Will You Come With Me

Today and tonight the new Engineers Ireland radio and TV advertising campaign for Chartered Engineer goes live. This will coincide with the result of the Presidential election when target audiences are high especially this evening around 9 o’clock.

To the lyrics of ‘Will You Come With Me’ we invite Second Level students to consider engineering as a career and we invite existing graduate Engineers to become Chartered Engineers. The title of Chartered Engineer or CEng is only possible to achieve in Ireland through Engineers Ireland.

Chartered Engineer is only awarded following a Third Level engineering degree followed by a period (minimum 2 years) of Technical Training and a further period (minimum 2 years) of professional experience. Typically therefore new Chartered Engineers are in the age group 26 – 35.

Claire Lillis
Mechanical Design Engineer
Aerogen

    

Nick Gray
Senior Software engineer
Havok

                                                                                 

The radio advert is 30 seconds long and the TV advert is 60 seconds. The messaging has to be more direct on radio to get the impact across while the visual imaging on TV carries its own powerful message. The TV advert involves the work of 10 existing Engineers (5 male and 5 female) operating in 10 diverse branches of engineering if Ireland.

The new advert shows that engineering is an exciting career – building bridges, turning the ocean waves into energy, developing new water supplies and giving life to people in our hospitals through biomedical engineering. Engineering also makes the work of defence forces more effective technically and creates jobs to new software development e.g. in gaming and entertainment.

Hope you enjoy the advert and all comments welcome. Link here to the advert.

Calling all Environmental Scientists

Engineers Ireland knows that we cannot rebuild a national recovery or even engineer a new Ireland on our own. While international companies exporting computing, medical and pharma products account for much of our current growth these enterprises employ a lot of different professions.

While there are many engineers involved in the design and manufacture of products and services there are also many other professionals contributing also to this great endeavour. The same is true of infrastructural projects in the Transport, Energy, Water, Food, Process and Environmental sectors where Engineers work closely with Scientists, Geologists, Statisticians etc.

That is why Engineers Ireland decided to open up our membership in recent years to 'cognate professions'. These are professions akin to engineering whose graduates are working 'in an engineering role' i.e. working on engineering projects or services. For instance, there are many environmental scientists working in engineering firms on Environmental Impact Assessments and Strategic Environmental Assessments.

These cognate professionals many with level 8 (BSc Hons) and 9 (MSc) qualifications can now become Members of Engineers Ireland (MIEI). If after suitable professional experience in an engineering role, they can then graduate to the title of Chartered Engineer (CEng MIEI) and when they become eminent in their field can apply for Fellowship of Engineers Ireland (CEng FIEI).

Last year my predecessor as President Martin Lowery conferred a Fellowship by Presidential Invitation on Elizabeth Arnett a Senior Environmental Scientist. Elizabeth qualified with a BAgrSc and MAgrSc by research from UCD, then worked as Green Schools Officer with An Taisce before joining MCOS as an Environmental Scientist in the late 1990s.



Martin Lowery President of Engineers Ireland, New Chartered Engineer and
Fellow of Engineers Ireland Elizabeth Arnett MSc and John Power Director
General Engineers Ireland at the Conferring of Titles in May 2011.



She subsequently developed her own brand of Stakeholder Engagement on sensitive infrastructural projects. That business then grew into an integrated Project Communications team employing environmental and social scientists, engineers, communications scientists and media consultants.

Elizabeth is now Director of Project Communications with RPS in Dublin leading communications on many national engineering projects. She has frequently been interviewed on national media shows such as Morning Ireland, The Right Hook, The Last Word and Prime Time.

Elizabeth as a scientist is not unique in gaining membership of Engineers Ireland. But she is a role model to demonstrate that Engineers Ireland membership at all levels is now open to other allied professions. I personally know a number of geologists who have also become members and apart from scientists I also know a forestry graduate engaged in GIS for engineering projects who has achieved MIEI in recent months.

So I'm calling on all those professions who work closely with us on engineering projects to consider membership of Engineers Ireland. Application forms are available on our website at http://www.blogger.com/www.engineersireland.ie.

Farewell to a Great President

As this week draws to a close we will know who will be the 9^th President of Ireland. I wish him or her well when elected by the people.

It signals the end of 14 years of Mary McAleese as our President. She has been an outstanding ambassador for Ireland crowned by two extraordinary visits in May by Queen Elizabeth and President Barack Obama.

She has represented us abroad with great distinction. Her predecessor Mary Robinson proved to be the symbol of a new tolerant Ireland. Mary McAleese was the symbol of a modern Ireland at peace with itself North and South. 'Building Bridges' was her motto and she fulfilled that ambition admirably. Her husband - now Senator Martin McAleese - also played a vital role in building these bridges North and South between nationalist and unionist traditions.

I had the pleasure of meeting the President when she invited Engineers Ireland to the Áras in June 2010. Our President Martin Lowery was abroad so I led the Engineers Ireland group together with Director General John Power. The occasion was the 175^th anniversary of the founding of Engineers Ireland in 1835 - when Sir John Fox Burgogne was our first President of what was then The Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland. Fox Burgogne was Chairman of the Board of Works based at the Custom House.

President Mary McAleese with Engineers Ireland Vice President PJ Rudden and Director General John Power during our visit to Áras an Uachtaráin in June 2010 to mark our 175^th anniversary celebrations

President McAleese made the visit of our 50 members so memorable. She gave us a tour of the State Apartments and then treated us to tea with the help of the Áras staff.  She was very informal to make us feel at home insisting on pouring out our teas herself and chatting with us throughout about the many challenges we faced professionally and personally. She has an engineer daughter which greatly helped her understanding of the profession.

Also striking was the courtesy of her military aides who were most helpful in explaining the history of the Áras and indeed the history of the Presidency. The confident ease of these aides bore large testament to the respect they had for the President and her family and it was obvious that it went well beyond their professional duty. You could see too the confidence that she had in them also to be faithful custodians of a proud heritage.

She expressed her wish that there would be a visit to Ireland by Queen Elizabeth before she left the Áras in 2011 and her wish was granted. No doubt the short visit by President Obama also in May of this year was an added bonus during her term.

As she retires to private life, we salute her two terms as President for all the people. We wish herself, her husband and family a happy and fulfilling life in the years ahead.

Annual Energy Institute Dinner

On Tuesday night I attended the Annual Energy Institute Dinner at which Minister Pat Rabbitte spoke on Government energy policy. The dinner was hosted by the Republic of Ireland branch of the Energy Institute currently chaired by David Taylor who was Sustainable Energy Ireland's first CEO.

Minister Rabbitte identified the key priority as 'the delivery of our vital energy infrastructure projects to underpin security of supply.....development of GRID 25 is critical to our long term economic recovery…..it has been argued in some quarters that the severe step down in economic activity ought to result in pulling back investment in this area…..but infrastructure investments are long term investments by nature.....they increase competition and assist in achieving our ambitious renewable targets'. Link to Speech.

Therefore it was 'game set and match' to the continued investment in grid developments including North South and East West interconnectors and in renewable energy projects all of which Engineers Ireland strongly support in our State of Ireland Infrastructure Report of May 2011.

The lack of interconnectors between Ireland and the UK 'is imposing significant costs on electricity generators and consumers on both sides of the border' the Minister added.

He also spoke of the national importance of the Corrib project which 'is capable of supplying over 60% of Ireland's natural gas needs - this underlines the strategic importance of the project'.

With regard to further oil and gas exploration, he ruled out any prospect of a state exploration company as a 'persistent myth' together with any further need for changes in the exploration 'fiscal regime'. The reasons for this are very clear from his announcements of the previous day on the '2011 Atlantic Margin Licensing Round' - of the 13 exploration licences issued, many are new entrants and there were no signs of any interest from the large global energy companies.

The message from the major oil and gas industry players was very clear - Ireland is not fully open for business based on legacy issues which we all understand.

The Minister also drew attention to the 'development over the new few years of a significantly more interconnected pan European energy market'. Ireland he said 'will ultimately be a small part of very large European regional electricity and gas markets'.

He concluded by stating that the current review of national policy by the International Energy Agency (IEA) will inform a new Energy Policy Framework to be published in 2012 which will replace the 2007 Energy White Paper.

YES Ball - Third Level Education Liaison

On Friday night I was pleased to accept the invitation of Justine Butler Chairperson of the Young Engineers Society (YES) to their Annual Ball at the Morrison Hotel.

It was a 'masked ball' affair with both John Butler the other guest and myself together with our partners exempt from the masking formalities. (John is the HR Director in Engineers Ireland). All of the young engineers donned their masks though led by Justine whose mask was painted on!

Julie Goggins Third Level Liaison Engineers Ireland,
P J Rudden President Engineers Ireland,
Justine Butler Chairperson YES and Richard Burke UCD Student Engineer

The YES Ball was a spectacular success with double the attendance of last year. There were two reasons for this - firstly more companies were represented than last year and secondly there were a substantial number of engineering students present from UCD, DIT, DCU and as far away as DKIT.

The students added greatly to the fun and glamour of the night. Their presence in force was a tribute to our two new Third Level Liaison officers in Engineers Ireland - Julie Goggins and Richard Wilson - whose outreach into the colleges has obviously been extremely successful over the past year. I have no doubt that this engagement with the Third Level Education Sector will continue to grow in the years ahead. I say this as both Julie and Richard continue to 'weave their spell' on the students who appear to have enormous respect for both of them and after Friday night I can see why.

William Meara President of the DIT Engineering Society, Julie Farrelly DIT Eng Soc, Richard Wilson Third Level Liaison Engineers Ireland and James O'Meara Project Engineer Dromone Engineering and Innovative Student of the Year 2010 (DIT)

Many thanks to the companies who took tables and sent their young engineers to enjoy the night - ESBI, Clifton Scannell, DPS, Arup, Cedco and RPS. Thanks also to the many students who see a bright professional future with Engineers Ireland.

In my speech I assured the gathering that Engineers Ireland will continue to work all of our creative skills to generate employment for our graduates whether in manufacturing, infrastructure or exporting our services.

We take the importance of the Young Engineers Society very seriously in Engineers Ireland as we see in YES the young engineers who are the leaders of our future.

This year for the first time we have co-opted the Chairperson of YES Justine Butler to both our Council and to our Executive Board to give a voice to the young engineers at the highest levels of the profession. Justine through her contributions has already shown that she is up to the challenge of helping to chart the roadway for the future with Engineers Ireland.

I was delighted to learn also that at least three of the young engineers who attended on Friday night are in our new Advertising Campaign for Engineers Ireland ('This is My Land This is Your Land') so look out for them when they appear in a staring role on TV  next month - Elva Bannon, Jamie O'Meara and Katie O'Neill!

I wish the Young Engineers Society every success and growth in quality and numbers in the years ahead. They are truly the future of Engineers Ireland.