New technology driving engineering success

From major construction projects to measuring change in the tiniest of molecules, Ireland’s engineering sector is highly innovative. That includes homegrown success stories such as John Sisk & Son, a family business that has been delivering excellence for 160 years.

Today it operates across Ireland, the UK and Europe and has worked on projects ranging from the Luas Cross City development in Dublin to the redevelopment and restoration of the Royal Academy of Arts in London to mention just two recent examples.

“Digital technologies have changed our perception of what is possible for construction and engineering to achieve while creating efficiencies through automation and integration. These changes significantly impact the way we need to operate in the digital era to stay competitive and relevant,” says Shervin Deh Bozorgi, digital transformation lead at John Sisk & Son.

Just as it is with individuals, so it is with companies. “In all our lives the digital tools we have at hand drive our lifestyle choices and speed up our daily tasks. They allow us to be more efficient, collaborative and organised in our workplaces. At Sisk we want to bring a new era of performance through the integration of cutting-edge technologies, increasing digital competencies and embed data-driven decision-making as a key enabler to our business strategy,” he says.

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To do that it not only invests in making its systems and processes better, but educates its people so they can makes best use of new technology. “Only when we embed digital thinking at the core of how we manage our business can we expect to be efficient and co-ordinated in every aspect of delivering our projects. This is a mindset shift, one that we need people to continue to embrace across our business.”

Technology and innovation plays a role in attracting the next generation of engineers to the company too.

“Sisk understands the importance of being innovative in attracting the best people, and we do a lot to ensure we offer our incoming engineers a great chance to learn new skills, broaden their perspective and get to use the latest technology in performing their tasks,” says Victor O’Shea, regional engineering associate at John Sisk & Son.

To this end it has a number of programmes it uses to drive excellence in engineering within the company, including a Summer Internship Programme. “This allows college students to come to work in the real world of construction and engineering and is a fantastic opportunity to sample first-hand the intricacies of Ireland’s largest construction company. They get a flavour of a range of different departments within Sisk including quantity surveying, safety, environmental and the temporary works department,” he says.

Twenty transition year students from 10 schools were invited into Sisk for two full days during Engineers’ Week, where they got to use a type of electronic surveying equipment called Total Station, received a briefing on temporary works pre-construction and visited a live construction site.

“In addition Sisk has developed a strong partnership with numerous colleges including UCD, Trinity College Dublin and TU Dublin, and this year has delivered lectures and practicals on the most modern methods of surveying and setting out for students in these colleges,” he adds.

“As part of this commitment to teaching we have developed an engineering training area at our head office in Dublin which is used to train secondary school students, college students and our own engineering staff in the intricacies and practicalities of setting out.”

Endress+Hauser, another family company, is a global leader in measurement and automation technology for process and laboratory applications. Although headquartered in Switzerland, from where it handles sales of almost €3 billion a year and employs a global workforce, it has had a presence in Ireland since the late 1970s.

It has also succeeded by continually pressing ahead with the development and use of innovative technologies, which increasingly means helping to shape the industry’s digital transformation. The fact that it has filed 8,600 patents and patent applications is just one indicator of the value it puts on intellectual property.

The process automation company provides products, services and solutions for flow, level, pressure and temperature measurement, process analysis and data management. Its subsidiary in Ireland, which employs 75 people, is a leading supplier of industrial measurement solutions and process controls.

“Endress + Hauser started out after the second World War making the humble level switch; now it has a physical presence in 75 countries and six production centres,” says sales engineer Eamonn Redmond.

Today it is to the fore in developing innovative applications for Raman spectroscopy, an optical analysis technology that performs continuous, real time chemical measurements in any environment without needing to extract, prepare or destroy samples. This technology dates to the work of Indian physicist CV Raman in 1928, which in recent decades has been developed for effective use across a range of industries to drive efficiencies.

Instead of having to take samples from a bioreactor and send them off to a laboratory for six to eight hours for analysis to see if, for example, fermentation has taken place in a food or beverage, Raman spectroscopy can measure what is going on inside in real time.

This kind of process analytical technology is driving efficiencies and reducing waste. “It’s a huge driver in industry. People want real time measurement in the cycle,” says Redmond. “Data is about measurement. You can’t control what you can’t measure. If you can see what’s happening in your process you can use that to inform your decision-making, saving you time, energy, money and resource. It is quality by design.”