Following his secondary education he travelled to the UK to attend Loughbrough University, where he completed both bachelor and masters degrees in chemical engineering. During his career he has worked in the coal, electrical carbon, chemical, steel and renewable energy industries. Before joining Rose Energy, he was Operations Director and Business Development Director for Energy Power Resources (EPR) based in Norfolk.

How did you get started in business?

I joined the UK’s National Coal Board as part of their trainee management programme, and for two years I travelled from one end of the country to the other, gaining exposure to all aspects of their operations and the entire business. At the time the coal industry was going through significant changes as it adapted to the new business realities of the 80s. It was an excellent learning ground, which certainly taught me the need for industry and business to adapt in order to compete in a very challenging environment.

What has been the most challenging part of running energy- from-waste plants?

Energy-from-waste plants are run by a small number of highly skilled and dedicated individuals. Their task is to provide electrical power to clients who are miles away, unaware of the complex logistical infrastructure that allows electricity to reach their homes and places of work.

In common with other services to the community, like hospitals and the police, power stations need to operate for 24 hours every day of the year. That requires a team that works together, planning ahead so that all eventualities are planned for and considered in advance. Forming such a team, coaching every individual, encouraging their development and balancing their skills and aspirations is the most challenging task we are faced with as managers.

What is the most satisfying aspect?

Being involved with major projects from the outset brings you into contact with hundreds of people, some of whom can have very negative views of our proposals. As the project progresses over months and years, opinions change and business and communities recognise the value in working together. Becoming a valuable member of the community always remains our aim, and to achieve it is the most satisfying aspect of our business.

How do you find doing business in Northern Ireland?

Northern Ireland is going through one of the most exciting times in its history. The creation of the Northern Ireland Executive and its Assembly has opened up not only a new chapter in political life but has given the opportunity to all individuals and industry to develop in the security of a new political consensus. I come from a small country not dissimilar to Northern Ireland which had to adapt very quickly to compete worldwide.

Fifty years ago Chilean wine was scarcely known outside the country. Today there is no restaurant in the world that does not offer one or two different brands. Northern Ireland has a very strong agri-food industry, and in supporting it through Rose Energy, it can also place itself at the forefront of the renewable energy sector. I believe this project has an important role to play in helping Northern Ireland to develop a more secure energy future, and I find it exciting to be part of that.

In what way do you think the local planning system can be improved?

Like any other developer, I would like to see a much faster and efficient system that would allow decisions to be taken promptly. When I speak about the planning system I am referring not only to the Planning Service, but also to all other governmental departments, institutions and individuals that act as consultees. A more efficient system would enable enterprise to flourish whilst ensuring that applications are thoroughly reviewed in a timely manner. Northern Ireland needs to urgently grow its private sector and our public sector needs to speed up its operations to facilitate this.

What do you do in your spare time?

I enjoy travelling and photography. Coming from one corner of the world has inspired me to visit all other corners. Human activity is fascinating, and to see and observe how other individuals very similar to us have found alternative ways of organising themselves and finding different solutions to their problems is certainly a never-ending story. I also like reading contemporary novels and the odd biography. In terms of sport, I watch a bit of football and Formula One motor racing. Perhaps now I should add some rugby and Gaelic football to complete my introduction to Northern Ireland.

In discussion with agendaNi, Arthur Cox’s Alan Taylor and Peter Curran survey the changing legal services environment, including the rising demand for specialisation and commercial knowledge.

Please describe your current roles.

AT: My role as Managing Partner is to use the specialisation that Arthur Cox has across its more than 400 professional staff to ensure that we are able to bring to the local market the strength and depth of expertise necessary to service the demand for top quality legal input.

Arthur Cox brings experience and knowledge gained from advising both the public sector and the private sector at the highest levels, on decisions of importance for the whole economy. My role is to ensure that this expertise is harnessed in the most efficient way for the benefit of our clients.

PC: I worked with Arthur Cox in Dublin up until 2008 and am now based in Belfast where I head up the Projects and Procurement Group. This team is focussed principally on public sector and utilities work. We generally advise public bodies and utilities on their procurement of projects and contracts as well as the private sector contractors who compete for this work. We work across a range of sectors including waste, transport, urban regeneration, housing, health, education, energy, telecoms and IT.

What is the biggest challenge facing Arthur Cox at present?

AT: The biggest challenge for us in the current economic climate is to maintain our market-leading position. The economic downturn and recession has adjusted a lot of markets and one of the challenges is to maintain that link that we have with the client, to be very much part of the client’s team and to have the support available for the clients in the difficult environment. Not everyone can do that but we’ve been doing it very well. Arthur Cox has grown, but it’s always a challenge maintaining that position.

PC: We have ramped up our teams significantly over the last two or three years to match our clients’ needs and we have raised our profile such that we are now recognised as the leading firm advising on public sector work across all of the key sectors. We find that more and more our clients expect deep knowledge of the sectors in which they are active and we work hard at maintaining that level of specialism in all relevant areas in order to provide the level of service that clients now demand.

Obviously the difficult economic environment presents a challenge for everybody in business today. We adapt our practice regularly to match developments in the market and in these uncertain times this is something that we have to keep under constant review.

The Projects and Procurement Group has been one of the busiest areas of the firm over the last couple of years despite the economic conditions. We haven’t seen the full effect of public sector cuts affect our workload so far; the challenge will be to deal with that situation if and when it arises.

How have your clients been impacted by the current economic downturn?

AT: I think it’s very varied across each of the sectors but a lot of our clients have done very well, partly because the sectors they are in are not particularly hit by the recession and they’re quite constant. The agri-food sector, for example, continues to be quite robust. Larger scale corporate client work has slowed over recent years although there are now lot of reorganisations taking place. Property is still a very difficult sector.

Because we’re acting for a lot of the bigger, well-known brand names, they continue to do quite well and have a global business which, in the current environment, enables them to reduce their exposure to the worst of the downturn.

There are winners and there are losers in the recession and I suppose the key is really to use the knowledge we’ve acquired over a period of time and the specialisation we have acquired to help both in whatever issue they face or whatever opportunity they face. That is particularly evident whenever the business failures come and you can actually help in a way that turns something around by restructuring in a certain way or providing a solution.

Looking back, what has been the big change in legal services in 2010 as opposed to 10-20 years ago and what will be the biggest challenge over the coming decade?

PC: I think clients are more demanding now and expect you to be available virtually 24/7. New technology and communications have made us much more accessible and mobile. Clients also now expect a level of specialism that simply was not available in this market a few years ago and they expect local advisors to provide that. They don’t necessarily want to go to London anymore to get the advice. Clients now appreciate that there are locally based lawyers who fully understand the industries and sectors that they are working within. As a result, they are increasingly willing to give lawyers a more hands-on role.

AT: I think we’re being asked for more commercial advice in conjunction with our legal advice. There’s much more of a commercial view as to ‘how do we do something?’ as opposed to ‘can you now document it?’

PC: I think that’s because they appreciate that we understand the sectors. Take waste: we understand how the sector works, not only from a legal perspective but also from a commercial perspective. That’s what they want and that’s what they expect. They don’t want a purely legal view anymore; you have to appreciate the commercial aspects.

AT: Probably the biggest shift over the last 20 years has been the clients’ ‘flight towards quality’ because the cost of a mistake, or not making the right decision now, is not as easily covered as it was, because margins are tighter.

It’s a much more difficult global trading environment, it’s much more competitive and I think over the next 20 years there’s much more movement towards going to somebody who actually does know the answer.

PC: Obviously the private sector in Northern Ireland has to grow and it has to look beyond the boundaries of this jurisdiction. It has to look to Europe and further afield to do business and I would say over the next 10 years we’re going to see businesses here playing catch-up with the rest of the UK and indeed the Republic of Ireland, in terms of globalising and selling products and services abroad.

How would you describe the culture of Arthur Cox?

AT: I would say it’s very commercial. I think there’s also a lot of freedom for people to develop their own career, style and develop a specialisation.

PC: I think as managers of people, we’re very approachable; we’re also very hands-on. We are both heavily involved in client work; we don’t just run the business. We try to delegate where appropriate whilst supervising everything that goes out. We find that our lawyers enjoy the quality work our clients provide and they respond to this by seeking to provide excellent, high quality and commercial advice at all times. It’s a very friendly and collegiate environment but at the same time it’s very hard working. The lights are rarely turned out at six o’clock.

Please describe your current role.

I’m Chief Executive of the Open College Network. We’re an education and learning charity, focussed on providing learning opportunities using qualifications and accreditation for the voluntary, adult, statutory and employer sectors here in Northern Ireland and also in the Republic of Ireland. My role here is leading and supporting the development and growth of the work that we carry out in OCN NI.

There is a network of open college networks across the UK and I’m part of the UK leadership team which leads the strategy and focus for the open college networks across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

What is the biggest challenge facing OCN at present?

Our challenge is not dissimilar to a lot of other organisations. We have an external environment which is moving very rapidly,

not least to do with the impact of the recession but also to do with the way in which the regulated environment within which education operates is changing dramatically. Moving from what was essentially a national qualifications framework (NQF), to a qualifications and credit framework (QCF) which heralds a dramatic shift from being focussed on qualifications driving learning, to learning for the individual, be it for family, work or personal or community development.

The change in the regulated environment is a massive shift for us and we’re changing a lot to accommodate it. Equally it’s a challenge for us to respond to the opportunities that it provides. In the past it was like walking into a supermarket and you picked a qualification off the shelf whereas now this is a collaboration to create the right learning opportunity for you, our employer or your community.

The QCF is up and running now and it’s planned to be fully working by September 2010. This means that we change our dynamics a bit so that we’re becoming an awarding organisation in our own right. We will be able to directly award national qualifications and learning programmes, which were developed, created and focussed on Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland needs a local awarding organisation providing internationally recognised UK qualifications.

Has learning become more of a priority in the economic downturn?

Yes, it has. People in the environment in which we live at the moment look internally and externally and look at “what can I do?” and then they look at it in terms of “what do I need to be able to do to meet that challenge?”

In our experience, people respond very positively in lots of ways. We work with the voluntary and community sector – their response to the current downturn has been fantastic. We’ve worked with statutory organisations and employers and all of them are looking at ways they can sustain learning and support learning and increase learning opportunities so that as we emerge from the downturn, people are in a better position to be able to respond to the demands of the economy.

Looking back over your experience in learning, what has been the biggest change over the last 20 years?

The realisation that learning is not simply the repository of a formal environment. Learning can take place anywhere, any shape, any place. That has driven the demand for learning to reflect the real world and not just the cultural institutions that in the past have shaped what is and what is not acceptable learning. Therefore over the last 20 years, culturally, we’ve seen the shift from people who have been receivers of education to people who have become creators – they’ve made demands upon that system and they have influenced the way in which that system has moved and a more democratic mechanism has emerged where people can make legitimate demands upon those who serve education to better reflect the needs of their own lives.

Looking towards the next decade, what is the big challenge in the world of learning?

It is about how we do and how we resource learning. According to the Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning, public and private resources invested in lifelong learning amount to over £50 billion. For example, approximately £8,000 is spent each year on every 18-24 year old; this drops dramatically to £300 for every 25 to 50 year old, drops again to £86 for every 50-75 year old and drops again to £60 for those aged over 75. We need to think how we share our resources across the life stages.

So what we have is a massive expenditure in education at an early age, the first 20 to 25 years. As people live longer and we expect people to take on more roles, to change jobs, take on new technologies and stay in work for longer, then we need to consider a way in which that totality of learning opportunities is better spread out over that range of ages. We need to make sure that the learning revolution, that we’re in the middle of, is one that is sustained throughout one’s life as opposed to just small parts of it. That requires us to start looking at the transitions as people move from one sphere to another.

How do you describe your management style?

I’d say participative, inclusive and open. But if you talk to my daughters Niamh and Aoife and my son Charlie, they wouldn’t necessarily say the same thing.

I rely a lot on the notion of coaching. Managers are responsible for processes, I’m responsible for leading a group of people and that means trying to create the best team that I possibly can and that means looking at individual skills, individual capabilities and seeing where they can fit in and impact the team. So I see coaching as a fundamental part of that because without that you lose the idea of a team.

As a small company, individuals always matter but in a bigger company individuals, whilst they impact on the organisation’s output, don’t necessarily always impact on the organisation. In a small organisation, it matters what individuals can do.

Do you have any mentors in your career?

The first person who opened me up to the democracy of education was probably Ivan Illich, who wrote ‘DeSchooling Society’, and Rhiannon Evans was one of my managers in my early management career who taught me an awful lot about working with people, listening to people, and also reaching decisions and following through.

What do you do to relax outside work?

I’m involved in coaching mini-rugby and youth rugby in Magherafelt. We have about 120 children on Friday evenings between the ages of three and 11 and on Monday and Wednesday we take the youth team so that takes up a lot of time.

I do a lot of writing and reading. I’m interested in medieval history, particularly the early medieval history. I also love photography and keep trying to recreate the iconic 20s, 30s, 40s pictures of Hollywood. I also like to spend a lot of time with my family.