‘Every day I come to work I’m doing something different...’
DAVID FLEMING grew up in Killarney and never thought he would be a fit for Dairymaster because he wasn’t from a farming background.
The son of a mechanic, Mr Fleming’s degree is in Civil Engineering. He says he was always more interested in mechanical engineering but at the height of the boom he was advised this was where the money was.
The rally enthusiast graduated from IT Tralee in 2008, just when the bottom fell out of the construction industry.
“I started working for Kerry County Council in the road design office and the Castleisland bypass was my first taste of civil engineering work,” he said.
When that project finished he was back in the garage working with his father. He heard Dairymaster was taking on a CAD (computer aided design) technician.
“I was actually slow to apply for it. I thought it would be more basic than an engineering role and they’d want someone with an agricultural
background,” he revealed.
“I ended up meeting someone who worked in Dairymaster, who told me about the range of things they did from farm layout to farm buildings to the machinery side of things.”
Mr Fleming began working on farm layouts but began to dabble in making drawings of machinery and components made by the company that they wanted to keep on file.
“From there I went on to machine design and
building the equipment itself. I’m very happy with what I do and it’s an area I hadn’t even thought of in college.
“Every day I come to work I’m doing something different, whether its pneumatics, hydraulics or electric motors, and you’re getting a flavour of every part of it, using technology that might be used in the automotive or aerospace industry.
“People don’t see that when they think of agriculture,” he added.