Page 22 - Sisk News August 2017

Engineers Week a success for Excelerate
Engineers Week takes place each year in March with an aim of celebrating the industry across Ireland, whilst looking to the future and inspiring young people to get involved.
This year, Sisk took a two-pronged approach, with our Excelerate Engineers tasked with creating a WOW event and all other members of Engineers Ireland invited to visit local educational facilities.
The Wow Events
Our Excelerate Engineers didn’t make things easy for themselves, deciding on two school-based events – one in Dublin and another in Cork.
The group planned the events by utilising their everyday project skills; bringing it together on time and in budget and with the required people in attendance!
Even a last minute hiccup of the chosen Dublin school becoming unavailable for the event at the city’s Capital Dock didn’t deter them,
as they found two replacement, albeit very different, educational establishments in time, O’Connell
Secondary School and CUS.
Mairéad Fitzsimons, Guidance Counsellor at O’Connell Secondary School, said: “The young engineers who welcomed
us and hosted the visit were excellent company, very personable and informative, with great enthusiasm with their engineering work. I hope that this enthusiasm in turn will be infectious with our pupils. We were especially delighted to meet a past pupil of O’Connell’s School, Joe Gartland who made a point of coming over to meet us.
“Site visits such as this one to Capital Dock are particularly important to school with ‘disadvantaged’ status like ours. Many of our pupils come from dif cult social backgrounds with few opportunities to observe professionals at work and it was an opportunity that would rarely come their way.
“We will always remember our visit to Capital Dock and look forward to seeing
the nal nished product.”
In Cork, meanwhile, Páirc Ui Chaoimh was the venue as we had 32 pupils from high school Colaiste Muire undertake
a site visit. According to their Deputy Principal, Honor O’Brien, the students and teachers “enjoyed a great day”.
Sisk would like to say thanks in particular to all those on site who facilitated the tours, along with Dave Cotter in Páirc UI Chaoimh & Shane Glynn and Declan Kelly in Capital Dock.
Involved in the Capital Dock event, picturted above, were Owen Downing, Conor Ryan, Laura MacGregor, Brendan Ryan, Brendan Beattie , Brendan O’Hanlon, Jonathon Squance , Gerard Byrne , Marti Junyent , Christos Pastellis , Leo O’Regan
School Visits
A number of engineers from across the business headed out to local schools to tell them about engineering, what
is involved in the industry and what a typical day is like.
Eamonn Reidy from our Civils division went to speak at the Holy Family Community School in Rathcoole, County Dublin. The school’s Kay O’Connell said: “Thanks for organising Eamonn to come and speak with our students.
“He delivered a really good talk and the students got lots of important information and advice.”
Brian Wilson and Padraig Mullen, meanwhile, headed to Adamstown Community School and Balbriggan’s Gaelscoil Bhaile Brigín respectively in County Dublin.
Brian Comaskey visited St. Peters in Dunboyne, County Meath, where the class teacher reported it as “eye opening for the kids, who never knew the breadth of engineering”.
22 Sisk News | August 2017