Thankfully January hasn’t been quite as hectic as the back half of 2025, so I’ve finally got a bit of breathing room to make some use of my new-fangled website. Going through old project folders while putting this together was a good reminder of just how compressed the year actually was.
Last year was enormously busy. Traditionally, Molloy Consulting Engineers have done a lot of one-off public realm jobs, housing estates, sports pitches and the like, but in 2025 we secured a higher volume of major projects than ever before. A lot of the work shifted from single-site, single-deadline jobs to schemes running in parallel, each with their own reporting, stakeholder engagement and programme pressures. Juggling two BusConnects projects and the Cork–Limerick motorway on top of 80+ other smaller jobs was a little punishing.
The financial result was great however, a 37% year-on-year revenue increase, and that’s after a few really solid years of growth already. The challenge now is making sure that growth stays sustainable, both in terms of workload and the way projects are resourced and delivered. Looking back through the project list, what strikes me most is the mix — from motorway and BusConnects schemes to ports, churches, active travel routes and international sporting events all running concurrently.
One of the more interesting jobs I worked on last year was the event lighting licensing for the Ryder Cup 2027 in Adare. We modelled everything in DIALux and tried our best to keep light out of the surrounding trees and the River Maigue. Balancing broadcast requirements, temporary infrastructure and environmental constraints was a nice change of pace from more conventional road and development lighting work. The design was approved pretty quickly, which was satisfying.
Last year I also concentrated on marketing for the first time by updating our website, sending out paper flyers and attending more events. I’ve been posting more consistently on LinkedIn and cold-emailing people who might be interested in our services. That’s helped generate more leads, and I’ve already got a good number of new jobs quoted for this year.
In 2026, I’d like to build on that a bit. One idea I’m flirting with is making some YouTube videos explaining how public lighting design actually works. Nick Smith already has a lot of excellent Lighting Reality tutorials online, so rather than duplicating that, I’m thinking about putting together a few case studies showing how individual projects are assembled, what planners tend to focus on, and what needs to be addressed in a lighting planning application. Possibly even how AI can be used to strengthen submissions.
I’ve been doing more jobs in the UK recently, and it often makes Irish planning seem like a cakewalk. There are so many bespoke requirements thrown at you that aren’t really documented in local authority specifications. That contrast is part of what’s sparked the idea of putting some of this material into case studies, if only to make the process clearer for others.
I’m not sure I’ll manage to produce videos I’m happy enough to publish, but I’m setting myself a target to at least record a couple and attempt to edit them this year as a baseline. More generally, 2026 feels like a chance to consolidate after a very intense year, be a bit more selective about the work we take on, and spend some time reflecting on and sharing what goes on behind the scenes of public lighting projects.
