It is with the deepest of regret that we inform you of the passing of Des Barry.
Des Barry was one of four sons and two daughters of Jack Barry our founder. Des followed in his footsteps and became an engineer, graduating from UCD in 1967. He spent a year on the Bantry Bay marine terminal project before heading overseas to Canada. On his returned to Ireland in 1971 he worked as a Resident Engineer on the construction of Wexford Town’s water supply project. He joined J B Barry and Partners in the Water and Wastewater sector in 1974, becoming a Director in 1986. When Donal O’Donoghue retired in 1996, Des became our Managing Director. He never saw himself as a leader, always saying our direction was a collective decision and firmly believing in our partnership structure. That was until the day he decided that he liked the font Verdana. We had to change all our templates and reports overnight!
Over the years, Des was Project Manager for Bray, Wicklow Town, and Greystones Sewerage Schemes, each of which included WWTPs, trunk sewers, pumping stations and the construction major sea outfalls. He was Project Director on Mullingar Sewerage Improvement Scheme completed in 2002, reducing the number of CSO’s and limiting nutrient loadings to the River Brosna/Lough Ennel, while upgrading the existing WWTP capacity to 55,000 PE. Des was instrumental in our winning the Limerick Main Drainage project, a significant body of work removing all CSO’s for the City of Limerick, building a new treatment plant at Bunlickey with some major tunnelling contracts including the Dock Road Tunnel.
He was always open to new ideas and directions for the company and was our first contact with Royal Haskoning, understanding the benefits of collaboration with likeminded experts form different spectrums. His brave and generous support of our movement into the transportation sector and the formation of Halcrow Barry has influenced how successful we are today.
During the latter stages of Des’s career, he developed an expertise in contract documents for Design Build and Operate (DBO) type contracts. This involved significant collaboration with the Department of Finance and Department of the Environment and led to the development of the standard Conditions of Contract which enabled DBO contracts in Ireland. This suite of documents was first used on one of our projects Donegal Group A. So successful, it led to Des being invited by FIDIC to be a Task Group member for the development of the FIDIC Gold Book Conditions of Contract for DBO Projects (Green Field sites) and subsequently to his appointment as Task Group Leader (chair) for the Bronze Book, for the amendment and expansion of existing facilities (Brown Field sites) in a DBO context.
He was generous with his time, and a great mentor to graduate engineers, was not afraid to tell you to pull your socks up and do better!! He would often say you can come to me with any problem, so long as you also have a solution. It might not have been the right solution but he wanted you to have thought about the answer first. He was enthusiastic about engineering and our business of working with local councils on improving water but mostly wastewater infrastructure. He was equally as enthusiastic about enjoying life and was strong supporter of our long standing Golf Outing, always enjoying the day out and the few drinks following.
May he rest in peace.
29 March 2022