Waterman Moylan is a multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy providing sustainable solutions to meet the planning, engineering design and project delivery needs of the property, infrastructure and environment markets in Ireland and overseas.
Founded in 1980, Waterman Moylan has grown steadily to become one of the leading consulting engineering firms in Ireland. It is part of Waterman Group – a multi-disciplinary consultancy with offices in Ireland, the UK, Europe and Australia.
Working with government agencies, local authorities and private sector clients to provide innovative, sustainable and economic solutions across a wide spectrum of business activities, Waterman Moylan is engaged on a diverse range of projects across all main market sectors ranging from city centre regeneration to new highway schemes; mixed use development to signature education buildings; large commercial offices to public realm enhancement.
Its teams provide professional services throughout the complete life cycle of the asset, starting from initial surveys and concept planning through to design, delivery, project management, construction monitoring and ongoing maintenance.
The firm was established in 1980 by John Moylan and prospered as John Moylan & Associates. Notable projects completed in the early years included the Clarence Hotel, Malahide Marina, refurbishment of the GPO façade, An Bord Pleanala offices and a new wing at St Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin.
In 2000, Moylan joined Waterman Group, an international engineering and environmental consultancy, and as part of the Group, Waterman Moylan is able to call upon specialist expertise within the Group when needed. The Moylan values of excellence in engineering standards allied to a focus on delivering practical and economic solutions for its clients have carried through from the beginnings of the company to the present day.
While originally providing consultancy in civil and structural engineering, Waterman Moylan added a construction-related health and safety consultancy division in 2006. In 2014, it established a building services and sustainability division, to expand its offering to include all engineering disciplines as well as specialist services such as BREEAM assessment, LEED CxA services and BER certification.
Multi-disciplinary engineering services are now provided on a regular basis to many clients, who see the advantages to be gained from truly integrated engineering design.
Waterman Moylan is led by Managing Director, Paul O’Connell, who is supported by fellow Board Directors Joe Gibbons and Richard Osborne. Currently based in Dublin city centre and employing 65 engineers, technicians and support staff (and growing), the firm prides itself on providing a supportive and collaborative work environment for its people, encouraging and helping its employees to develop their potential and to achieve their professional goals.
Relationships within the industry are fundamental to the company’s continuing success and it approaches all commissions – both large and small – with the same commitment to quality and performance. By working closely with clients and other design and construction professionals, it builds long-lasting relationships and delivers exemplary results. Waterman Moylan’s workload is characterised by a very high level of repeat business and it has collaborated with many of the leading architectural, project management and cost consultancy practices in the country.
The company provides its services on projects throughout Ireland, with active projects at present from Waterford to Clifden, and from Dundalk to Tralee, but it has also built up a strong portfolio of international work over the last ten years, with commissions completed in the Middle East, Central Asia, Ukraine, Belarus, Belgium and the UK. It is completing work for a data centre in Mauritius at present and is responsible for all structural engineering modelling and design for the iconic 41-storey Two Fifty One tower currently under construction in London.
Waterman Moylan is particularly strong in the education sector, where it has been responsible in recent years for the engineering design for a significant number of large building projects under the Department of Education and Skills Major Schools Building Programme. Completed projects include the Monaghan Multi-user Education campus (consisting of co-located primary and post-primary schools, a college of further education, extensive sports facilities and a new public theatre), major extensions at Dundalk Grammar School and Presentation College Bray, and new primary schools at a number of locations throughout the country.
Current school commissions include a new exemplar 1,000 pupil post-primary school at Kingswood, Tallaght, and a similar urban primary school at Harcourt Terrace (where the firm is providing multi-disciplinary engineering services), both awarded following design competitions and with the remit to develop new design standards for adoption for future new schools.
Other ongoing school commissions include a replacement post-primary college at Clifden, as well as several primary school schemes, and technical advisor roles to the Department of Education and Skills on a Site Acquisition team and on the roll-out of the Rapid Build School Programme.
Another particular strength at Waterman Moylan is in design for residential projects, where schemes undertaken have ranged from individual architect designed houses and extensions to some of the largest residential developments in the country.
The firm is heavily involved in assisting its Local Authority and housing agency clients in addressing the current severe shortfall in the public housing stock, with the largest single scheme being a 155 apartment and housing scheme for Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, for which multi-discipline engineering services are being provided.
Previously delivered schemes include the award-winning Sean Treacy House in Dublin, named best regeneration project and best social housing project in the 2011 Community Housing Awards, and some 500 homes in the Ballymun Regeneration urban renewal project.
Residential capability is not restricted to public housing schemes, however, and Waterman Moylan is also responsible for some of the most prestigious private sector schemes currently under development in Ireland, including the Capital Dock apartment and office scheme in Dublin, the centrepiece of which is a 23-storey apartment tower, Clancy Barracks in Islandbridge, which includes conversion of the listed army barracks buildings to high-quality townhouses, and large new schemes at Royal Canal Park and Adamstown in west Dublin.
Of course, expertise at Waterman Moylan is not limited to the education and residential sectors. Recent major office developments have been completed at Baggot Street (Baggot Plaza) and Central Park in Dublin, while the firm’s track record also includes commissions as diverse as Clongriffin Dart Station, the Hilton Dublin Airport Hotel, the Kilpeddar Interchange on the N11, preliminary design and EIS for a major cruise ship berth at Dún Laoghaire Harbour, an integrated Operations Control Centre at Terminal 1 in Dublin Airport and design and construction supervision for modification works at Yas Marina F1 Circuit in Abu Dhabi.
Waterman Moylan is experiencing strong growth in its business at present and has confidence that this will continue. “A very noticeable trend is a big increase in the volume of residential work on our books. There has been a real shift in the last six months from planning to actually moving to site, as increasing property prices have improved viability and the availability of financing has improved somewhat,” MD Paul O’Connell notes.
“We would be confident that 2017 will see a very significant improvement in the delivery of new homes to the market, both by local authority clients and private sector clients, and that the current housing supply crisis will slowly start to abate.
“Affordability is likely to remain an issue, however. The sector is caught between the borrowing limits set by the Central Bank, which are in place to protect homeowners from over-extending, and the cost of building a modern home that complies with the high building and sustainability standards that are now required.
“While we would fully support the implementation of high standards for new housing and apartment schemes, it has to be accepted that achieving these standards does have cost implications. Similarly, the Building Control (Amendment) Regulations, introduced in 2014, which require much more detailed submissions to the Building Control authorities throughout the design and construction process, and oblige clients to engage an Assigned Certifier to monitor construction throughout the construction period, while badly needed to address the shortcomings in building standards encountered previously, again add to the actual cost of delivering homes.
“As demand picks up in the construction sector, cost inflation is likely to become more of an issue, with designers, contractors and suppliers having to compete for scarce resources. The economics of house-building, particularly in Dublin, are such that any pressure on construction costs will have an immediate effect on new house prices. It will be essential that effective measures are taken to reduce the non-building related costs that make up a significant proportion of the cost of a new home, if affordability is not to become an even greater problem in the future than it is at the moment.”
As a design practice, one Waterman Moylan’s key strengths is its BIM (Building Information Modelling) capability. It invested in BIM from the outset, both in software and hardware and also in training, and are one of the leading proponents in Ireland of the use of BIM for building modelling and design. “Our work on UK projects over the last few years has shown that in spite of the requirement to use BIM on all public works contracts, many industry practitioners in the UK are not yet utilising BIM to its full advantage. Our early integration of 3-D modelling and design into our project process was definitely an advantage for us in entering the UK market, and it was no doubt a key factor in the success a number of our fellow Irish consultancies have achieved in the UK over the last few years.”
The team at Waterman Moylan strives to develop innovative, economic and sustainable solutions that successfully meet the needs and goals of clients, whilst adding value and a better quality of life for all. “We recognise that we have a responsibility to the wider community, as we shape the built environment, and that there is an onus on us to deliver sustainable solutions that anticipate the effects on future generations,” Paul concludes. “We look forward with confidence to the continued recovery of the construction and development sector in Ireland, and to the challenge that the industry faces to create a modern and sustainable built environment that it can be proud to leave for generations to come.”
Waterman Moylan
Marine House,
Clanwilliam Place,
Dublin 2.
Tel: 01 6648900.
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.waterman-moylan.ie
Taken from Building Ireland Magazine, November/December 2016, Vol 2 No 7
