Sisk enjoying a surge in growth, with projects across Europe
Sisk completed the Janssen Bio Cork 2 expansion of their existing facility in Ringaskiddy, Co Cork, and implemented large-scale fed batch technology, the first of its kind in Ireland and for Johnson & Johnson globally.
Donal McCarthy
Chief Operating Officer (COO), Life Sciences, Data & Tech, Sisk
Living in Malahide, Dublin with wife Nora and three daughters Mae 18, Tess 21 and Ella, 22.
I joined Sisk in 1990 as a graduate engineer and emigrated to New York in 1994. I then rejoined Sisk in 2002 and worked my way up through the company. Throughout my career, I’ve had the privilege of working on some of our largest and most challenging projects.
I have been in my current role as COO of Data, Life Sciences & Technology at Sisk for the past two years, prior to this I was COO for Ireland. My key responsibility is overseeing the growth and management of the Data, Life Sciences & Technology business unit operating across Ireland, UK and Europe.
My role involves a lot of international travel which has been an enjoyable change for me personally. Meeting our international staff and local supply chain partners is very rewarding and seeing the impact that our work has on peoples’ lives is a fulfilling aspect of the role.
Constructing state-of-the-art life sciences facilities dedicated to the advancement of research and human health puts people at the centre of our work, including the patients whose lives are saved or improved, the people we work with — our clients, the design teams, specialist services and the many specialist vendors that service the industry.
I believe that the biggest differentiator for us is our people. We have a fantastic combination of experienced and new highly motivated staff who are very open to experiencing travel and delivering groundbreaking, high-tech projects across all our geographies. We have an unmatched list of blue-chip clients with partnerships going back as far as 40 years.
As part of the wider Sisk strategy ‘Breaking New Ground’ our ambition is to grow the Data, Life Sciences and Technology business unit sustainably, without compromising the quality of our overall delivery to meet the demands of our clients. Over the past two years, we have expanded our business and followed our key accounts into the UK and Europe as well as developing new client relationships.
In 2023, we delivered over €770m in Data Centres, Life Sciences and Technology projects, up 90% on 2022. With over 2,500 operational and support staff across Sisk, we have the resources and capability to support our strategy.
We are active in Ireland, UK, The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Croatia and prior to that in Germany. We have delivered projects in Israel and provided both construction and tech transfer support to clients in Spain.
In The Netherlands and Belgium for example, our clients, are pushing the boundaries and providing significant learning opportunities for our business. These are complex cutting-edge cancer treatment facilities and are a great example of how we are working with our clients and project teams to share knowledge and drive design innovation utilising MMC and digital transformation to enable and accelerate delivery.
Analog Devices International (ADI) located in Limerick operates a semi-conductor fabrication plant (FAB) on their site. This year marks the 40-year ongoing relationship between Sisk and ADI in Limerick. We have been an integral part to all their onsite developments, from concept design to tool installation and commissioning. Last year we also celebrated a major milestone at Vision Care in Limerick where we celebrated 5 Million accident-free hours on site.
At Sisk, our purpose is to create places for future generations and we have been on a Sustainability journey since launching our Sustainability Roadmap in 2021. There have been some notable milestones including, switching to fossil-free HVO fuel across all of our Irish construction sites.
We have many initiatives that are reducing construction carbon, we are now actively working with our clients to assess embedded carbon and using this information to challenge and inform design strategies. We also work closely with our group colleagues, Sensori FM to seek their ideas on optimising carbon reductions in facility operations, both new and with retrofit solutions.
We are also seeing demand from clients to focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI). As a female-majority, family-owned business these topics have been on our agenda for many years. We are also seeing major demand from our clients for more sustainable construction and support with improving the full life cycle of their assets.
Technology has also had a major part to play, meaning we can do more, faster and with less resources. Our teams have extensive experience in delivering prefabricated solutions along with modularised components.
The construction industry has embraced the most cutting-edge technological shifts including, 4-D Modelling, robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our teams are constantly evolving with the latest innovations.
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