Since its establishment, Kiernan Engineering Contractors has earned a reputation for quality workmanship and service.
Building Ireland caught up with company director Finbarr O’Regan recently to learn more.
Now operating with 180 staff from its base at Airport East Business & Technology Park, Co Cork, Kiernan Engineering Contractors is very much a leader in the Irish electrical industry.
The company has successfully completed a wide range of projects – many of which are in and around the Cork area – in the pharmaceutical, petro chemical, industrial commercial, educational, food and healthcare sectors.
They complement innovative design and installation with exceptional, professional instrumentation and calibration solutions and are very much experts in office fit-outs, clean room installations and energy saving projects from inception to commissioning.
Finbarr O’Regan has been a director at Kiernan Engineering Contractors for approximately 20 years now and took the time to fill Building Ireland in on what they’ve been up to lately.
“We’re very busy all round lately with pharmaceutical work, oil and gas and medical too,” he explained.
“We’re just finishing a five-week turnaround in Irving Oil in Whitegate (Co Cork). We were the sole electrical contractor on that site and right now we have a lot of projects going on.
“We just finished a fit-out for a seven storey building for Clearstream in Cork city. That’s just finishing up for us now and we’ve a lot of on-going projects.”
Providing direct gainful employment to a crew of 180, Kiernan Engineering Contractors is by and far the largest independent electrical contractor in Cork.
The catchment area covered is predominantly within the Cork and Munster region, although projects have been undertaken nationwide.
“We’ve worked on a lot of Tesco stores around Ireland when they were expanding over a decade ago but, other than that, we are a Munster-based business. The pharmaceutical sector is embedded here and that’s where we draw most of our work from,” said Finbarr.
Indeed Kiernan Engineering Contractors is particularly renowned for its work within the pharmaceutical sector, having completed many high-profile instrumentation projects in local plants such as Pfizer, Janssen, Brinny (Merck Sharpe Dome) and Dairygold.
The company has had a presence on the BioMarin site in Ringaskiddy since 2006, completing a wide variety of project work there.
They have been an on-site contractor at Pfizer, Ringaskiddy for over 25 years and have carried out a large number of projects there, with over 70 small-to medium-sized projects often completed in a typical calendar year.
Other notable clients include Amazon, Cork University Hospital and University College Cork, to mention just a few.
Kiernan Engineering Contractors operates to the strictest of Safety Standards and all employees have a minimum of Safe Pass, Kiernan Safety Induction Program, and ATEX Hazardous Area Training Program.
On-going training is an integral part of the company’s Safety Policy.
They operate to the highest of quality standards and are accredited with NSAI ISO 9001:2015.
“All of our employees would be fairly highly skilled and our Safe T Certificate is at an A standard. There’d only be about 25 of those in the country,” Finbarr pointed out.
“All of our employees go through the ATEX programme as well, so we’re working to very high standards.”
No doubt standards are constantly high, but what is it that sees Kiernan Engineering Contractors’ clientele choosing them first ahead of the rest of the competition out there?
For Finbarr, a lot of it has to do with the trust the company’s clients have had instilled in them down through the years.
“It’s our attention to detail and the relationships we’ve built up with clients,” said the director.
“As I said, we’re working to very high standards here and the clients that we’re working for have to demand those high standards.
“We still mostly concentrate on the Cork and Munster region, with Cork being our main area.”
When founded by Frank Fogarty, Richard Browne and Finbarr O’Regan, Kiernan Engineering Contractors cut its teeth working mainly in the industrial sector before beginning to concentrate on pharma in the mid-90s.
Today, pharmaceutical, industrial, educational and healthcare the sectors that the company caters for the most, with the personnel, experience and expertise to cover all sectors.
Instrumentation is a big part of what they do, along with calibration services. To this end, they employ a number of instrumentation technicians in-house.
According to Finbarr, business in and around Cork city is booming at the moment, which has seen them having to increase their workforce over the past 18 months or so.
The company recently finished work on the construction of an extension and complete fit-out of a 163 bedroom hotel with bar, restaurant and meeting room facilities on the South Mall, Cork of the new Maldron Hotel.
Works also included is the internal fit out of the existing shell and core building ground floor front and back of house, basement level bedrooms, meeting rooms and back of house accommodation/plant. It also comprised of the retention of existing protected façade to Parnell Place.
“We just finished a 163-bedroom Maldron Hotel in Cork city,” said Finbarr.
“Cork itself has really take off in the last few years and it’s helped to see our staff numbers grown awful lot.
“Then on top of that you have the Oil & Gas sector being really busy as well, with Irving Oil investing in the oil refinery in Whitegate, so we’d be doing a lot for them there too.”
Indeed Kiernan Engineering Contractors’ staff numbers have practically doubled since 2017 and the signs are beyond excellent heading for 2020.
Kiernan Engineering Contractors has on-going working relationships with clients such as SOLAS, UCC, OPW, Heineken Ireland, CETB, Rockwell Automation and GE Healthcare
As for projects which are on the horizon, the company have work at the Carrigaline Educations Training Campus due to commence in October along with Horgan’s Quay Development in Cork.
Kiernan Engineering Contractors
Unit 15, Airport East Business & Technology Park,
Cork
Tel: 021 4310910
Fax: 021 4315811
Email: [email protected]
Taken from Building Ireland Magazine, September, Vol 5 No 9
Kiernan Engineering Contractors
