– Dornan at 60: Micheál O’Connor on data centre pivots, Turner alliances and domestic headwinds
From a regional Irish contractor to a €1.2bn European engineering powerhouse—Dornan is celebrating 60 years of business by breaking records. Dornan Group Managing Director MICHEÁL O’CONNOR speaks with ROBBIE COUSINS about leveraging the company’s integration with Turner Construction, driving on-site diversity, and navigating the shifting digital infrastructure landscape across the UK, Ireland, and continental Europe.
When an engineering firm reaches its six-decade milestone, it offers a natural opportunity for leadership to evaluate the baseline values that have enabled such long-term stability. For Dornan Engineering, celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2026 represents far more than an impressive marker on a corporate timeline. It stands as the culmination of 60 years of operational evolution, a period during which the business successfully transitioned from a small Munster-based mechanical and electrical specialist into a European delivery partner for global clients. Over this extended journey, the company has broken new ground, expanding its geographic reach across continental Europe while simultaneously strengthening its capacity to act as a contractor.
Its 2025 financial results show the group delivering a record-breaking overall turnover of €1.214bn for the year. This milestone firmly establishes the contractor in the top tier of the European engineering and construction market, driven by its ability to secure high-value repeat business from global blue-chip clients in high-technology sectors. What makes this operational volume particularly notable is the geographic distribution of the company’s revenue. While Dornan maintains its commitment to its domestic market, generating €95m within the Republic of Ireland, the vast majority of its commercial activity is now driven by exported engineering services, which reached €1.119bn last year.
Reflecting on this period of growth, Micheál O’Connor, Group Managing Director, explains that this landmark anniversary is directly linked to the fundamental trust the company has developed with its client base over several decades. “As we reflect on a strong 2025, celebrating 60 years in business in 2026 is a significant milestone for Dornan,” Micheál O’Connor states. “It reflects the strength of our foundations and continued client trust.”
This trust has allowed the business to navigate changing macroeconomic conditions, shifting regional legislative environments, and the increasing complexity of modern mission- critical engineering projects without losing operational momentum.
A CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PIVOT IN THE UK
The most prominent narrative in Dornan’s trading performance over the past few years has been the acceleration in the UK market. Historically, the company’s British operations were anchored heavily in commercial London City projects, particularly high-rise office developments.
A structural shift in public policy by the British government, designating data centres as critical national infrastructure, had a huge impact on Dornan’s operations. This legislative change transformed the operational environment for engineering and delivery partners. By elevating the status of data centres, the UK government aimed to ensure that the nation could securely host its digital data domestically while expanding its digital economy to support the global evolution of artificial intelligence. For data centre developers, this designation provided structural guarantees regarding planning timelines, climate emissions frameworks, and utility grid energy availability.
Micheál O’Connor explains, “When the British government made a strategic decision to designate data centres as critical infrastructure, that was the game-changer for our business in the UK. We were well positioned to capitalise on this policy shift, pivoting our specialised engineering resources to fulfil the sudden surge in critical digital infrastructure demand.”
The commercial outcomes were immediate, with the UK business expanding to nearly £400m last year across a portfolio of critical data centres. This expansion turned the UK into Dornan’s largest single geographic market in 2025, surpassing its broader continental European operations.
NAVIGATING HEADWINDS AND EMBARGOES
In contrast to the rapid acceleration experienced across the Irish Sea, the domestic market presented a more challenging and competitive environment throughout 2025. The data centre sector in Ireland remained constrained by a utility grid embargo, which restricts the development of new hyperscale processing facilities. Consequently, the domestic market produced smaller-scale data centre developments.
Following an investment boom driven by global vaccine manufacturing infrastructure during the pandemic period, the pace of capital expenditure moderated as international pharmaceutical companies adjusted to new drug development timelines.
Recent capital investments within the Irish pharmaceutical market have shifted toward specialised facilities for diabetes treatment and weight-management medications. Dornan successfully secured a role in several of these advanced biotech developments.
Micheál O’ Connor comments, “The combination of utility grid constraints on digital infrastructure and some cooling in the pharmaceutical construction sector created a highly competitive domestic market.
As a result, the Irish market has been slow of late.” Rather than being constrained by this local plateau, Dornan has utilised its established international footprint to absorb regional variations and deliver strong performance in growing markets.
EUROPEAN EXPANSION THROUGH STRATEGIC PARENTAGE AND ALLIANCES
Beyond the UK and Ireland, continental Europe remains a foundational market for Dornan, driven by steady projects in Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland.
Germany and Spain are growing markets for Dornan, which are projected to become Europe’s dominant data centre hubs alongside the UK. While Germany sees sustained investment across life sciences and digital infrastructure, Spain’s boom is fuelled by abundant energy and a shift from passive air cooling to advanced liquid cooling, enabling high-efficiency facilities in warmer climates.
Dornan’s expansion is heavily accelerated by its integration into Turner Construction Company. This acquisition allows Dornan to leverage global reach and form tier-one partnerships with fellow Turner companies, such as Hochtief in Germany and Dragados in Spain.
“Under this model, our partners handle civil and structural construction, while we deliver specialised mechanical, electrical, and process engineering solutions,” Micheál O’ Connor explains.
CONTINUITY AND SUCCESSION
To manage a billion-euro international business operating across multiple countries, Dornan evolved its internal leadership structure during 2025. The company established four focused business divisions, each led by an internal managing director. This structural redesign was engineered to enhance corporate accountability, deepen sector-specific focus, and guarantee absolute consistency in project delivery as the business scales internationally.
The leadership structure supports distinct operational pillars. Dave Dukelow serves as the managing director for the Life Sciences and Industrial division, while Derek Hogan took charge of Critical Infrastructure, which encompasses the data centre business. Brendan Herbert leads the Advanced Technology division, focusing on specialised digital facilities, and Ronan Keohane continues to head up the UK business and DESL, with a strategic remit to expand this delivery model further into continental Europe as new opportunities emerge. This executive tier is supported by procurement director Barry O’Hea and Finance Director Darren Tutty, completing a cohesive executive leadership team.
What makes this leadership transition remarkable is that every single one of these senior appointments was made from within the organisation’s existing ranks.
Micheál O Connor comments, “The individuals in these executive roles boast tenures ranging from 15 to 30 years with Dornan, representing a profound depth of institutional knowledge and cultural alignment. This structured succession planning is vital for maintaining our core identity. The longevity of our senior staff reflects a deliberate, long-term approach to career planning and a strong corporate culture within Dornan.”
PRAGMATIC INNOVATION AND THE OFFSITE ASSEMBLY STRATEGY
In an industry frequently prone to chasing passing technological trends, Dornan’s approach to innovation remains pragmatic and client-centric. The company has avoided having to constantly reinvent its baseline operating model, choosing instead to focus on continuous, disciplined refinement of established engineering methodologies. This evolution is driven by the changing demands of major global clients, who are looking to commoditise their physical facilities and place a premium on pre-engineering and modular construction.
“We have invested heavily in expanding our internal engineering capabilities, building a substantial in-house design team that spans mechanical, electrical, civil and structural engineering disciplines.”
This design intelligence forms the backbone of the company’s extensive offsite fabrication and modular manufacturing strategy. Having established its first offsite fabrication facility in Coventry in 2018 to service the UK market, Dornan added two new manufacturing facilities on the continent during 2024, located in Belgium and the Netherlands, to directly support European data centre clients.
By shifting thousands of hours of complex pipe fitting, electrical containment assembly, and equipment testing from the unpredictable environment of a live construction site into controlled manufacturing facilities, Dornan reduces project risk. Offsite fabrication delivers faster and more predictable schedules, enhances safety, and improves overall sustainability outcomes.
O’Connor notes, “Our innovation strategy is entirely about listening to and reflecting the exact operational requirements of our clients, focusing our engineering resources precisely where we can deliver the highest level of project certainty.”
REBUILDING INDUSTRY MENTORSHIP VIA THE DORNAN CORK CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE
As Dornan expands its international pipeline, recruiting and retaining skilled professionals is a top priority. To counter a post-recession decline in traditional on-the-job mentorship, the company invests heavily in professional development through its Dornan Academy. A key milestone is its new Centre of Excellence in Cork, which brings apprentices from across Ireland and Europe for intensive, multi-week training under experienced mentors, ensuring they can safely execute complex engineering tasks before working on live sites.
Micheál O’Connor views the landscape for young talent with optimism—and a touch of envy:
He comments, “If I were a graduate again, Dornan is a place that I’d love to be because it presents huge opportunities. Our focus is on ensuring that people are given the tools, the supervision, and the clear career pathways to succeed from day one.”
DIVERSIFYING THE ENGINEERING WORKFORCE
A central pillar of Dornan’s cultural transformation over the past few years has been a concentrated effort to improve gender diversity across all levels of the business. Historically, like much of the heavy engineering sector, the workforce was predominantly male. To address this imbalance, the company relaunched its Women@ Dornan initiative, a programme that has gathered substantial momentum over the past 12 months.
O’Connor explains, “The impact of this programme is becoming more visible in our employment metrics. At the start of 2025, women comprised roughly 17% of the total workforce across the group. By the first quarter of 2026, that figure had risen past 20%, driven by focused recruitment and outreach.”
While the majority of female employees have traditionally been concentrated in corporate support functions, such as human resources, finance, and administration, he adds that Dornan is seeing a shift into technical roles. “Today, women make up half of our health and safety group, and are increasingly entering project planning, quality, quantity surveying, and site-based trade apprenticeships.”
He continues, “The next step in this strategy is ensuring that this growing cohort of technical women can transition into senior operational management and executive leadership.”
To achieve this, Dornan is leveraging its integration with Turner Construction Company, drawing on Turner’s established network of senior female executives to provide direct mentorship, career advocacy, and leadership guidance to women within the Dornan business.
O’Connor acknowledges that changing the leadership profile of a heavy engineering firm requires deliberate effort, noting that they are focused on creating authentic mentoring networks and “clear career paths to ensure women are central to the future leadership of the company.”
LEAVING A DEEP CULTURAL LEGACY
When asked to consider the legacy of his tenure at the helm of the company, Micheál O’Connor shifts the conversation away from financial milestones and turnover figures. While a billion-euro balance sheet is a significant corporate achievement, he insists that true leadership success is measured by the culture left behind inside the organisation once a leader departs.
For Dornan, that cultural benchmark was validated by its inclusion in the ‘Sunday Independent’s list of the top employers in Ireland, ranking at number 41 overall.
He comments, “This recognition is important. It highlights a sustained corporate effort to cultivate an authentic workplace environment where employees feel safe, valued and respected. This philosophy goes far beyond traditional physical site safety, extending directly into comprehensive mental health and emotional well-being initiatives.”
Dornan’s mental health strategy is built upon a practical business truth: A workforce that feels safe, supported, and genuinely cared for by its leadership is inherently more focused, collaborative, and productive. This protective culture covers a massive operational footprint. “We directly employ over 1,400 people, while managing upwards of 4,500 subcontractors across our various international project sites. Extending this safety and well-being culture to thousands of external subcontractors requires an ongoing commitment to education and open communication.”
Ultimately, Micheál O’Connor views his mission as building an inclusive environment where every single worker, from an apprentice stepping onto a site for the first time to a senior project director, has an equal opportunity to build a meaningful career.
“The legacy I’d like to leave is to establish Dornan as an employer of choice. That’s a simple legacy that I hope will remain on and on in Dornan after I depart,” Micheál O’Connor concludes.