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ACEI FConsEI member Paul Doherty wins the European Young Professional Award< back to news


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left to right: ACEI President Tony Horan, Paul Doherty EFCA YP Award Winner, Incoming EFCA President Kevin Rudden


Paul Doherty, Managing Director and one of the founding partners of specialist geotechnical engineering consultancy in ACEI Member firm Gavin and Doherty Geosolutions was announced as the winner of the EFCA YP Award (European Young Professional award) today at the EFCA 2017 Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, beating off stiff competition from excellent engineers from all around Europe. The jury also congratulates the two runners-up: Samuele Ambrosetti (Italy) and Ask Tonsgaard Brüel (Denmark).

Paul was also recognised earlier this year at the ACEI Awards Dinner where he received the Award for Emerging Professional Consulting Engineer of the Year (EPCE Award)   

Paul has established a successful engineering business that provides leading geotechnical designs to the international market. Through the recession period from 2011 to today, Paul has managed the sustainable growth of GDG from an initial headcount comprising just the two founders to a team of over 30 highly skilled engineers. GDG is now one of the leading geotechnical consultants across Ireland and the UK, with the workload serviced from offices in Dublin, London, Belfast and Edinburgh.

In addition to his role in managing the GDG business, Paul regularly takes the role of Project Lead on a diverse range of engineering jobs, where he applies his high level of knowledge and experience in foundation design and marine geotechnics. Having developed a keen interest in soil mechanics during his undergraduate civil engineering degree at University College Dublin, Paul subsequently specialised in geotechnics and completed a PhD on the topic of marine piling in 2010. His industry experience is also supplemented by a successful research career that resulted in over 50 publications and international presentations.

Paul has delivered a wide range of consultancy projects where he offered specialist geotechnical analysis and engineering advice including: port/harbour developments, offshore foundation design, piled foundations, dredging analysis, quayside infrastructure, scoping and supervision of marine geotechnical investigations. Paul is also an active member of the Deep Foundation Institute (DFI) technical committees for "Marine Foundations" and "Driven Piling". He is also a reviewer for the ICE Ground Engineering and ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) Civil Engineering journals. In recent years, Paul has also acted as an expert geotechnical witness in marine forensic cases including arbitration for a complex marine project in Scotland that experienced “unforeseen ground conditions”.

His project where he played a key consulting engineering role is the Irish Rail Cutting and Embankment Decision support Took, which was completed in December 2016 was the successful winner of the Geoscience Ireland category at the Engineering Ireland awards in November 2016 and is an excellent example of technical project delivery, innovation and sustainability.
 
The EFCA FIDIC Press Release is available Here