth and scope to attract potential international investors.

⁃ If the project does proceed, it would be governed by a PLC like structure, although not a publicly quoted company. It could have an investor mix of private individuals and members of the public; the State, on behalf of the citizens of Ireland; institutional investors; the European Investment Bank; and international sovereign funds. The Spirit of Ireland team do not expect to have any involvement in the governance structure, and view their work completed once the plan is accepted and being undertaken.

⁃ The project would not intend to replace or displace existing energy generation initiatives, in particular the current and planned development of wind farms across the country. Rather it is intended to be complementary.

⁃ The project proposes that new wind farms be built, with full support and endorsement and in fact leadership from local community groups. The balance sheet of the new PLC would be used to loan funds to, and/or co-invest in, communities to build these wind farms.

⁃ Like Denmark, there should be a once off national planning process, leading to a national energy atlas of wind farm sites. Once the atlas is in place, permits should be readily accessible (there be no further planning process required) to those sites in the atlas.

⁃ These new wind farms are themselves connected to a new, separate, medium scale grid. This grid would be completely separate from the current national grid. Once built, it would be operated by Eirgrid alongside the national grid.

⁃ The new grid would feed at least 2, and possibly more, large sea water reservoirs somewhere on the West coast. These would be pumped storage schemes, somewhat like Turlough Hill, but differing in important aspects: sea-water; above ground generating plant; linear rock dams (not circular structure), about 1km long each. The stored energy in each reservoir (I believe, and subject to correction) would be about 300GW hours.

⁃ The reversible hydro-electric turbines in the pumped storage schemes would then link to the current national grid (run by Eirgrid) by high voltage connections.

⁃ Some 50 alternative sites for the pumped storage schemes have been identified, and modelled in detail on a 10m by 10m by 10m grid for the west of Ireland. Several of these sites are eminently suitable.

⁃ The reservoirs may need in part, or total, sealing against sea water seepage: the costs of this are included.

⁃ Sea water based hydro electric schemes exist elsewhere. There is a pumped sea water based hydro scheme in Japan.

⁃ Depending on national strategy and national objectives, the proposal could be designed to export energy as needed (by the pumped storage scheme, not directly by the wind farms) to other jurisdictions via suitable interconnectors. It depends on what capacity of pumped storage we decide as a nation to build for our own strategic energy security, and whether or not also for the export market.

⁃ Some 10,000s of jobs would be created. Rural communities would see investment, and community profits from wind farms. Land owners over whose property the new grid was built would receive income for energy transmission. Ireland could develop its own manufacturing capability for aspects of the plant required, such as the wind turbines.

⁃ Spirit of Ireland are appealing to the professional engineering community to engage, and test and correct the proposal. Ultimately a national, apolitical, politically stable and socially endorsed effort is needed, with transparency and honesty.

Innovation Awards 2009

2009-06-22T14:31:00.001-07:00

This evening was the national finals of the Innovation Awards 2009, in association with the Irish Independent. Siemens have sponsored some of the awards for some time, and this year the Dublin Airport Authority sponsored a new category on innovative sustainability. I'm also very grateful for the judges who gave freely of their time to make very difficult choices: Malcolm Edgar, Srdjan Krco, Jack MacGowan, Gerald Nagle, Eoghan Nolan, Michael O'Connor, Damien Owens, John Power, Paul Rellis, Brendan Tuohy, Lorcan Tyrrell, and John Walshe.

In his recent budget speech, the Minister of Finance stated that ‘our economy must return to being driven by sustainable export-led growth, rather than domestic demand’. The basis for a sustainable export-led growth is a new Smart Economy, relying on innovative people applying intelligence and insight, rather than brawn, to drive growth.

Science is the discovery of what already exists. Entrepreneurship organise business. Invention yields new ideas which did not previously exist.

Innovation is however how new ideas are put into practice.

Science Foundation Ireland’s mission is to develop a world class research capability. The discovery of new things, by research, may attract foreign investment, and it may encourage the invention of new products based on insights from the natural world. We celebrate our most successful scientists via SFI, the British Telecom Young Scientists Exhibition, and indeed via others.

We also celebrate our entrepreneurs via the annual competition sponsored by Ernst and Young and Ulster Bank. Entrepreneurs manage a business, sometimes taking considerable risk. It is wonderful to see the growth of family businesses, and the implementation within Ireland of imported business models and franchises, but it is unclear whether such ventures necessarily lead to a sustainable prosperity and repair of our faltering national competitiveness.

Joseph Schumpeter, in his Theory of Economic Development, noted that innovation brings new goods, new methods of production, new markets, new sources of raw materials, and new organisational structures into practice. If we innovate and bring new products, new processes, new markets, new sources, and new business structures into practice, then we will not only change Ireland but also change the world.

In my view, innovation is the true foundation for a sustainable export-led economy. Engineers Ireland chooses to celebrate our innovators, and our innovative companies.

The 2009 winner of the Innovative Company of the Year was OpenHydro, for its successful innovation of open turbine tidal power generators. Denis O'Connor is the 2009 Innovative Engineer of the Year, providing real time monitoring of water quality for a number of local authorities. Mesut Dogan won the 2009 Sustainability award for his Intelligent Air-City Dublin initiative for Dublin airport.

In the student awards, Nicola Greene won the Sustainability category, for her Green Roofs coupled with Rainwater Harvest for Dublin Airport. Colm O'Brien won the Level 7 award for his Automated Personalised Home/Work Environment using RFID tags. John Mulvihill won the Level 8 award for his Reduction of Time Required for Haemodialysis by Optimising the Mass Transport in an Idealised Dialysis Cartridge.

Finally, Noel Joyce was highly commended for his student project on novel braking system for wheelchairs.

Our country is asking much of our innovators. It was an honour to be able to recognise some of them this evening.

Busy day at Clyde Rd

2009-06-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

Busy day today, and was in Clyde Road from 10am-8pm.

National innovation awards for 2009, with award ceremony this evening - see next posting. Also had media interviews from the Irish Independent, Silicon Republic and the Irish Times on the awards.

We submitted some comments on the transposition of EU Directive 2006/24/EC on Data Retention, jointly to the Ministers of Justice, Equality and Law Reform; Enterprise, Trade and Employment; and Communications, Marine and Natural Resources. We have a number of concerns and observations, and are offering our help to assist in deriving a pragmatic solution to the revised Data Retention legislation.

We are also in discussions on behalf of the Civil Division on the CIC proposals, in which we participated, to revitalise the construction industry, and we hope to address some reputed concerns from the Department of Finance on aspects of fiscal operation of the proposals.

I followed up some earlier discussions with the BT Young Scientists organisers today with our STEPS team, seeking to work together on schools outreach in the forthcoming year.

We are in early discussions with the Cork hosts of next year's annual conference, about the format of the event, and have some interesting suggestions which would lead to even greater engagement by our sectors and divisions.

Tomorrow morning: Spirit of Ireland event. Follow us live on webex or #sptirl

Xperience Engineering

2009-06-18T12:30:00.001-07:00

We hosted the Xperience Engineering today at the Helix in DCU. There were 40 junior schools who reached the finals, out of 150 schools who entered nationwide.

It was a wonderful, brilliant, noisy, enthusiastic, inspiring day. The heroes of the event were of course the teachers who provide so much leadership and inspiration to our young people. And they were ably supported by parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, older brothers and sisters, and guardians. The success of the event also depends so much on volunteers and companies across the Engineering profession, who freely give their time and access for school visits to their operations, to excite and enthuse our next generation of engineers - and leaders. I also want to sincerely thank the wonderful STEPS team in Clyde Road - what an honour to work with them.

We are dependent on financial support from our commercial partners - e.g. the ESB donated some laptops as prizes, and Hasbro have been wonderful in their support - and government agencies - in particular Discover Science and Engineering, Fas, and the Department of Education and Science.

For both the Junior (3rd/4th class) and Senior (5th/6th class) Engineering Class of the Year, we had incredibly beautiful once-off, unique, statuettes made by Ciaran Byrne of the Air Corps.

I have many duties and responsibilities as the Honorary President until next spring. Today was a wonderful, happy, exciting inspirational celebration of the creativity and innovation of our young people, all of whom shouted and shouted and shouted again the answer of what do you want to be: "engineer!".

Meetings, Xperience Engineering

2009-06-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

Met yesterday with one of our new Council members, to brief her on the workings of Council.

Met today with Martin Lowery, who takes over from me this time next year, to discuss the work of the Liaison Subcommittee of Council, working with the Sectors and Divisions. We also discussed next year's annual conference and how to improve mentoring and coaching of engineers towards Chartered status.

Also had a brief chat with John Power about the logistics for next Tuesday's Spirit of Ireland event: we are expecting approximately 160 attendees, with more registering each day..

I'll be at the Xperience Engineering Primary Schools National Final tomorrow, at DCU Helix.

Spirit of Ireland

2009-06-15T01:49:00.000-07:00

A reminder that we are hosting the Spirit of Ireland team to present their proposals at 22 Clyde Road on tuesday 23rd June next. If you are not previously aware of this proposal, it is a project to make Ireland energy independent, or even a net exporter of energy, by using large sea water reservoirs on the west coast of Ireland to generate hydro electric power, in turn pumped by wind turbines to replenish the reservoirs.

This event is only for Members of Engineers Ireland, and will be an opportunity to join the debate on the engineering involved. The event will be webex'd as usual, and hopefully also live tweeted under #spirit.

If, as a Member, you have not already registered for this event and would like to do so, please contact Barry Stokes in Clyde Rd at bstokes@engineersireland.ie.

Council meeting 13th June

2009-06-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

We had our first national council meeting of 2009-10 session this morning.

While there were a fairly large number of topics discussed, a few in particular may be worth especially highlighting.

Our finances are under pressure, particularly due to cut backs in government subvention for our continued professional development (CPD) and schools outreach (STEPs) programmes, as well as the obvious economic challenges to our corporate customers and partners. Our finance subcommittee has, and continues to, monitor our situation in detail. We are reasonably optimistic of at least breaking even, from the operational perspective, by the year end.

We took the opportunity to co-opt 3 additional members to Council: Dave Kelleher, Christian Scholz and Justin Tuohy. We also confirmed the following members to the Executive this year: Domhnall Blair, John Carley, Gerry Cawley, Orla Lonergan, Dan O’Brien, Damien Owens, Jim Robinson, Con Sheahan and Tadhg Walshe. I look forward to working with the Executive, and the full Council, throughout the next 12 months.

We reviewed our activities in support of our unemployed members, and are seeking further suggestions and ideas for additional initiatives. We are particularly concerned about challenges in the Civil Engineering field.

Our investment in improving our business processes, IT support, and new web technology is progressing well, albeit it emerged to be a larger project than we had initially envisaged.

A recommendation from the Director General will be going to the first meeting of our new Executive to implement and publicise changes in our membership rules for MIEI, which has the potential to increase our membership. If the Executive so approve, then these changes and publicity could be immediately put in place.

Our next annual conference is confirmed in Cork, in late April next year.

I was very pleased with the collegiate atmosphere and involvement of our Council members, and trust we can continue to even further improve the service we provide to all our members

Jean Venables ICE Presidential Address

2009-06-12T15:21:00.000-07:00

We hosted Jean Venables, the current President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, this evening in Clyde Rd where she gave her presidential address.

I have previously met Jean at the ICE Northern Ireland annual dinner dance earlier this year in Belfast.

Jean has a distinguished career in water and flood management, and served as the Chairperson for the Thames Region Flood Defence Committee, leading to the construction of the Thames barrier. She was recognised with an OBE in 2004. She also lectures to university engineering students, as well as having her own consultancy with her husband Roger.

Her talk tonight focussed on the threat to flood levels due to global warming, and also the carbon dioxide and energy required to maintain fresh water supplies. She argues strongly for action needed today, and fresh thinking - and she was delighted to visit the wetlands water purification project at Glaslough, Castle Leslie during her visit here. She feels that Engineers must make their voices more articulately heard with the general public, and the policy makers and Engineers have to have more active engagement.

The full text of the Presidential address is here.

BT Young Scientists et al

2009-06-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

Met with two of the BT team this morning in Clyde Road to discuss Engineers Ireland involvement in the next Young Scientists exhibition. Personally am very supportive on their ideas to add a careers theme to the exhibition, to further encourage participants to consider engineering and science as career paths.

We also examined the role of volunteering by our retired members, and others including those currently unemployed. I believe we can take further initiatives here over the next few months.

Welcome

2009-06-11T14:57:00.001-07:00

Welcome to my blog as the 2009-2010 President of Engineers Ireland.

The main purpose of this blog is to capture my activities for Engineers Ireland, what I am doing on a day to day basis. I intend that the primary audience for this blog are the members of Engineers Ireland, and others interested in the Engineering profession in Ireland.

I maintain a different blog here for my personal opinions and musings, not necessarily related to my work for Engineers Ireland. The contents of that blog are not necessarily endorsed by Engineers Ireland.