The business end of the visit involved a special briefing by Hywel to senior Government officials in relation to the probe being conducted into Grenfell fire disaster, and the report being prepared. The probe is led by Dame Judith Hackitt with the interim report already released. See: (www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-report-from-the-independent-recovery-taskforc). Hywel also had a separate briefing meeting with the RIAI.
On the social side Nial Bourke and David Doherty of T Bourke hosted Hywel, a proud Welsh man, as their guest to the rugby international in the Aviva stadium. Even with the result Hywel was in great form and has promised to return to Ireland to update everyone on the Grenfell final report, and to join us for CIBSE Ireland’s 50th anniversary dinner in the Autumn.
Schools visit to promote building services engineering On the broader front, and to coincide with Engineering Week, Paul Martin and Mervin Doyle toured a number of schools in the Waterford region to try and get primary and secondary school children to consider building services engineering as a career. Mervin is a lecturer in the Waterford Institute of Technology in the degree in Building Services Engineering, and the Masters in Sustainable Engineering.
Their tour started in St Declan’s Primary school where Paul was a student over 30 years ago. They met Paul’s old teacher, Gerald Fitzgerald — still teaching despite having taught Paul for over three years — and Paul spoke to the children about sustainability and the environment. He concluded his presentation by showing them the latest Nisan Leaf electric vehicle kindly provided by John Flood of Nissan Dungarvan dungarvan.nissan.ie/
From there Mervin and Paul ventured into their old secondary school, De La Salle. Here they spoke with 4th and 5th year students about the WIT courses in building services engineering, and the related employment and career prospects. Much to Mervin and Paul’s disappointment, neither Derek McGrath (Waterford hurling Manager), nor Kevin Moran (Waterford senior hurling captain) were teaching that day … they were relaxing after hammering Cork in the league.
From here they went to St Paul’s School where again they spoke to over 50 students. Mind you, here the students were more proactive and there was some lively debate when they asked of Paul and Mervin: “who earned the most money”; “who drove the newest car”; and “who had the handiest job”. As CIBSE Ireland Chair Paul claimed the right to answer and said Mervin to all.
For more information about the Degree and Master (Part and full time) courses in WIT visit:—www.wit.ie/schools/engineering/building_services www.wit.ie/courses/school/engineering/PostgraduateEngineeringDepartment%20of%20Built%20EnvironmentFull%20TimePart%20Time/msc_in_sustainable_energy_engineering
