Mark Flanagan and his Senior Team have led Kirby through the last four years of challenging and exciting change, and they continue to lead the company as it reaches revenue of over €700m in 2024 which will be a record year for growth and development at the company.

Irish Building Magazine speak to Mark Flanagan, Kirby Group Engineering.

AS A LEADER, Mark is ‘hands on’ and brings an expertise to the role that is based on his knowledge of the business, having progressed from an electrical apprenticeship background through each of the site supervisory and management roles to Group Operations Director and then in 2020 to Group Managing Director. Now in 2024, he is the Company’s first Chief Executive Officer. Mark knows how things are engineered and how they can be efficiently and effectively constructed. This ‘hands on’ knowledge is at the core of the approach to business leadership at Kirby. Senior Leaders in Kirby know the business and they know how to handle leading-edge engineering and construction challenges because they have ‘done the hard yards’ building real projects.
This is testament to Kirby’s proud legacy of 60 years of developing and empowering talented people in a structured manner. Brothers Tom and Michael Kirby established their engineering business in Limerick’s Thomondgate in 1964. Its headquarters are still in Limerick, at Raheen Business Park, but the firm’s footprint has spread far and wide – across Ireland, the UK, mainland Europe and, as of last year, South Africa too.

Kirby has a first-class reputation for delivering leading-edge projects in a variety of specialised sectors, including data centres, industry and pharma. It is also involved in power and renewables, providing High Voltage / Medium Voltage design and build services for utilities, the renewables sector and large industry facilities. The Kirby team also has substantial experience in delivering high-profile HVDC interconnector projects in Ireland and the UK.

Mark’s progress and impact on the development of the company over the last decade has been immense. He believes and practices that true leadership is about empowering others to be ‘the best they can be’. He is a high-energy leader who leads by example and consistently ‘looks around corners and challenges, stretches, and supports his team. He and his senior team of Henry McCann, John Grogan, and Conor O’Brien continuously look for newer and better ways of doing things. At Kirby, we see complacency as being the enemy of growth and improvement at individual, team and organisational level as being the building blocks of success. Mark believes that leadership is about relationships and a fundamental part of this process is maintaining the priorities that are core to the company’s identity: “Everyone at Kirby is aware of our core values – people, safety, quality, delivery and value, and we always emphasise ‘people’ as number one. Each of our relationships, with colleagues, potential customers or clients we’ve known for years, is based on getting to know them and what they need. Once you’re committed to working on that, the other four values flow from that point.”

Kirby does not take succession planning lightly and since 2015 has set out a plan that saw Jimmy Kirby, Executive Chairman, successfully lead the company from 2017 to 2019 and Mark lead the company from 2020.

Mark decided and communicated to the Board in 2019 that he would lead the company for five years. Coming to the end of that five-year period, 2024 is set to be a record year of delivery and growth for the Group and a year of major investment in our human capability. Mark will remain on the Board for a period of time to support the team in developing in their new roles.
Current Group Operations Director Henry McCann has now been appointed as CEO (designate). Henry has been part of the Kirby team for almost 18 years. Having started with the company as a Project Manager, Henry’s career is another example of succession development at Kirby. He says he’s looking forward to the next steps: “I’ve worked closely with Mark in recent years, and we share a passion for operational excellence and creating value for our customers.”

I passionately believe that being fair, honourable and reasonable in everything we do is a recipe for success. It’s a strong bedrock for building success in a business.

Taking up the CEO Designate position this year has offered an efficient transition into the role before it becomes permanent in January 2025”. Henry will be supported in his new role by his experienced Kirby colleagues John Grogan and Conor O’Brien who are being promoted to Chief Operations Officer (COO) and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) respectively in January 2025.
Kirby believes that a successful business creates and delivers value for internal and external stakeholders and builds strong relationships with its valued clients. Mark believes a fundamental part of this process is maintaining the priorities that are core to the company’s sixty-year-old identity. “I passionately believe that being fair, honourable and reasonable in everything we do is a recipe for success. It’s a strong bedrock for building success in a business.” “From there, you add in the best people you can find, you give them the tools they need to deliver and you’re on the right path.”

Maintaining the principled foundations laid by the Kirby brothers has allowed the company to continually adapt to move with the times over 60 years. The past 20 years has seen massive strides in two particular areas digitisation and offsite manufacturing (OSM), and Kirby has been at the forefront of these in its sector. Significant investment in both areas has allowed the company to offer extremely precise control over factors like project scheduling, materials, quality control, health, safety, and budgeting, which in turn improves outcomes for the client.

We’re building the infrastructure of the future. Experts are predicting that hyperscale projects like the ones we work on are going to double in size every four or five years, which is incredibly exciting.

The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) has had a massive impact on multiple industries and become a talking point across the economy. Despite concerns over the impact of AI on the labour force, Mark Flanagan is not unduly concerned: “We’ve already harnessed AI to an extent in our work and of course, I see its power increasing in the coming years. At the end of the day, we are creating a physical building and despite the opportunities afforded through prefabrication, we still need to be on site, putting the tangible elements together. Although our data is increasingly being stored in the cloud, the reality from our point of view is that the cloud is on the ground, inside these incredible data centres our teams are building for clients, and that won’t change for now.”

Mark has always been fascinated by the power of the projects Kirby works on: “We’re building the infrastructure of the future. Experts are predicting that hyperscale projects like the ones we work on are going to double in size every four or five years, which is incredibly exciting. The reality is that beyond the next ten years or so we’re not sure what things will look like, we just know we’ll need to be at the top of our game to compete for the projects, and we’re confident we can do that.”

A major factor in designing and constructing this powerful infrastructure is its impact on the environment, something Kirby takes seriously from the very start of every project. The company’s Director of QEHS and Sustainability, Giedre Visockaite is charged with ensuring that the company integrates environmental and social considerations from the outset, which mitigates potential negative impacts and ensures that the infrastructure aligns with sustainable practices.

Change is a constant, and it creates exciting opportunities. However, Kirby believes it is well placed for the future by consistency in our approach to client service through the ‘Kirby Way’ and in structured and proactive planning. Nowhere is this approach more evident than in how we focus on having the right leadership and people in place through our succession planning, which aims to ensure that we can lead in meeting the needs of our valued customers into the future.