The ICT Skills Plan and the Higher Diploma in Science in Computing Graduate Conversion Programme: an Example of Government, Third Level and Industry Engaging to Address a Specific Skills Deficit in the Irish Economy

The past 15 years have been ones of rapid change not only in the ever growing impact of ICT on everyday life but also locally in terms of talent development and delivery for ICT graduates. One of the critical issues identified for Ireland and indeed internationally, has been a shortage of Level 8 Graduates in Computing and Computer Science. Enterprise Ireland, Forfás, the HEA, the IDA, Industry bodies such as ICT Ireland, The Irish Computer Society, Engineers Ireland and IBEC as well as government departments recognised the criticality of supply of talented graduates to Ireland’s ICT sector and took measures to correct the situation culminating in the 2014-2018 ICT Skills plan. A key response measure aimed at addressing the ICT Skills shortages was the funding of a call in late 2011 for graduate conversion programmes aimed at converting numerate graduates from disciplines other than computing who worked in declining sectors of the economy into graduates with ICT Skills sufficient to take up graduate level roles in the ICT sector. This paper discusses the formation of an Institute of Technology based consortium, including DIT, ITB and IT Tallaght to respond to the call for graduate conversion programmes. Discussed is the range of industry partners included in the consortium, their contribution to the development of the programme and their subsequent engagement with the programme. Also discussed are the very positive outputs from the first cycles from the programme including the employment successes and the actual range of roles obtained by graduates of the programme. Included in the paper are feedback and learning from each of industry, Institutes and student participants

Building services and the code for sustainable homes

This paper investigates the design of space heating and ventilation to meet Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) (CLG, 2008) targets for detached housing. The design of building services plant is radically affected by the requirements of the CSH. “Super insulated” u values and much "tighter" construction lead to fabric losses and uncontrolled ventilation rates that are considerably lower than those achieved by Building Regulation Approved Document L1A (ODPM, 2006). Before considering renewable technologies such as photovoltaics, designers should fully explore the potential of envelope and plant to achieve minimum CO2 emissions. Even with the most stringent envelope build quality it is not possible to meet CSH Level 3 without either triple glazing, solar thermal or mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. The CSH will require designers, builders and plant manufacturers to reconsider traditional envelope, heating and ventilation solutions

Work Organisation and Innovation - Case Study: ROFF, Portugal

[Excerpt] Founded in 1996, ROFF is a Portuguese firm dedicated to the implementation of SAP solutions. Since its early days, the company has grown significantly and currently employs just over 500 people. It has offices in Lisbon, Oporto and Covilha in Portugal, in Luanda (Angola), Paris, Stockholm and Casablanca. The company has also developed projects in many other European countries as well as in other African, South and North American countries and China. More than 50% of the sales turnover is based on international projects. In 2011 ROFF had consultants operating in 44 different countries. ROFF’s main direct competitors include firms like Accenture, Deloitte and Cap Gemini

Digital Transformation - IoT is a Metaphor

Digital Transformation is a convergence of multiple tools, technologies and ideas. A few of these elements are discussed in "IoT is a Metaphor" (PDF).Digital Economics is approaching and the "new economy" will need new rules, new changes and new thinking. Digital Transformation is a step toward Digital Economy. In this article, we haven't even scratched the surface of the imminent digital tsunami. Infrastructure and innovation must converge with tools and technologies, where systems must connect and communicate to meet the customer at the point of consumption. This will be an immense change which will turn paradoxes to paradigms. Please scroll down to download the pdf "IoT is a Metaphor

A comparison of the UK Standard Assessment Procedure and detailed simulation of solar energy systems for dwellings

The drive to reduce worldwide Carbon Emissions directly associated with dwellings and to achieve a zero carbon home dictates that Renewable Energy Technologies will have an increasingly large role in the built environment. Created by the Building Research Establishment (BRE), the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) is the UK Government's approved methodology for assessing the energy ratings of dwellings. This paper presents an evaluation of the advantage given to SAP ratings by the domestic installation of typical Photovoltaic (PV) and Solar Domestic Hot Water (SDHW) systems in the UK. Comparable PV and SDHW systems will also be simulated with more detailed modelling packages. Results suggest that calculation variances can exist between the SAP methodology and detailed simulation methods, especially for higher performance systems that deviate from the default efficiency parameters

State of the Irish Housing Stock - Modelling the heat losses of Ireland’s existing detached rural housing stock & estimating the benefit of thermal retrofit measures on this stock

Ireland’s housing stock has been identified as being amongst the least energy efficient in Northern Europe. Consequently, atmospheric emissions are greater than necessary. Government funded schemes have been introduced to incentivise the uptake of thermal retrofit measures in the domestic Irish market. A study of Ireland’s housing highlights the dominance of detached houses (43%), 72% of which are rurally located and are predominantly heated with fuel oil. This paper investigates the economic and carbon case for thermal retrofit measures to the existing detached, oil centrally heated, rural housing stock. The study found the case for energy efficiency measures to be categorical and supports the Irish Government’s focus on energy efficiency policy measures. Thermal retrofit measures in the detached housing stock have the potential to realise an averaged 65% theoretical reduction in heating costs and CO2 emissions for houses constructed prior to 1979 (coinciding with the introduction of building regulations) and around 26% for newer homes, thus offering a significant contribution (44%) to Ireland’s residential carbon abatement projections and hence in meeting the EU’s directives on energy and carbon. The greatest savings (36%) of Ireland’s carbon abatement projections result from improving the energy efficiency of the pre 1979 stock

A Generalisable Bottom-up Methodology for Deriving a Residential Stock Model From Large Empirical Databases.

Average reference dwellings representing a predominant housing typology are defined in this work. Specifying such reference buildings is a prerequisite for (i) calculating cost-optimal energy performance requirements for buildings and building elements and (ii) ensuring valid calculations of national building energy consumption. In the EU, an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating is an assessment of the energy consumption of a dwelling. The use of inappropriate default-values for the building envelope thermal transmittance coefficients (U-values) and standardised thermal bridging transmittance coefficients (Y-values) in the production of EPCs leads to an over-estimation of potential energy savings from interventions in the existing dwelling stock

Towards Female Empowerment. The New Generation of Irish Women Poets: Vona Groarke, Sinéad Morrissey, Caitríona O’Reilly and Mary O’Donoghue

The monographic study “Towards Female Empowerment − The New Generation of Irish Women Poets: Vona Groarke, Sinéad Morrissey, Caítriona O’Reilly, and Mary O’Donoghue” analyses in depth the poetry written by four most significant Irish authors born in the 1970s. Together with insightful interpretations of the explored poetry, it offers a new reading of philosophy, social and cultural studies, and psychology connected with the subject matter of women’s empowerment. The book constitutes a thought-provoking debate on the up-to-date issues that need to be critically re-examined and re-thought these days. It is an inspiring reading for people interested not only in Irish poetry but in modern literature in general.I have dedicated this monograph to my Mother whose unremitting and unfailing support “empowered” me to work on this book. Many thanks to my fiancé for not losing faith in me and for his patience. Over the years, while conducting my research on contemporary Irish women’s poets, I have encountered many inspiring and helpful people to whom I am sincerely indebted for their advice, wisdom and encouragement. With regard to this book, my special thanks are directed to Michaela Schrage-Früh, her husband David and Frederic for their hospitality and kindness. I would like to thank Przemysław Ostalski for his help with typesetting of the book, and Richard O’Callaghan Ph.D. for proofreading of the earlier versions of the text. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Jerzy Jarniewicz for inspiring me to read poetry

Determining realistic U-values to substitute default U-values in EPC database to make more representative; a case-study in Ireland.

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are the foremost source of information on the energy performance of the EU’s building stock. Inherent in all EPC methodologies are trade-offs between reproducibility, accuracy, assessor expertise and costs. During an assessment, where accurate building data acquisition would be excessively invasive or costly, nationally specified default values are used. Default values are necessarily pessimistic to; avoid a better-than-merited rating, enable homeowners to know the advantage of energetic refurbishment, encourage homeowners to record upgrades informing EPCs, and propel assessors to seek-out information to provide an accurate rating. This work reviews default U-value use across Europe and the UK before focusing on Ireland’s EPC methodology, finding 1 in 3 entries in the Irish EPC dataset to be characterised on default U-values in 2020, leading to the dataset presenting an overly pessimistic view of the stock, thus lacking validity. To mitigate the thermal energy performance gap between theoretical rated energy consumption and actual or likely energy consumption arising from the selection of unrealistic default values for parameters; this work reviews the literature to identify and catalogue predominant/prevalent construction characteristics over time and calculates associated U-values that can be substituted for unrealistic defaults, thereby making the EPC dataset more representative and resultant national building energy stock models more robust. A total of 38 wall (8 predominant) and 4 predominant roof types were characterised finding differences between default and realistic U-values to be as high as 187%. A generalisable find-and-replace methodology for the Irish EPC database is also proposed