Ormonde Construction

Lisa O’Shea’s surveying journey began when she started her apprenticeship in plastering, which is where she found her love for all things construction. Later, she realised that she wanted to go back to college to do a course in construction studies with quantity surveying.

She admits that at this point she didn’t know much about quantity surveying but through a brilliant lecturer, Martin O’Neill, she became more and more interested in this field of work.
She says: “He got me completely hooked on quantity surveying. He made it really enjoyable, brought us on site visits and made everything really interesting”. Lisa had originally planned to complete two years of construction studies and continue on with plastering, but after her transformative learning experience, she decided to finish the rest of the course and achieved an honours degree in quantity surveying.

Moving up

After that, Lisa joined a local Kilkenny firm as a quantity surveyor. She spent three years there and then a year in England, before returning to take up a position in Dublin. She has since moved back to Kilkenny and now works with Ormonde
Construction. Lisa explains that the company is a fast-paced environment, where they have completed a number of projects in both the public and private sector, ranging from commercial, retail, and industrial, to the food and beverage, healthcare, educational, sports and leisure, and residential sectors.

Responsibilities

Lisa’s role as quantity surveyor involves a variety of responsibilities such as cost estimation, budgeting, tendering, procurement, cost control, valuations on projects, noting variations on site, ensuring that everything is compliant with the Building Control Amendment Regulations (BCAR), and keeping a line of communication open with design teams and clients. Mostly, her work day consists of managing the costs and finances of a construction project: “I am responsible for estimating the cost involved in construction, material, labour, equipment and other expenses required to complete the project. I have moved into the development side of our company now, so I’m more involved in the initial stages of getting projects up and running”.