Visit by Taoiseach on Engineering Manufacturing was Best Ever EGA Event

 

The EGA Autumn Panel Discussion which was led by An Taoiseach has been hailed by many senior engineers as the 'best ever EGA event'. There is no doubt that it was one of the most extraordinary Engineering events I witnessed in my lifetime. That coupled with the iconic Engineers Ireland Annual Conference in the new Titanic building in Belfast at the 2012 Titanic Centenary.  

An Taoiseach is greeted on arrival by EGA President PJ Rudden, UCD President, Dr. Hugh Brady and UCD Dean of Engineering,  Professor Gerry Byrne



We witnessed such a unique combination of Innovation Design Manufacture and Marketing experience and plain sensible savvy laid out so graphically for a Head of Government. We saw an Taoiseach take such copious notes that he was able to respond point by point to the 4 Panel Speakers. It was real democracy in action before our eyes and tremendous performances by both the Taoiseach and by our Panel in their interaction.

The 'warm up' act before the Taoiseach's arrival was filled at short notice by UCD Engineering Vice Principal for Research and Innovation Professor Tony Fegan. He described in some detail the UCD Research effort concentrating on the diverse number of 'spin out' companies like BiancaMed, APC and others.

UCD Engineering Vice President for Research and Innovation Professor Tony Fegan

The Taoiseach arrived in good form after Leaders Questions in the Dail and wasn't long telling me that he wanted to see some 'action points' out of the Panel Discussion. I promised him that he would not be disappointed and I don't now believe he was. He himself left with his own very clear list of Action Points following the extended Debate.  

EGA President PJ Rudden, Prof. Gerry Byrne, An Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Dr. Hugh Brady Dean of Engineering

I welcomed him as a Taoiseach who was finally leading us back to be masters of our own destiny as a people. Engineering Manufacturing was leading the national recovery through the export of our food, biomedical, pharma, ICT and other engineering products. Indigenous manufacturing represented some 50% of total manufacturing in Ireland - a little known fact when all the media emphasis is on FDI manufacturing which is also an essential but not the only ingredient in our industrial mix.

'This Government's top priority is jobs' the Taoiseach said in his speech 'a strong manufacturing sector is essential to growing our exports to sustain and create jobs in innovative, home-grown businesses as well as in foreign companies who locate in Ireland'.

The Panel Speakers, four leading manufacturing entrepreneurs from the four corners of Ireland then gave their presentations.



An Taoiseach with the panel of speakers L ro R: Philip O'Doherty, E&I Engineering, Martin Mc Vicar, Combilift,  Edmond Harty, Dairmaster and Ian Quinn Creganna Taxtc Medical

Ian Quinn in his presentation called for a stable environment to allow manufacturing which has a future in Ireland. Short term jobs will come from small indigenous businesses. Long term jobs will come from innovative Irish enterprises'

An Taoiseach Enda Kenny listens intently to Ian Quinn

'Manufacturing is sustainable in Ireland' said Martin McVicar 'it is better to be a big company in a small niche market than a small company in a big market. There needs to be a close link between R&D and Sales/Marketing and we have a relatively short time to market'. Manufacturing long load and specialised forklifts, he has grown employment from 160 in 2009 to 275 in 2013 and hopes to grow to 400+ by 2018.

Philip O'Doherty is in the electrical switchgear export business from Donegal has 475 staff in Ireland and 220 staff in Dubai. He promoted lean manufacturing and working with the education sector to produce highly skilled employees including showing local schools around his factory.

Edmond Harty employs over 300 staff making automatic milking machines. 'Innovation is the key' he said 'we are about making dairy farming more profitable, more enjoyable and more sustainable. Universities should be demonstrating the value and validating the performance of products. This would help exports. I can't get the people with the right skills in Ireland'.

Full attendance for Panel Discussion in Clinton Auditorium

A number of the speakers spoke of the support to FDI companies whereas there should be more State supports for indigenous Irish firms.

UCD Dean of Engineering Gerry Byrne then gave the Response to the Panel Discussion and spoke of the need to internationalise manufacturing education and practice calling the new cyber world the 'Internet of Things'. This was akin to the 4th generation industrial revolution which is now creating transformational in the way we manufacture and go about our business. Colleges like UCD are adapting to these new challenges and will continue to do this. Gerry was recently Chairman of the Irish Academy of Engineering national report on 'The Future of Manufacturing in Ireland' which he presented to the Taoiseach.

An Taoiseach Enda Kenny listening to Professor Gerry Byrne's response to Panel Discussion

All through this the Taoiseach took extensive notes and then gave an unscheduled but very welcome and detailed response to what had been said. 'You four people represent the future of manufacturing and you have direct access now to the Head of Government. We hear what you are saying and we will investigate and act further if it creates new jobs for our people. I want to ensure jointed up Government thinking to ensure that we are acting correctly and efficiently. The Government through our Action Plan for Jobs will continue to support measures that will capitalise on our advantages - our people, our proximity to key markets and our pro-business policies.'

An Taoiseach wishing to reply in detail to the Panel Discussion

Taoiseach responds to Panel Discussion

 There was a very full and appreciative audience at the event including the Chairman of Enterprise Ireland Terence O'Rourke and its Director of Cleantech Industry and Global Markets Tom Kelly whose efforts were praised by a number of the Panel Speakers. The audience had many questions about industrial policy to which members of the panel replied.

At the UCD Panel Discussion were Professor Gerry Byrne,
Chairman of Enterprise Ireland Terence O'Rourke, PJ Rudden and Dr. Liam Connellan

Feedback on email, Twitter and Facebook concerning the event has been most positive and also personally by many who attended and thought it a most entertaining and inspiring event. I'm sure that the Taoiseach will bring his first hand knowledge to the relevant Ministers and what he learned to bear at many future educational and job creation events he will attend.

Thanks to UCD President Hugh Brady, Professor Gerry Byrne, Michael Redmond Buildings Officer, EGA Administrator Clare Davidson and security officers for permission and assistance in making the event such a unqualified success in the view of those who attended.

EGA President PJ Rudden with UCD Engineering Graduates at the Panel Discussion

Joy for Students and Parents at Annual Gold Medal Ceremony

This week we had the UCD BE Conferrings in O'Reilly Hall. Prior to the Conferrings, the EGA and our sister organisation, the Architecture Graduates Association (AGA) hosted the Annual Gold Medal Ceremony for those who obtained 1st place in each of the branches of Engineering and Architecture.

The 7 Engineering Gold Medals were awarded to Claire Dunne, Ian Kenny, Eoghan Power, Conor O'Malley, Raymond Carley, Robert O'Donoghue and Brian Kealy in Biosystems, Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Electronic, Mechanical and Structural Engineering with Architecture respectively. These Gold Medals were sponsored by GEA, Helsinn, RPS, Airtricity, S3, CRH and ARUP respectively. ARUP also sponsored the EGA Architecture Gold Medal awarded to Andras Dankhazi. All were present to accept the Medals except Brian Kealy who is currently working in the US and was represented by his parents at our event.



(L–R) UCD Dean of Engineering Prof. Gerry Byrne, Ian Kenny (Chem), Robert O'Donoghue (Mech), Andras Dankhazi (Arch), Claire Dunne (Biosystems), Raymond Carley (Electronic), Eoghan Power (Civil), Conor O'Malley (Electrical), EGA President PJ Rudden.



In addition, there were a number of additional Prizes awarded for Civil, Chemical & Bioprocess, Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering sponsored by Roughan O'Donovan, Pat McAdam, PM Group, Mark Carthy, Cylon and Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Rep of Ireland Branch). Prize winners here were Eoghan Power, Sharon Quigley, Aisling Brazel, Sheila Courtney, Donal Finegan, Killian McKenna, Adrian Walsh, Claire Lambe, Philip Flahavan, Fionnan McNamara and Robert O'Donoghue.

In my Welcome Speech, I emphasised the importance of engineering to everyday life in terms of energy, water, transport and communications. That 'engineering genius' is not celebrated in Ireland as much as literary genius as it is not as well known. That is not surprising given our national reputation for winning Nobel Prizes in Literature by Yeats, Beckett and Heaney.

On the day of the prize giving, the funeral of the late and great poet Seamus Heaney who died suddenly at age 74 from a short illness was taking place a few hundred metres further up the Stillorgan Road at Donnybrook Church. Later that day he was buried in his native Derry. His poetic talent was legendary across the English speaking world as he was a very sensitive yet very graphic communicator with his imagery. Engineers need to be graphic also in our use of the English language and other communications tools to show our relevance in society.

Seamus Heaney

As a profession we need to celebrate our engineering skills on a wider stage where it is not realised that it is engineers who are driving our national recovery in terms of the manufacture and export of biopharma, ICT, biomedical and other engineering products.

From the moment we waken each day to the moment when we fall asleep engineers have created the products and services we use from electricity to clean water to safe roads, rail and airports to buildings where we work and go to school, to the cars we drive, the Internet, iPods and iPhones we use to stay in touch.

In job creation announcements we are told that new jobs are being created in 'Life Sciences' when in fact they are jobs in engineering and that is where many of the future jobs in a growing Irish economy lie - career guidance teachers, parents and Leaving Cert students need to be aware that it is an Engineering Degree that will lead them into these exciting new careers that will nurture, support and save human lives. I visited the fabulous new UCD Science Centre last year and found that many of the researchers working there were engineers as well as scientists.




Edwina White, Airtricity presenting the EGA Gold Medal in Electrical Engineering to Conor O'Malley

 


Arthur Rogers, GEA Tuchenhagen presenting the EGA Gold Medal in Biosystems Engineering to Claire Dunne





Eimear O'Flynn, CRH presenting the EGA Gold Medal in Mechanical Engineering to Robert O'Donoghue



Eileen Lee, Project Management Group presenting the PM Group Design Award to Shelia Courtney



Padraig Somers of Helsinn Birex Pharmaceuticals presenting the EGA Gold Medal in Chemical Engineering to Ian Kenny

Mike Murray of S3 presenting the EGA Gold Medal in Electronic Engineering to Raymond Carley

Larry O'Toole, RPS presenting the EGA Gold Medal in Civil Engineering to Eoghan Power

Rory Mc Gowan, ARUP presenting the EGA Gold Medal in Structural Engineering with Architecture to father of Brian Kealy



Tony Dempsey, Roughan O'Donovan presenting their prize to Sharon Quigley



Professor Don Mac Elroy presenting the Pat Mc Adam Scholarship in Chemical Engineering to Aisling Brazel

Fantastic Weather Forecast for the Engineers Picnic!

Great news today from the Met Office – next Saturday, 24^th, will bring fantastic weather to the East Coast. We are expecting a huge crowd to attend the Engineers Picnic in the UCD Rose Garden kicking off at 4 p.m. with BBQ food, Music Fest and exhibitions.





We Are All Going to the Picnic!



All are welcome including family members and graduates attending don't have to be from UCD Engineering. This is an inclusive Gathering and you can book your tickets here.

Thank you again to our sponsors ESB, Eircom and Eirgrid for their generous sponsorship.

It Really Is Going to Be an Electric Picnic After All!

The UCD Engineers Picnic is fast becoming a real Electric Picnic with the generous sponsorship by ESB, Eircom and Eirgrid - lots of electricity there by the electrical, electronic and communications utilities! Thank you sincerely ESB, Eircom and Eirgrid for relieving our worries after our brave EGA Picnic Committee slashed the ticket prices from €40 to €20 per head to encourage as many young engineering graduates to attend as possible.

There's more exciting Electric news and that's the Engineering Exhibition on Smart Grids and Interconnection to UK and Europe which will be displayed by the Energy Needs Ireland (ENI) students under Professor Mark O'Malley of the UCD Electricity Research Centre (ERC).



Energy Needs Ireland at work



Added to that will be quality BBQ food by highly reputable caterers and a music medley by a combination of TradSoc and Jazzsoc, both of UCD, running from 4pm to 9pm - all in the ambiance of the UCD Rose Garden.

Book your ticket now here and see you in the Rose Garden. All are welcome not just UCD grads!

Project Maths is having Positive Impact

The new Project Maths approach to the learning and teaching of maths at Second Level is a good start but cannot be an overnight success. Reading the national media this week on the 2013 Leaving Cert results, one would think that Project Maths and bonus points are magic wands towards high maths literacy! They are not! It’s a whole new applied approach that will take years maybe a generation towards us fully understanding the everyday usage and value of maths in our everyday lives.

I gained an appreciation of the challenges faced by students and teachers of maths when, as Vice President of Engineers Ireland a few years ago, I chaired a Report on the Learning and Teaching of Maths and Science at Second Level Report. This Report led to a lot of welcome changes in the new approach adopted by recent Ministers of Education.

Everyone uses maths even when buying food in the supermarket. At higher level, complex maths systems lie behind modern day inventions like the iPhone, chemical processes, water treatment, flying aeroplanes, PC’s, electricity networks and Google on the Internet. Most of us don't know or care what maths lie behind these modern gadgets or systems and don't need to know as long as they work! When the lights don't switch on, then we tend to blame the engineers but when the lights do switch on (as in 99.9% of the time!) we rarely appreciate their value.

Project Maths is designed to help us gain a deeper understanding of what we are learning - to get us away from the 'rote learning' school systems of the past. Generations of students and teachers have been brought up to apply a diet of formulae and theorems 'learnt by heart' without needing to understand what they were doing. We are not going to change this overnight.

The early signs from Project Maths are very positive. Helped by extra bonus points for Grade D or better on the Honours Leaving Cert, the numbers sitting the Honours Maths paper this year are up more than 50%. That's good news. Also, the fear of taking the Honours Maths paper and not getting at least a Grade D and thus completely failing the Leaving Cert is now gone. That's more good news!

  

If suddenly the Leaving Cert grades were to dramatically improve overnight with Project Maths then we would say that the marking systems were now easier than before to make the new approach look good. The media would cry wolf again!

Of course, we can train our kindergarden and Primary school children to 'understand and think maths' from first principles. But this would take over 20 years before this year’s Junior Infants go into the workforce.

Even then I worry more about the teachers than the students. It was discovered lately that approx 60% of maths teachers in Second Level Schools had no degree in maths. They were unqualified to teach maths or were 'out of field' as a learned University of Limerick research report euphemistically put it. That issue once known is also now being addressed with extra teacher training which will also take years to embed. For instance many of the better teachers of the old system have no PC or lack any IT skills to take the new on-line learning on board. Many simply did not see the new unfamiliar Project Maths approach coming down the track.

Maths is a sensitive and critically important subject to get right as it will greatly impact on our future economic development as a nation. Decades of national systemic failure in the learning and teaching of maths will not be solved overnight but we have made a good start. Our failures in this respect were firmly understood by the previous Government who introduced the extra bonus points to improve student uptake at Honours LC level. This has certainly worked but as Minister Ruairi Quinn stated this week it’s only a temporary measure until we embed the Project Maths approach. The Minister is correct in defending the new syllabus as a work in progress that needs ongoing support by industry particularly in the engineering profession. I'm glad to see in yesterday's Times that he acknowledges Engineers Ireland to be one of the industry leaders on this issue.

I am delighted to report that Engineers Ireland are still giving the free Leaving Cert Maths Grinds on Saturdays during the school year and have extended the service beyond Dublin to the other major cities.

New UCD Engineers Newsletter launched by EGA

A new Engineers eNewsletter has been launched by the UCD Engineering Graduates Association to keep Members and potential New Members fully informed on happenings in UCD and in Engineering in general.

The first Summer Edition dated July 2013 is available (here). Its up to date on all the main stories from the New UCD President, our latest Distinguished Graduate Award and of course the upcoming Engineers Picnic BBQ in the Rose Garden later this month. Don't forget to book the Picnic online on the EGA website homepage (here)! There's also a call to join the EGA at reduced cost (here)!



EGA Newsletter

The new Editor of the Engineers Newsletter is Dr. Ciaran McNally of the UCD Civil Structural and Environmental School. Ciaran has put together a superb e-publication in a short space of time. It is hoped to issue the Newsletter quarterly in July, October, January and April of each year. Members of the EGA are invited to contribute Articles, Letters to the Editor and Opinions directly to Editor Ciaran.

Editor Dr. Ciaran McNally

I would like to thank Dr. Liam Madden, Vice President Xilinx Corp in Silicon Valley, California. Also, EGA Board Members, Cormac Mannion for his piece on Energy Efficiency and Angela Treanor for publicising the Picnic also through Facebook. I've mentioned it myself on Twitter (@PJRudden) a number of times. The administration of the Picnic is now in the very capable hands of Karina O'Neill, Marketing Manager for the College of Engineering and Architecture assisted by Robyn Kelly on Entertainment and Tony O'Brien on Sponsorship. Karina, Robyn and Tony are also on the EGA Board.

I hope you enjoy the Engineers Newsletter which will keep up updated on what the EGA are doing. The idea of restarting the Newsletter came to me from a very informative meeting I had earlier in the year with 6 EGA Past Presidents - Tom Hardiman, Des Green, Liam Connellan, Colm Bannon, Tony O'Brien and Michael Loughnane - together with the UCD Dean of Engineering Gerry Byrne.

An Taoiseach to Open UCD EGA Panel Discussion on 'Manufacturing Engineering and Job Creation'

An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD will open the UCD Engineering Graduates Association (EGA) Autumn Panel Discussion on 'Manufacturing Engineering and Job Creation' on October 22nd 2013. This is in recognition of the importance of the manufacturing sector to our current job creation and export drive.
The Panel Discussion will be addressed by leading national and international engineers in the manufacturing space including some of Ireland's leading entrepreneurs.

The Taoiseach recently opened the 5,250 sq metre NexusUCD Research and Innovation Centre together with the offices of ResMed a leading international company in the sensor technology business. 'By providing innovation in Irish business and education we will make Irish high-value products and services more attractive across the world' the Taoiseach said 'Building closer links between industry and higher education institutions will be essential if Ireland is to be promoted as the 'innovation island.'
 


An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD at the opening of the NexusUCD

 At the launch, UCD Vice President for Innovation Peter Clinch demonstrated the UCD ambition in this area. He said that 'the university is actively supporting the transition to a sustainable Irish economy based on innovation, education, enterprise and exports'.

ResMed is an Irish company formed out of innovative engineering research in UCD. Both itself and its predecessor company Bianca Med were founded by UCD research engineers Dr. Conor Hanley and Professor Conor Heneghan who studied chemical and electronic engineering respectively. Their initial research was to invent sleep monitoring technology which became a world leader in non contact sleep and breathing. You can imagine how this transformed the remote monitoring of sleep and breathing in the home especially for babies and the older generation.

Pictured at the launch Dr. Conor Hanley of ResMed, An Taoiseach Enda Kenny and UCD Vice President for Innovation Peter Clinch

Dr. Conor Hanley of ResMed was delighted with the new research facilities in NexusUCD. 'We chose to site our new office in NexusUCD because of the excellent facilities available and its proximity to UCD and affiliated hospitals. Together they deliver an ecosystem that is vital to our innovation and growth' he explained.

The EGA Panel Discussion will further illustrate and explore the engineering innovation that is helping to drive our economic recovery. A further example of this in the agricultural engineering area is Dairymaster in Tralee, Co. Kerry, who manufacture automatic milking machines for the export market in China. Dr. Edmond Harty CEO of Dairymaster is a mechanical engineer who has a PhD from UCD in the area of milking performance in dairy farming. Edmond won the Ernst & Young 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

So please put the date of October 22nd in your diary for the Panel Discussion on 'Manufacturing Engineering and Job Creation' commencing with An Taoiseach at 7pm in the Clinton Auditorium. It will be preceded by the UCD EGA Annual General Meeting at 5.30pm.