MCD Fire Engineering is bringing the latest innovations in fire safety from Australia to Ireland - and vice versa, aiming to incorporate the best of both worlds in the application of fire safety solutions.
The fire engineering and disability access consultancy, which opened in Dublin last year, has a sister office in Sydney which has been providing fire safety solutions to the construction and engineering sectors there for over a decade.
The business was founded by chartered fire engineer Mark McDaid, who is originally from Donegal.
Today he leads an expert team of fire engineers from offices in Glasnevin, as well as in Sydney, and commutes between the two.
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It’s a set up that gives him a unique opportunity to provide the best in international fire safety solutions to clients in both markets.
Experience
McDaid has a long track record in fire safety, starting with a primary degree in fire safety and fire engineering from Letterkenny Institute of Technology (LYIT), now Atlantic Technological University (ATU).
After graduating in 2003 he attained a post graduate diploma in fire safety from Trinity College Dublin followed by a master’s degree in fire and explosion engineering from the University of Leeds, where he won the top prize for his research project on smoke control reservoirs.
He subsequently spent almost a decade working at one of Dublin’s top fire engineering firms - on projects spanning the residential, retail, office, hospitality, education, industrial/manufacturing and healthcare sectors - before leaving, in 2010/2011, to travel around the world for a year with his wife.
When they landed in Sydney, a former colleague from Dublin put him in touch with a friend who offered him a job on the spot and asked how soon he could start.
“They were screaming out for chartered engineers in Australia who specialise in fire safety,” he explains. While the couple carried on with their travels, the opportunity piqued his interest. “I did up my CV for Australia and got five very significant offers straight away, choosing the smallest of the five because it offered more perks,” he recalls.
What also appealed to him was the fact that its owner had previously worked for one of the world’s largest fire safety engineering firms, before going out on his own, something McDaid was also keen to do.
He ended up setting up a second office for his employer in Sydney, followed by a virtual office in Brisbane.
The role gave him both an in-depth knowledge of the latest innovations in fire engineering in Australia, as well as an invaluable education in entrepreneurship.
So equipped, in 2015 he left to set up his own business, MCD Fire Engineering, in Sydney. Although he had set aside savings to fund him through his first year, he didn’t need them, such was the demand for his services from day one.
By its second year MCD Fire Engineering had a turnover in excess of AUS $1 million and has continued to grow. Today the Sydney business works with a large and loyal client base of architects and developers, many of whom are repeat customers. “Clients use us because we’re skilled and highly experienced at what we do,” he says.
But he also believes that a key to the business’s success in Australia was its commitment to clear and honest communications.
“We operate in an industry in which fire consultants can be hard to pin down and even harder to get an answer out of. That’s not how we operate. I’d rather tell someone up front if something doesn’t work and offer them a solution,” he says.
It’s a straight speaking reputation that extends to its clear pricing. Where others in the sector might opt to compete by quoting the cheapest price possible – and then very often send out junior personnel to do what is an expert’s job – McDaid takes a different tack.
MCD Fire Engineering will never be the cheapest, says McDaid, but only because it operates on the basis that getting something right the first time is always cheaper than having to fix it afterwards. We have seen this not only in Australia but also through the lens of the Celtic Tiger era in Ireland.
More than that, fire engineering is too important to skimp on, he adds, pointing to the evacuation of residents at Dublin’s Priory Hall in 2011 for fire safety reasons, and, worse still, the tragedy of Grenfell Tower in London, as cases in point.
It’s why, for example, rather than leaving the inspections and checking of the requisite fire safety standards at the completion stages of a project, MCD Fire Engineering emphasises the carrying out of inspections all along the way, to ensure that what can’t be seen – behind walls and ceilings - complies fully with all fire safety regulations.
Integrity
Having established and successfully grown his business in Australia, the desire to be closer to friends and family, and for his young Australian born children to be close to family in Ireland, prompted McDaid and his wife to return to Ireland and set up a second operation here.
Today the company offers a nationwide service here, working with architects around the country who are typically at development planning stage, right through to construction and completion stage.
It specialises in both fire safety and accessibility certificate applications for developments such as residential, retail, offices, warehousing, manufacturing, schools or assembly/recreational buildings.
It’s a hugely responsible task and one he takes seriously.
“I take enormous pride in being able to exercise our expertise in the real world of fire safety,” says McDaid.
“We also love helping the design teams – the architects and engineers – to come up with new solutions and new ideas, whether for new builds or to identify an existing problem and remediate a solution.”
As a chartered engineer in Australia, Ireland and Europe and APEC engineer, with over 22 years in the application of fire safety engineering, he has experience of new and innovative practices in each country that has enormous applications in the other. It gives the company a competitive advantage in both markets.
“I want to bring the best of both worlds to the industry in each, and in so doing, raise the bar,” he explains.
At the end of the day his mission is about so much more than business success. Fire safety is, after all, quite literally life and death, which is why integrity is his watchword.
Says McDaid: “I take great pride in being able to provide good advice to the industry so that I can say, not only is this building compliant with regulations, but it is also a genuinely safe building.”
