Kerrigan Mechanical is delighted to be a finalist in the highly-competitive Sub-Contractor of the Year category at the upcoming 2025 Irish Construction Industry (ICI) Awards.
No stranger to winning prestigious accolades, Kerrigan Mechanical is celebrating 27 years in business and continues to go from strength to strength. Based in Athboy, Co. Meath, the business is a multi-disciplined and diverse organisation with the ability to complete mechanical and electrical contracts in a professional and efficient manner. It is a medium-sized mechanical services contractor with 80 direct employees and 300 subcontractors engaged.
Launched in 2014, the Irish Construction Industry (ICI) Awards recognise, encourage and celebrate original and innovative contractors, businesses, teams, consultants and projects that demonstrate excellence in the built environment.
Kerrigan Mechanical has developed from the commercial and industrial experiences of Midland Heating & Plumbing Ltd, which has been in operation since 1998, and continues to grow organically. The company has a dedicated team that allows it to provide a unique service at every stage of the mechanical and electrical construction process, interpreting the required design and specification requirements, and taking the project through the construction phase to successful completion and handover.
The aim of the business is to effectively carry out installations of heating, plumbing, ventilation, air conditioning and mechanical services installations. The business is currently growing significantly in size, and the vision is to maintain this growth rate, in a controlled manner, and ensure that it prospers.
Kerrigan Mechanical is the largest entity in the business which also consists of Midland Heating & Plumbing and Midland Renewables. Midland Heating & Plumbing undertakes one-off heating and plumbing installations to new build residences and refurbishments as well as upgrades to existing premises. This division of the business also carries our heat pump retrofit installations
Midland Renewables is a service and maintenance division which has been established to capitalise on the growing market for the maintenance of higher value and more complicated heat pump and heat recovery. This will provide an income stream over many years with repeat business possible.
“We’re thrilled to be shortlisted for Sub-Contractor of the Year. It’s great recognition for our amazing team and the work we do,” Kerrigan Mechanical Commercial Director Aiden Likely enthuses.
“We had a turnover of €33 million last year and are aiming for €40 million this year. We’ve spread our wings beyond our traditional east coast and midlands heartland to other parts of the country, including Cork where we’re currently working on residential projects alongside Glenveagh Homes, Conack Construction and CLBK Construction.
“We’ve recently won awards for Large Mechanical Contractor of the Year (Ireland’s Plumbing & Heating Awards) and District Heating Project of the Year for Cheevers Court & Haliday House in Dun Laoghaire, with both blocks of apartments having achieved NZEB compliance.
“We also previously won Highly Commended Mechanical Project of the Year for the state-of-the-art new Meetings & Events Centre at Clayton Hotel, Cardiff Lane for Monami Construction.”
The business model of Kerrigan Mechanical is to carry out its function as a specialist installer, in most cases as a subcontractor to a main contractor. These installations range in value from €21 million down to €50,000. Specialising in the supply and installation of heating, plumbing, ventilation and air conditioning systems, the Meath-based company possesses the technical and managerial experience to carry out multiple projects in a wide range of sectors, including education, commercial / retail, hospitality / leisure, and high density residential. Over the past number of years, it has grown into one of Ireland’s leading residential heating and plumbing subcontractor installers, completing an impressive 2,200 units per annum.
Kerrigan Mechanical’s aspiration is to focus more on higher value projects in this business entity, while also widening its customer-base to ensure that risk is minimised by not being too reliant on one customer.
The owners have steered Kerrigan Mechanical from a small sole trader-based operation to a medium-size limited liability company. The goal of the stakeholders is to own a secure, stable and profitable business, while providing secure employment and opportunities for training and growth for all team members, as well as providing a valuable asset to the construction industry at a time when severe labour constraints exist.
All clients are currently repeat clients. Kerrigan Mechanical ensures that it carries out a high-quality installation, in compliance with the agreed specifications, which is rigidly controlled by a submittal and approvals process.
Some of Kerrigan Mechanical’s most significant recent district heating residential projects include Glass Bottle 1A & 1B with Sisk, Greenacres Grange with BAM and the award-winning Cheevers Court & Haliday House with Cosgrave Developments. The scope of works at the 894-unit Glass Bottle development is the supply and installation of the complete mechanical services package. 1A, consisting of 570 units, and 1B, consisting of 324 units, are running concurrently.
“The waste heat from the (Dublin) city incinerator will eventually be used to provide a heat source to the Glass Bottle development. We’re also installing a quite complicated system to utilise this in the future,” Aiden explains.
Greenacres Grange consists of 307 apartments which are served by a centralised energy efficient district heating system. Kerrigan Mechanical also carried out the supply and installation of the complete mechanical services package at Cheevers Court & Haliday House. Each block consisted of 182 apartments.
As Kerrigan Mechanical grew, the owners recognised that a defined plan for development had to be put in place, and several director level staff were recruited and were supplemented by long-standing and experienced employees of the business. The company’s strategy is determined by the general trends and direction of the construction industry which has high demand in the residential sector.
To execute this strategy, the owners had to recruit more experienced managers from outside the business to implement more rigid processes and controls. A root-and-branch analysis of the business was conducted with a report being output which highlighted all the required changes which were obvious at that point in time.
The owners supported the implementation of the plan, and the process began. There was a change in the structure and the team within the head office, and the required changes were introduced and successfully implemented.
Key personnel now include Founder and Managing Director Ronan Kerrigan, Commercial Director Aiden Likely, Contracts Director Francis McNulty, Commercial Manager Brian Mahon, Senior Contracts Manager Adam Dent, Contracts Managers Kevin Nea, Adam Traynor, Brendan McGarvey and Dan O’Shaughnessy, EQHS Manager Aoife Tully, Maintenance Project Manager Darren McCague, Financial Controller Richard Coffey, Estimation manager Charlie Monahan, Purchasing Manager Philip Mulrone and Senior Building Services Engineer Sarah Callaghan.
Incidentally, Adam Dent will soon appear on our TV screens and the hit RTÉ show ‘DIY SOS: The Big Build’ as one of over 1,000 volunteers who took part in a much-needed project for the O’Connor family in Tallaght. In the series, deserving families facing difficult personal circumstances, who need help to improve their quality of life, get a significant home renovation – all delivered by the goodwill of trades, suppliers, contractors and the local community.
Quality is always a priority at Kerrigan Mechanical. To this end, it has introduced an app-based quality control system. This consists of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Fix certificates for Heating, Plumbing and Ventilation, which can also have embedded photographs, video, GPS and time stamped to verify testing. These are then approved and signed off by the Senior Manager. These certs can then be retained on file for handover or can be forwarded to the client in real time. The certs can also be extended to include wall closures and all other QA tracking that may be required on the project to comply with specific requirements.
Furthermore, Kerrigan Mechanical is currently in the pre-audit stage for ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001, and intends to be fully certified before the end of 2025. The company is already Safe T certified and complies fully with all safety regulations and requirements. Full compliance of five-point PPE adherence is implemented on all sites, with zero-tolerance policies in place.
The family-run business delivers whole building heating and ventilation solutions from conception to completion. It specifies and designs, supplies, and installs, commissions, and maintains fully integrated energy efficient heating and ventilation systems, with a strong bias towards renewable technology
Here’s to the next 27 years of Kerrigan Mechanical and its associates Midland Heating & Plumbing and Midland Renewables.
Kerrigan Mechanical
Unit 3,
Athboy Business Park,
Trim Road,
Athboy,
Co. Meath,
C15 W13H.
Telephone: 046 9430529
Fax: 046 9480530
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, January 2026, Vol 12 No 1
