My Working Day: Paul Kenny, building and property development manager at St Michael's House, is always satisfied when he sees patients move into their new homes
St Michael's House was set up by parents and friends of children with learning disabilities back in 1955. It has grown since then into an organisation which is one of the largest service providers for people with learning disabilities in the Dublin area. We provide community-based services for almost 1,600 people at over 140 locations in north and south Co Dublin.
At the moment we have approximately 74 residential houses in the community, offering both full-time residential and respite care and also 26 local adult day-care centres that provide training and development services. They are designed to cater for the needs of those with disabilities while at the same time being integrated into the community so that the buildings are unrecognisable from those around it, enabling people to live as normally as possible.
I have a dual role in that my official title is building and property development manager and that can be split into two areas of responsibility.
The building side of things involves plans maintenance and reactionary maintenance and we have a professional maintenance team that carries out most of this. It's quite an enormous task as we have about half a million square feet of property to maintain.
In my other role in property development, I source the residential houses in the community and manage those from project conception to handover. This involves liaising externally with professional design teams such as architects and engineers, and also internally with our occupational therapists, physiotherapists and heads of each unit around specific needs of clients.
These needs can often be very complex and it's not just ramps and handrails; all the five senses, such as sight and touch, come into play and we face a lot of challenges in meeting those needs.
A while back, a survey was carried out among our service users and one of the activities that they really enjoyed was swimming. Unfortunately, it's not always practical to use public swimming pools if they don't meet our requirements and access can also be a problem.
A new project that is currently on site is the development of a swimming pool at Belcamp that will be designed and built to meet a range of needs, from mild to severely challenged people. There will also be a home cinema, quiet room, coffee dock and multi-sensory room included in the facility where groups can meet and enjoy alternative activities to swimming.
There is great job satisfaction. We are designing houses for lifetime use and when I see a group of our clients moving into their new home, it is hugely rewarding.