Secondary School:- St Dominic's College, Cabra. 3rd Level Education:- Preliminary Engineering, DIT Bolton St. (1 yr, Introductory Course) - Honours Degree in Structural Engineering, DIT Bolton St. (4 yr course, general first year).
Engineers Ireland and other Profession Institutes such as the Institute of Structural Engineers carry out evening lectures throughout the year which are CPD (Continuous Professional Development) approved and continuously develop your knowledge of the industry. ESB International along with other engineering consultancy firms are accredited for the completion of the CPD programme which requires at least 5 days of CPD each year from each employee.
Have you undertaken, or do you plan to undertake any further training as part of your job?
I continue to attend the CPD lectures provided externally and the training courses within my company.
I continue to work towards developing my knowledge and to Chartership.
I would like to do a Masters in Structural Engineering in the next few years.
What aspects of your education have proven most important for your job?
The main subjects that have proved most useful from my degree for my work is Steel and Concrete Design. An aspect of my course I have liked the most since leaving is that I do use what I learned in college. Most of the final year subjects are useful. As those that aren't would be if I had followed a different career path.
Structural Analysis and Mechanics of Materials were the most technical subjects in college, only because they were the back bone of the other subjects. You would not require this knowledge as much in the working world because there are computers to do the work for you but they are required in college to understand what the software is doing. Highway Design - more a civil subject then structural - I would use this on very rare occasions but should I be in a different section of the industry it would be used much more.
Subjects that were more focused on communications wouldn't appear to be useful but taught me skills that I use without even thinking now. Subjects like Maths are probably the least useful in my job, but the level of Maths carried out in College would open the door to many other numerical based careers including teaching, thereby giving you very good grounds to following non engineering related careers.
What subjects did you take in school and how have these influenced your career path?
The subjects I did in school didn't help much with my career path. The only subject I did do that was useful to me career was honours maths. As I didn't have the required subjects to get into my desired course, I did an extra year - a bridging year - Preliminary Engineering.
There are always other ways to get into courses so if you have your heart set on engineering but don't have the required subjects, look into courses like Preliminary Engineering or other bridging courses. If you haven't chosen your leaving cert subjects yet, some of the subjects that will assist you in an engineering degree is honours maths, physics, chemistry and mechanics/applied maths.
