Eoghan O’Meara

Fire Engineer

BSc (Hons) in Fire Safety Engineering, Letterkenny Institute of Technology

My grandad was a fireman and as soon as I started thinking about my career, I knew straight away that was what I wanted to do. I joined the Civil Defense at 17, which included an auxiliary fire service, and then went on to study Fire Engineering which I thought would help in pursuing a career in firefighting. I progressively realised that Fire Engineering would allow me to have more of an impact on fire safety in general. Prevention is better than cure. The fact that the money was better, and I didn’t have to hop out of bed in the middle of the night to fight a fire also didn’t hurt!

Semper took me on as a summer intern in 2018, while I was still studying part-time for my degree. I continued to work with Semper while completing my studies in Ireland after the internship was over and eventually returned to the London office as a graduate in May 2019.

The fact that they were less “corporate”. At the open day where I had my interview, the other companies didn’t seem that interesting (one even talked about timesheets – yawn!) Semper set themselves apart straight away. Their presentation was funny, relatable – and they put money behind the bar after the interviews were finished.

As a fire engineer, I take an active role in the project-facing side of the company – whether it be drafting documents, building software models, marking up fire strategy drawings or devising and discussing engineering solutions with the design team.

My colleagues. I don’t know half of them half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of them half as well as they deserve.