As a company that prides itself on its people, Murphy Ireland is delighted to have Projects Director Patrick Maguire named as a winner at the Irish Construction Excellence Awards in the ‘Construction Project Manager’ category for his stellar work on the €19 million Ringsend Phosphorus Fixation and Recovery project on behalf of Irish Water.
The Irish Construction Excellence Awards (ICE Awards) are the original and premier recognition of performance excellence for the contracting sector in Ireland, and provide an opportunity for the industry to showcase and reward best practice across the full range of construction disciplines and project categories.
In addition to Patrick’s success at the Irish Construction Excellence Awards, Murphy Ireland also picked up an award in the ‘Civil Engineering over €20m’ category for its work on the Stillorgan Reservoir Upgrade.
Murphy Ireland is a leading multi-disciplinary engineering and construction company founded in 1968 and employing over 500 people. It is part of the Murphy Group which also has operations in the UK and Canada. Murphy’s culture is built on a foundation of family values, where it believes every single employee has an impact on the company. One employee who has certainly had that is Patrick Maguire who, since returning to Ireland in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic armed with a wealth of knowledge and experience from different cultures, has become an integral part of the Murphy team.
A chartered member of both the Institute of Civil Engineers and Engineers Ireland, Patrick graduated in 2011 with a MEng in Civil Engineering from Queen’s University Belfast. Due to the recession, he moved to the UK to work on international development projects from a hub base in Cambridge. The Cullaville, Co. Armagh native undertook engineering and contract preparation where he gained a great appreciation for the structure and communication around successfully delivered projects.
To strengthen this knowledge, Patrick took a posting to Pakistan in 2012 as a design coordinator for a project which involved the upgrade of the world’s largest contiguous irrigation network in the southern province of Sindh. After a period of time, Patrick took the position of in-country project manager, coordinating project delivery with the project team back in the UK and managing national staff.
Patrick spent the next four years travelling over to Pakistan periodically as the resident engineer incorporating the management of all project staff. In tandem with this, he began undertaking the position of project manager for UK-based jobs within the company, specialising in construction delivery and contract management. In addition, Patrick also undertook the project management for projects of other disciplines, including design, feasibility, funding business care and professional delivery.
Patrick’s track record on delivery was noted, and he was placed in a position of deputy account leader for a key client. He took this opportunity to evoke best practices in delivery with a detailed look on delivery KPIs and metrics.
The affable Armagh man’s passion for onsite delivery led to him taking a new role with a contractor in London, using both his project management capabilities and familiarisation with infrastructure and development to deliver utilities projects. Alongside his project / contract manager role, Patrick was the design manager for the UK projects, managing up to 11 technical staff. This post enabled him to strengthen his technical knowledge in delivery of water projects and gain an appreciation of design impacts to construction. Optimising design to ensure safe, efficient construction became an area of engineering that Patrick wanted projects to excel in.
After almost a decade abroad, Patrick returned to Ireland with the aim of pursuing his project management role on Irish infrastructure. Since joining Murphy Ireland, he has been instrumental in delivering new technologies in the water treatment sector and has been rewarded with promotion to the position of Projects Director for works involving design and build projects in the Republic of Ireland.
“When I left Ireland in 2011, my objective was to acquire sufficient experience abroad, ensuring that when I did come home, I would be able to have a positive impact on delivering national infrastructure. That’s where the joy comes from,” he says.
“As a 33-year-old, managing a project of such national importance with Irish Water in Ringsend was quite daunting. But at the same time, it was a great opportunity for me to apply my past experiences and to put my stamp on it.
“That’s one of the great things about Murphy – they encourage you to fulfil your potential. I was brought into a team as the new guy and the first thing that struck me was how welcoming and open-minded everyone was. The buy-in was exemplary, from the graduate up to the project manager.
“I got married and became a father during the process and never had a worry. That confidence and trust was there from the very beginning. It was a real team effort.”
He continues: “The project had a particularly challenging delivery as it involved bringing new technology to waste treatment in Ireland. But with the help of Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies who we partnered with, it was delivered successfully. Ostara went above and beyond – it wouldn’t have happened without them.”
Patrick was challenged with the overall design of Design, Build, Commission and Operation of the new plant, which was the first of its kind in Ireland and the largest in Europe by reactor volume. It involved the use of innovative technology to sustainably remove phosphorus from the wastewater being treated at Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The Phosphorus Recovery Facility was constructed within the confines of the existing plant and operates in tandem with the Aerobic Granular Sludge technology which was installed to reduce the levels of phosphorus being discharged into the Lower Liffey Estuary. This safeguards the environment of Dublin Bay and ensures that the plant operates in compliance with the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive standards.
The project was a key part of the overall plant upgrade and involved the installation of a sustainable phosphorus recovery facility using proprietary technology. Auxiliary works were also required to adapt existing wastewater treatment works on site, to supply the required media to the system and recover the phosphorus.
This project not only enables the Ringsend Wastewater Treatment plant to reduce the phosphorus released in the treated effluent, but to also allow the phosphorus recovered to be processed to sustainable fertiliser for use in agriculture. Wastewater from Dublin has been treated in Ringsend since 1906. Built in 2005, the current plant is the largest in Ireland and was designed to cater for the equivalent of 1.64 million people.
Extracting phosphorus, which is a valuable finite resource, from wastewater is an innovation that brings forward a more sustainable use of part of the wastewater. The technology brings a new meaning of providing fertilisers to the agricultural industry and making use of elements which may otherwise be discharged in the treated effluent.
Murphy Ireland
Kingswood Drive,
Citywest Business Campus,
Dublin 24PV4D.
Telephone: +353 (0)1 403 9300
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.murphygroup.ie
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, November 2023, Vol 9 No 11
