The white crane looms over the foundations of DCU's new library and information research centre and the portakabins which are the temporary offices for the site staff.
Inside, sheltered from the driving rain, sits Mr Ken Lynch, who, at 31 years of age, is in the enviable position of being a contracts manager for Sisk, which is building the library.
Mr Lynch graduated from UCC in 1988, with a civil engineering degree. "I had two choices - to go into design and consultancy or contracting. Contracting appealed to me because I could see a lot more freedom would be involved in the work. I didn't fancy sitting in an office from nine to five. I thought I'd be more at home in the site environment," he says.
Of course, the late 1980s was a very poor time for the construction industry and Mr Lynch modestly says he was "very lucky" to obtain a job with Sisk in Cork.
"My first job was as a site engineer in Merchant's Quay shopping centre in Cork city," he adds. He came to Dublin via an industrial building project in Waterford.
As a site engineer on the Square shopping centre, Tallaght, he says the "main job was to make sure that the project we were working on was built in the right position and to the right shape and size". Coming in at the latter end of the project, he was mainly responsible for roads, car-parks and ancillary services.
Having spent three, six-month stints as a site engineer, he moved to the custom house docks where he worked as a senior engineer, on a building with the Kafkaesque title of Spine Block B. "It's very satisfying when you walk on to a green field site or empty shell and you leave a finished building. As site engineer you don't often get to see that."
From senior engineer, he moved up the careers ladder to become a contracts manager on a project at the Rotunda where Sisk built an extension to the hospital. "I worked abroad with Sisk on three occasions, twice in Germany, once in the Isle of Man."
As a contracts manager, his job is "multi-faceted, dealing with anything from public relations with neighbours to industrial relations with unions on site to more routine matters such as the quality of health and safety procedures".
Since returning to Ireland in December 1995, Mr Lynch has been involved in a variety of projects from Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Civic Offices to Connaught House in Herbert Street to the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre.
He describes his job as a "labour of love, it's very rewarding. If you were only working on a site in this type of position to keep the wolf from the door you'd crack up. If you hate it, you should get out. There are definitely easier ways of making money".
Sisk now has a five-year training programme for civil engineering graduates. This is designed to ensure they accumulate sufficient relevant experience to become contracts managers.
The construction industry is currently in a boom phase. The latest Higher Education Authority's survey of civil engineering graduates shows 61.5 per cent found work in Ireland with 16.7 per cent employed abroad. Only 0.8 per cent of 1997 graduates were actively seeking work when surveyed in April 1998. The remainder went on to further education or training.
The value of the construction industry in 1998 was more than £9 billion (€11.43 billion), which equates to 17 per cent of GDP. The outlook for 1999 is for activity to expand by 8 per cent. It is expected that some 45,000 new houses will be completed this year.
