Keith Shirley

The Showcase articles are my attempt at helping to promote local businesses by giving them a little extra exposure. Todays article is about the Hayes Higgins Partnership.

Hayes Higgins Partnership

Who are they?

The Hayes Higgins Partnership is a multidisciplinary consulting engineering practice employing 50 staff in Dublin and Kilkenny. Rather than just concentrating on one specific area of engineering -Hayes Higgins Partnership aims to bring together the best professionals to suit their customers’ needs.

More details of the practice can be found in the newsletter at http://www.hayeshiggins.ie/images/newsletter.pdf

What kind of services and products do they offer?

Hayes Higgins Partnership has core capabilities in numerous areas:

• Civil and Structural Engineering
• Building Services
• Forensic Engineering
• Project Management
• Health and Safety Services & PSDP
• Fire Engineering
• Transport Engineering
• Environmental Engineering
• Risk Management
• Buildings Energy Ratings

They guarantee personal involvement and supervision by senior staff and principals on all projects.

Each of the engineering disciplines is supported by a team of qualified and highly motivated individuals.  They compliment their engineering disciplines with state of the art computer software technologies and a wide support network of specialist consultants engaged as required on more complex projects.

They aim to deliver a high value service to their clients and the design teams they work with, based on their knowledge of construction economics, planning, site selection and evaluation, engineering design, and value added engineering.

More details of the specific services offered can be found on http://www.hhp.ie/index.php?page=services

Who are their typical customers?

70% comes from large commercial ventures or local authorities but they do also work on one off projects. You can contact them directly for assistance – you don’t have to go through your architect.

References are available from Hayes Higgins on request.

More details of various projects worked upon can be found on http://www.hhp.ie/index.php?page=recent

What makes their business special?

As they say on their website “Our vision is to become the No. 1 wholly Irish Owned Engineering Consultancy in Ireland by 2030.”

They aim to

• Attract and keep the best staff
• Develop the full potential of every person in the practice
• Continue to work with the best architects and contractors to produce excellent buildings
• Use their brains, imagination, experience and energy to continually refine the design and construction process
• Lead the way in integrating design and construction
• Ensure sustainability is always part of project success criteria

What are they especially proud of?

They are proud of the quality of their work, and the large volumes of work for repeat clients reflect this quality and attests to their promise of meeting or exceeding our client’s expectations. This is achieved by adherence to their core principles:

• Recognise and respond to our clients aspirations, ideas and values
• Facilitate and support creative architectural design
• Identify and explore innovative engineering solutions
• Deliver practical, buildable and cost effective solutions
• Work collaboratively with all members of the project team
• Deliver our service on time and cost efficiently
• Adherence to our Total Quality Management System

What other things do they work on?

John Hayes is a qualified arbitrator is a well respected professional witness

Donal Higginsis a project manager (Donal project managed the M50 Westlink bridge in the late 1980’s) and is a specialist in contract law

Sean Murphy has acted as consulting engineer in Australia, Saudi, Bahrain designing large hydroelectric installations and skyscrapers in excess of 50 stories.

Christopher Grey has acted as consulting engineer on the design and construction of a $1bn oil and gas storage and refinery in Nigeria.

Shane Tierney is a Building Energy Rating Assessor

Niall Patterson is a specialist in Quality Assurance and Controls

Michael Fogarty is a skilled professional witness and arbitrator

What else do the staff do?

John Hayes Senior Partner is a bass singer with the National Concert Orchestra Choir and a Swim Coach for Tipperary Youth. He is also a breeder of Charolais Pedigree Cattle.

Donal Higgins is keen sailor and has competed in numerous regattas.

Christopher Grey is a keen tri-athlete, rock-climber and mountaineer

Sean Murphy(a Kerryman from Caherciveen) trains junior footballers in north county Dublin

Shane Tierney is a keen historian of the twentieth century.

Niall Patterson is a keen golfer with a 6 handicap.

Michael Fogarty is a keen golfer and senior club hurler for Golden / Kilfeacle in Tipperary

Contact Details

Hayes Higgins can be contacted via their

Kilkenny office- The Arches, Gashouse Lane, Kilkenny.

Phone: + 353 (0)56 7764710
Fax: + 353 (0)56 7723223
Email: info@hhp.ie

Or their Dublin Office – 58 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2

Phone: + 353 (0)1 6612321
Fax: + 353 (0)1 6625804
Email: info@hhp.ie

As a followup to my article on Hotdesking in Carlow I was invited by Terry Clune to review the hotdesking facilities in the Taxback.com premises in Kilkenny.

The IDA park is on the Kilkenny ring road  – easy to access and within minutes of most parts of Kilkenny City. I was not 100% sure where in the IDA business park that the building was located but as the picture of the building shows – it’s pretty obvious once you get there. There will be no problem giving directions to your customers.

The building is shared by a bank on the ground floor and Taxback.com on the first floor. The top floor is currently set aside for the hot-desking facilities (soon to be opened).

The first signs were good when I saw the milk delivered to the front door.

The area with the hot desk facilities was not
yet complete when I was there but the taxback open plan area gives an idea of what the final facilities will be like. An interesting touch is that the office is equipped with a white noise generator. The idea is that when you are on the phone the microphone is not picking up the voices of others around you. When sitting in the reception area it’s a bit annoying (I thought it was a noisy air con unit at first) but for the office area I can see how it would be very useful.

Some details of the actual facilities

• Each desk will have its own lockable storage space and a partition between the desks. The partition itself is too low for my taste (based on the current floor plan) but if that’s the only thing I can find to complain about then it’s a good sign.
• Visitors will be greeted at the main Taxback reception area and then you get a call. As a visitor it’s pretty clear where you need to go.
• There are current a few meeting rooms available that can be booked – or just grabbed on an ad-hoc basis.
• The hotdesking area has its own kitchen (with a slim balcony – not sure if smokers will be allowed to use it) but I was told that the taxback kitchen area will also be available. This is a really nice room with comfortable seating – great for getting to know your fellow hotdesker’s.
• Access is via electronic key fobs but it’s not clear how out of hours access is going to work as the front door gets physically locked.
• Broadband and phone connection are included  – you will be billed separately for your actual calls.
• There is a nice big parking area which is properly finished. Unlike many other Irish business sites – this one is clean and well maintained.
• Copying and faxing services will be available as well as access to a printer (although there may be a small charge based on usage).
• The lease period is a minimum of 1 month (so not true hotdesking) and the price is currently expected to be 400 Euro per month.

Please contact Kelley O’Neill on 056 778 3400 or koneill@tacback.com for more details and to ensure the details here are still accurate.

Some more photos:

The Taxback.com dining area

The Hotdesking Kitchen Area

One of the small meeting rooms.

Note: If you wish to send someone the link for this page – just give them www.keithshirley.ie/showcase

The Background

Following on from the success of Bizcamp in Dublin I’ve decided to use this blog to help promote local businesses. After all – we do business with people we know.

I’ll publish a number of interview style posts here  – starting off with Carlow and Kilkenny based businesses. It’s a great opportunity to raise your profile and hopefully get some more customers.

There are hundreds of boring business directories on the Internet. The profiles I’m trying to publish here will be much more personal, informal and interesting. I love to get to know details of peoples businesses and I want people reading this blog to be interested in knowing about your business.

How will it work?

You can write your own profile or I can help you. Just remember the style should be conversational and should not sound like boring sales brochure material. The questions below can form the starting point and then we can expand on any areas I feel are not clear.

Questions:

• What are your basic business contact details?
  - Who are you? Where are you based?
• What kind of services and products do you offer?
  - In plain English – pretend I don’t know your business.
• Who are your typical customers?
  - I’d like people reading the blog to be able to refer you.
• What makes your business special?
  - Is there anything you are especially proud of? Now is not the time to be modest.
• Are there any other things that you work on that are not necessarily part of your core business?
  - You’d be amazed at how often a business deal twists into something completely different.
• Is there anything about you or your background that stands out or that you’d like to highlight?
  - You might be an Interior Designer with 20 years project management experience at Microsoft. At least I’ll know that my house redesign is more likely to be completed on time.

How can I get the updates?

Hopefully you are interested in seeing the new profiles as they are published. There are a few ways you can do this.

On the right hand side of this blog there are 2 options that you can choose:

“Enter your email address:” – If you provide your mail address you will receive an email every time the blog is updated. Follow the instructions that are given after you click the “Send me Updates” button.

If you feel more comfortable with the technology then you can use the RSS feed by clicking on “Subscribe in a Reader”. This is the fastest way to get updates.

I’d like to have my business included

Great. Please send me an email (K.Shirley@Shercom.com) with the starting questions listed above completed (only as much as you feel comfortable). Please include your phone number. You can also call me – 087 9112027 – but I can be hard to get  – I won’t answer the phone if I’m with clients.

Once I have your details we can get in contact so I can fill out the details.

I know a lot of people are not used to having to promote themselves. I will help you. Note:

• You don’t have to have a website
• You don’t even have to have email
• You don’t need to be in business a long time

Do I have to pay?

No – I’m doing this because I want to help. I plan to leave the posts available for a long time but there is no guarantee. I’ll do changes for you if details such as phone numbers change. My blog is set to allow Google to follow links – that means you can have a link to your website (if you have one) and it’ll get a little it more exposure.

I reserve the right to edit comments or posts if something is unclear or inaccurate. I also reserve the right to delete a post. You have the right to get me to delete a post. I’ll be allowing people to post comments – that means you might get some good testimonials or some pissed off customers. I suggest you respond to both in a polite and helpful way.I don’t plan to remove negative comments unless they are abusive as I feel a business can shine by dealing with a negative situation in a positive way.

Enough about me – Let’s hear about you!

Pass this on to any friends that you think can benefit. Feel free to copy any text from here that you need. If you wish to send someone the link for this page – just give them www.keithshirley.ie/showcase