Tributes have been paid to Kevin C Kelly, a former managing director at Irish construction company Sisk, who died on November 12th at the age of 86.
Kevin was husband to Nuala (nee Hourigan) and father to Jeremy Kelly of Kelly Walsh Property Advisors and Marion, Jeremy, Ronan, Kevin and Cathal.
In the family’s eulogy, they said of Kevin: “Dad absolutely loved the building industry and loved every minute of his time in Sisk. He was immensely proud of the company and of all his colleagues and of the big flagship projects like Croke Park, the original Central Bank office on Dame Street and Dundrum [Town Centre], to name just three.”
Having joined Sisk in 1959, Kelly worked first as a junior estimator from the firm’s Lad Lane office in Dublin, while attending a night course in quantity surveying at Bolton Street College. He progressed through the ranks to become senior estimator in 1970, regional director in 1979 and main board director in 1983. Kelly was appointed managing director in 1986. He retired in 1999.
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Following his retirement, he became chairman of Treasury Holdings, a post he held for 12 years.
He received awards from his peers including a lifetime achievement award from The Master Builders, and the Chartered Institute of Building Presidents Medal in the UK in 2006, the family said. He remained closely involved with the Construction Industry Federation up until very recently, a role that was hugely important to him, they added.
Kelly was born in Lehanmore, Garnish, in west Cork, the youngest of the nine children of Jeremiah and Sheila Kelly. He attended boarding school at St Colman’s in Fermoy when he was 12 and played football with Garnish and Beara; he was on the Beara team in 1958 that won the Cork championship in 1958. He was also a keen golfer.
