Westmeath native promotes engineering for Engineers Week

Irish Water Engineer, Emily Kavanagh is promoting engineering as a career choice for young people as part of this year's Engineers Week.

Ms Kavanagh became interested in engineering watching her Dad working in the local Water Treatment Plant when she was growing up.

Born and raised near Moate, she now lives in Dublin with her engineering husband and three young children. She studied Civil Engineering in University College Dublin and received a Post Graduate Diploma in Environmental Engineering from Trinity College Dublin.

The young engineer worked with leading consultancy group RPS for five years, developing and delivering water supply and wastewater strategic planning for the Dublin Region, working on various projects including the Water Supply Project and flood modelling. She worked on the Water Supply Project with Dublin City Council for two years before joining Irish Water in 2014 as part of the Sustainability Team.

Ms Kavanagh currently works as a project engineer on the upgrade project for Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant, the largest wastewater treatment plant in the country, which will deliver the capacity to treat the wastewater for a population of 2.4 million.

Speaking about why she thinks engineering is a great career choice, Emily stated “A qualification in engineering opens the door to many opportunities to allow you to find a career that will play to your strengths. These can range from the roles that are highly technical, to those roles that are more people focused. There is a wide-ranging choice of areas to choose from within the field of engineering and in that respect, there are no limitations to what you can achieve.”

Irish Water is responsible for the delivery of all public water and wastewater services in Ireland.