Rua talks about working as a Project Management Associate at MKO. Rua studied for a BSc in Clinical Speech and Language Therapy at the University of Galway and a BEng in International Mechanical Engineering at the HAN University of Applied Sciences in Arnhem, Netherlands. Rua joined MKO in 2023.
What inspired you to pursue a career in project management?
I had an unusual route of figuring out what area I wanted to work in. I previously worked in healthcare and enjoyed working directly with people and collaborating with colleagues from different disciplines to try and make a positive impact. It was an enjoyable role but I wanted something more technically focussed. So I went back to college to study Mechanical Engineering. This appealed to my love of logic and solving puzzles but lacked the interactivity and variety which I wanted in my career. In trying to combine all elements, I discovered MKO and applied for the Graduate Project Manager role. The communication skills I developed when working as a Speech and Language Therapist combined with the understanding of the construction industry from internships during my engineering degree gave me skills that could be adapted to become a Project Manager.
Can you describe your typical day as a Project Management Associate?
It would be a cliché to say every day is different but there is great variety in the job. I’m office-based for the most part, but I enjoy it that way. It lets me chat about projects with the rest of the team. Very rarely do I spend a full day on just one project, so there is lots of variety in the day. A typical day could involve an in-house meeting, a call with a client or design team, drafting reports or contract documents, training on a specific topic, chatting with a contractor for site updates, or assessing tenders. One thing that is consistent regardless of the task is that we bounce ideas off each other as a team, usually, someone has done something similar before and has a good idea on how best to tackle whatever we are working on.
What types of projects are you currently working on?
There’s a great range of projects that the MKO Project Management team work on. We are working with multiple universities to either directly deliver construction projects such as energy upgrades and extensions, or help them procure a design team for some major construction projects. At the same time, we’re working with housing developers to secure planning permission for over 500 houses and apartments in Galway and managing the construction of over 100 homes. Another major project for us is managing the design and delivery of three public parks around Galway City.
How would you describe the culture at MKO?
MKO is a really great company. It is over 200 people who are genuinely interested in what they are doing, and making a positive difference in Galway and Ireland. People are generous with their time and knowledge and just all-round decent people.
What do you enjoy most about your role at MKO?
There’s lots to enjoy about working here, the people are sound, the work is interesting, and the facilities are good. I think the thing that I enjoy most is that we get a peek behind the curtain of the major projects in Galway, and across Ireland, from their earliest stages. At MKO, as project managers, we’re privy to the early stages of the projects and know what the next big project will be and these are the projects that will shape our cities, universities, and businesses for years to come. That’s pretty cool.
What advice do you have for someone aspiring to pursue a career in planning with MKO?
If you have an interest in being centrally involved in projects across a range of sectors, give it a shot. As a team, we’ve come from a wide range of backgrounds and all have very different strengths and interests, there’s not one route to being a good Project Manager. If you’re interested in the types of projects we work on, and think you’ve got skills that can push those projects forward, it’s worth applying for a position.
What are the most important skills required for your role?
Juggling and keeping track of all our projects. Projects can need our attention at short notice, so we need to be able to switch our focus quickly. At a certain level, it’s about having an in-depth knowledge of multiple projects, but it’s also about being able to identify the most important issues at any given time for any given project and communicating them effectively with the client or a design team.
How does MKO support your professional development in Project Management?
The professional development here is second to none. As I mentioned above, there are many ways to be an effective Project Manager and MKO is supportive of finding the way to let us become the best Project Managers that we can be. We have fortnightly in-house training sessions on technical topics that we need to know about, but there are also more structured trainings and courses that people have completed. There is a lot of learning through working and doing, and at the early stages of the job, we were eased into the role and gently exposed to more and more responsibility at a pace that worked for us. It’s a steep learning curve as a Graduate Project Manager but you’re very well supported in that learning curve.
