Duke McCaffrey Consulting’s exceptional Senior Project Manager David Madden has been shortlisted for the prestigious Project Manager of the Year Award at the 2022 Irish Construction Industry Awards. This represents a tremendous personal accolade for an ambitious and high-achieving young construction professional, with whom Building Ireland touched base to find out more.
Industry-leading construction consultancy Duke McCaffrey has been shortlisted for awards in no fewer than three categories at this year’s Irish Construction Industry (ICI) Awards, namely Project Management Firm of the Year, Consultancy of the Year and Project Manager of the Year (David Madden).
Liked and respected by everybody who works with him, David is a highly driven team player and a talented, valued member of the Duke McCaffrey Project Management team. He is leading on some of the firm’s most complex projects across numerous sectors including community, commercial, residential, retail, education, hotel, student accommodation and infrastructure, helping deliver projects ranging in value from €500,000 to €50m.
The personal Cork man was both delighted and humbled to see his name in the shortlist for the ICI Project Manager of the Year award: “It’s a great honour to find myself in this company,” David confirms. “I was honoured that Duke McCaffrey put me forward in the first place and then to get shortlisted after that was another boost. It’s really nice to get a little bit of recognition for all the hard work you put in.”
Does it provide some validation and vindication in difficult times? “It’s been a challenging time for the industry between Covid shutdowns and rising inflation pressures. There has been a lot of uncertainty and it’s reassuring to learn that clients who put their faith in you are happy with the results.”
Duke McCaffrey Consulting is a dynamic and flexible construction consultancy committed to providing a broad range of services to clients across a wide spectrum of sectors. In response to the changing demands and needs of an expanding marketplace, the company was established by two former senior managers of a global construction consultancy business working in the Irish market
Since graduating in 2013, David has progressed quickly through the ranks to reach the level of Senior Project Manager. At 31, he is one of Ireland’s youngest Project Managers. A talented professional with almost a decade’s experience in the construction industry, having started his career as a structural engineer, he joined Duke McCaffrey in November 2020 as a Project Manager and was promoted to the position of Senior Project manager within one year.
“We’ve been very busy in the residential care sector over the past two years, during which time I’ve been involved in the construction of three new nursing homes for Delsk Group. As a Cork man, I was delighted to project manage the 93-bedroom, two-storey Riverstick Nursing Home, which was opened by An Taoiseach.”
David and Duke McCaffrey were also involved in the new 120-bed nursing home development in Duleek, County Meath and the 129-bed nursing home development in Dundalk, County Louth, constructed at costs of €12.5 and €12m respectively.
On these residential care nursing home developments projects, David was asked to lead on an in-depth value engineering process to bring the contract sum back within budget when initial tender returns exceed budget. Taking direct client changes to the design out of the equation, the projects were delivered under budget.
There is great variety to the range of projects overseen by David Madden as Senior Project Manager, another notable one being Coram Deo, Holy Trinity Church. Here, on a protected heritage site that hosted an existing rectory, Holy Trinity Church embarked on a sensitive and challenging scheme for the community of Rathmines. Their new development consists of nine new homes including a rectory and curate’ss house designed to provide sufficient accommodation for those that work within the church, serving to extend Holy Trinity’s pastoral reach. The scheme also helps to address the shortage of affordable housing stock by providing a mix of contemporary townhouses and apartments for rental
Meanwhile, the €38m Arran Street Hotel development, which is due for completion in mid-2024, will bring an exciting new 270+ bed hotel to the Fruit Market area of Dublin city. Located on Arran Street and a short walk to Jervis Street Shopping Centre and Henry Street retail areas, the project involves the demolition of existing two- and three-storey buildings and construction of the new hotel and basement below ground level.
A challenging project on a relatively restricted site and bustling retail environment, this hotel development encountered major archaeological and medieval challenges which David dealt with in a professional and practical manner with outstanding results.
Arran Street was not only a tight timescale project but had a significant complication of exploring and implementing archaeology mitigation measures to minimise cost and programme impacts from the level of archaeology finds on site. The implication of archaeology findings was an evolving situation, where issues could arise from day to day. This did not faze David, who took a proactive hands-on approach to manage the main contractor, design team and employer expectations.
As the archaeological excavation progressed, it was clear that given the nature and extent of the archaeology findings there would be significant programme and cost implications to the development. The high concentration of archaeology identified far exceeded the level of findings anticipated from historic research and prior archaeological assessments undertaken on the site.
The excavation revealed significant medieval structural remains of the abbey with a large number of medieval human burials associated with the abbey, including rare and early stone-lined cist graves of key ecclesiastical figures.
The Project Manager actively managed and provided guidance to the design team whilst exploring programme and cost mitigation measures ensuring best case outcome for the client. David researched the merits of different archaeological strategies. These included a preservation in situ and display strategy which was adapted into the overall scheme.
The change in archaeological strategy, from full excavation to partial excavation and preservation in situ, involved retaining the long-term archaeological integrity of the monastery and graveyard and preserving human burials in their burial soil matrix for future scientific research.
David’s input was particularly important not solely for ensuring the long-term archaeological integrity of the area but it was key to ensuring that the project progressed in line with the client’s budget and programme constraints, minimising impact as far as reasonably practicable.
David led an aggressive and challenging redesign of the foundation layout with work on re-designing the piles, ground beams and floors to try and mitigate the impact on the archaeology as part of the partial excavation and preservation in situ strategy. The level of the piling matt was raised to ensure that all the medieval walls were preserved in situ by avoidance.
In part due to David’s input, there were significant programme and cost savings. An anticipated six-eight month programme extension was reduced to 40 days through this change in archaeology strategy and foundation redesign. The archaeology programme of works was successfully completed in April 2022.
David Madden’s collaborative, practical and common sense approach to project management has seen him quickly establish himself as one of Ireland’s most-admired PMs. As for the key to good, effective, value-added Project Management, the ICI award nominee notes:
“Building relationships is important and working in a collaborative environment. Once everybody is on the same page and working towards a common goal, that’s a big thing. Communication is very important.
“Coming from a technical background, it’s good to have that knowledge and design teams and contractors tend to respect you more. Unexpected challenges are always going to arise so you will need strong problem-solving abilities and you need to be able to find solutions that keep the project cost, quality and programme all in line.”
Founded in 2015 by Joe McCaffrey and Kevin Duke, Duke McCaffrey was set up to provide specialist advice in MEP cost consultancy and excellence in project management for Ireland’s growing construction pipeline.
In 2015 Ireland was finally coming out of its economic crisis and the Duke McCaffrey founders took the opportunity to provide something that the larger firms could not – hands-on senior expertise that could get the job done quickly for strong economic growth. This model continues to contribute to the company’s success.
Led by a senior team of expert project managers, quantity surveyors and dispute resolution advisers, in just seven years, the business has grown to a team of 20 who have delivered no less than 5,000 hotel bedrooms, over 1,000,000 sq ft of commercial office space, 500,000 sq ft of retail space and data centre facilities with circa 200mw of power, and much more.
In an industry that is highly fragmented, Duke McCaffrey has built an incredibly strong network of allies and has a reputation for being great people to work with. The team has an ability to translate the client’s vision in a commercial way – whether retaining an architectural intent, promoting modern methods and environmental innovations or mitigating potential risk on sensitive areas such as construction disputes.
In this short time, the business has built a portfolio of projects across eleven industry sectors from pharmaceuticals and life sciences through to public and private sector developments including offices, hotels, student accommodation, extra care and homes for the vulnerable, schools, health, retail and a specific specialism in retrofitting data centres in a sustainable way.
Duke McCaffrey Consulting Ltd.,
24 Baggot Street Lower,
Dublin 2.
Te1: 01 5677300
Mobile: 087 3531326
Email: [email protected]
Web: dukemccaffrey.ie
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, February 2023, Vol 9 No 2
Duke McCaffrey Consulting Ltd.
