“Five years ago I travelled to NY State for a client project and haven’t looked back since”
Kevin began his LotusWorks journey almost 5 years ago as a Junior Mechanical Engineer working on a semiconductor client project in Leixlip, Co. Kildare. Kevin is now Site Lead working on a multibillion-dollar semiconductor client project in Oregon USA.
“I personally love the growth opportunities that I could take, and the trust the LotusWorks Leadership team put in me to take on that additional responsibility throughout the course of my career within the company.”
When Kevin commenced his role as Junior Mechanical Engineer, he was very “nervous” as he was coming from a college theoretical background and wanted to understand and know everything about the process and the systems he was working on right away. “There is a lot to take in when you first start your career, new acronyms, systems, processes, and procedures but college gave me a basis in terms of understanding the technology and problem-solving side of things. After about a month, I began to take the lead in meetings, system walks and continued to ask a lot of questions.”
After just three months with the LotusWorks team, Kevin was presented with an opportunity to go to upstate New York working on a next-generation start-up facility “I was very excited when asked to move to New York. I started daydreaming about lunch breaks in Times Square. Unfortunately, as a young Irish lad not having travelled much, I didn’t know how much of a difference there was between upstate New York and New York City.”
Kevin commenced a role as a Commissioning and Operations Engineer within this client start-up facility, making sure to connect with the key engineers that designed, started up, and programmed the systems logic as he wanted to understand how all the facility systems interconnected and operated. “Although the first site I worked on was significantly smaller than the site I currently work on, I would never change it. I gained mechanical, instrumentation and general field knowledge that gave me a basis to start with and once you can master the basics of how a facility operates you can succeed within a larger facility as the concept remains the same.”
After a year of working across the LotusWorks Operations & Commissioning Team in upstate New York, Kevin was again presented with an opportunity to move to a pharmaceutical client site in Kansas or a global semiconductor client site in Oregon. “I decided to stay within the semiconductor industry and moved to Oregon taking up a role as a Commissioning Engineer working within the Process Exhaust Team on-site.”
During his first year working on-site, Kevin had observed a number of areas for improvement across the commissioning program on-site and the existing operating equipment that were prone to failure and increased replacement costs; so, he decided to present his operations and commissioning observations to the client. “I saw an opportunity to go to the client, detail the problem and propose a way forward. I ensured that I completed research in the background presenting data as opposed to highlighting errors based on opinion, it was about gaining the clients trust and showcasing ways through my experience that we could bridge the gap on-site and make a real difference for the client.” Kevin became solely responsible for the commissioning program on this client facility and is now the company site lead responsible for a growing team of 17 LotusWorkers across both Operations and Commissioning within five different disciplines.
When asked what he finds exciting in his day-to-day role, Kevin said, “As our site in Oregon is a Research and Development site, all new technologies on the facilities side get designed and piloted here, we get to assist with design, test the equipment, develop testing procedures, and then funnel the finished product down to the client’s other sites.”
Commenting on what he enjoys most about LotusWorks, Kevin stated, “There are a lot of things I love. I personally love the growth opportunities I could take, and the trust LotusWorks put in me to take on that responsibility. With an endless number of client sites within various industries, you have the opportunity to diversify your knowledge. If you want to relocate to another industry, state or project, the team really put people first and they make it their sole job to make sure you are happy and content as a part of the team. With the industry and project variations that the company offers, LotusWorks is a company you can spend your whole career with and still be able to learn every day”
If you want to be part of the LotusWorks team, view a full list of vacancies here.