Prior to 2011 Dr. Farrell was a Senior Lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering and Hydraulics in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. He is now working as a full time senior consultant to AGL with more than 40 years experience as a geotechnical engineer in Ireland and abroad. He is the Irish Liaison Engineer to the European Committee for the development of EN-1997:2004,Eurocode 7 for Geotechnical Design, and has over 50 technical publications including a book he co-authored titled “Geotechnical design to Eurocode 7”, published by Springer-Verlag, London.

With AGL Dr. Farrell has provided expert geotechnical advice on a wide range of major civil, infrastructure and commercial building projects in Ireland. He was the geotechnical adviser to Brown & Root on the Contractor’s temporary works soil nailing proposals for the open cut section of the Dublin Port Tunnel. He was also the geotechnical consultant on the design of Phase II of the Dundrum Shopping Centre and the Dublin Central Project on O’Connell St. in Dublin. He was the geotechnical designer of the excavation support and groundwater control systems for the Limerick Tunnel casting basin, which involved deep excavations in very soft alluvial soils and Limestone rock adjacent to the River Shannon, and he was the independent Category 3 checker on the earthworks design for the A1/M1 Dundalk to Newry Link, N25 Waterford Bypass and the Kinsale Road Interchange projects.

Dr. Farrell has extensive experience in specialized areas of geotechnical engineering and hydraulics. Through his research at Trinity College Dublin he has developed numerical soil models for the Dublin Boulder Clays which have extensive application in finite element modelling for optimizing the design of excavation support systems for deep excavations in Dublin, particularly in calculating realistic profiles of ground movement adjacent to excavations. For this reason Dr. Farrell was specialist consultant to the BAM group on the design of the excavation support systems for the stations at tender stage on the Metro North project. Dr. Farrell has advised on the dewatering requirements for the Dublin Central and Dundrum Town Centre Phase II projects He has also carried out a detailed hydrogeological study of groundwater levels in projects. the Kildare Aquifer to assess the impact of the tanked section of the Kildare Bypass.