Mark O'Donovan

Great to meet you guys in Dallas

If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I’ve taken a pretty unconventional route through the world of engineering. My career has been a mix of electrical engineering, software, IIoT, and system architecture, with plenty of twists and turns along the way. But is has all been to give myself the tool to solve peoples problems

I started out in Electrical & Instrumentation (E&IC),some PLC programming, some SCADA, and a good dose of Electrical and instrumentation work, and then over the next few years deeper and deeper into high-voltage electrical engineering. Finishing up working on 110kV substation for windfarms. I then took a detour into safety—which, funnily enough, led me to launch the globally recognized Certified Machinery Safety Expert (CMSE) training. I delivered the first Train-the-Trainer program and helped certify over 2,000 machinery experts worldwide. I still love when I visit a Plant and see someone who has the CMSE binder on the desk. I do really get a kick out of the whole training side of things.

But I couldn’t shake my passion for controls and automation, so I did something that felt a bit like hitting reset on my career—I jumped back into PLCs, relearned HMI, climbed my way through SCADA, and eventually found myself knee-deep in MES. And one MES/Digital Transformation project that was done as a huge monolith project, focusing on 50 lines in plant 1 and looking at plant 2 at the same time. And 2 years in I was completely cooked. I needed to find a better way to help companies Digitally transform, and ideally one that doesn't leave Engineers burned out at the end. That journey led me to Unified Namespace (UNS), where I dived in with both feed and now I get to design systems that actually make sense—systems that unify data, streamline automation, and help industries like energy, logistics, and food & beverage work smarter, not harder.

These days, I spend my time bridging the gap between IT and OT, designing architectures that bring industrial data to life, and helping businesses make sense of their automation challenges. I’m a huge believer in the power of data, cultural understanding, and cross-disciplinary collaboration—because at the end of the day, the best solutions come from people who know how to work together.

Apart from that, I work from home, so too does my wife( not for me) so I get to walk the kids to school( well not the teenager any more) and pick my son up a lot too. I'm know for being on meetings while cooking dinner at the same time. I live in Crosshaven beautiful town in the south coast of Ireland where I Sail, train with the tri Club( not so good at doing the actual triathlons). I love reading , favorite author is Terry Pratchett. Despite writing about dwarfs werewolves and trolls his understanding of people is something I really try leverage, if we can understand people we can get on with them ( mostly) and make the world better( probably) . Oh and I am a massive optimist probably too much