Evros Labs founder wants to position Mullingar as centre to build tech talent

The Mullingar man behind the success Office Pass app launched this month to ensure a safe return to the workplace is confident his hometown could become a new technology labs hub.

Paul Gilbride, Business Solutions Practice director and founder of Evros Labs, believes that the town has huge potential to became an innovative space in which to build tech talent.

Since joining Evros 10 years ago, Paul has recruited many Mullingar people for his team and on the back of the success of his new app, the creation of a labs hub in the town looks like a real possibility.

In an interview this week, Mr Gilbride told how the new app has already been rolled out to 20,000 users including Laya Healthcare, the Department of Enterprise and A&L Goodbody.

Paul lives at Ardleigh Crescent, Mullingar; he grew up at Lynn Heights, where his parents opened a shop in 1990 having moved from Longford, where they ran a pub. Niall Breslin grew up in that part of town too and the two are childhood friends. Now Bressie is to voice a new advert for the app to be aired this month.

Locally, Paul will be best remembered for his work as a DJ, which he did for 20 years before branching out into the IT world. He was resident DJ in the Final Fence for years and he ran Project Guest DJ, where local people got to DJ in venues such as Daly’s, the Final Fence and Gilleran’s. At that time, Paul was also working for Golden Discs.

His last 10 years working in the IT sector have been hectic. Paul said that this year brought the largest feedback loop imaginable in produce development. Organisations faced the same challenge at exactly the same time – how to manage and benefit from hybrid working.

His company has been engaging in that feedback loop and in response, has created this new desk-booking app. Office Pass can assist with back to office plans, and has evolved for 2022 into a hybrid working assistant, Mr Gilbride said.

He pointed that its many benefits include visual cues for co-worker office days and promoting carbon neutrality. Office Pass is a new way to connect home and office. Built inside Microsoft 365, the tool also keeps all data securely inside an organisation’s control.

Paul is delighted at the success of Office Pass app and how it has “taken hold”. It can be deployed in two days, is easy to implement and even easier to navigate and is seen as a solution to businesses wishing to manage their on-site attendance over the coming weeks and months.

The app was launched last month by eir Business and Evros, who have been ‘Microsoft Business Applications Partner of the Year’ in Ireland for the last two years running, as well as this year’s ‘Partner for Employee Experience and Apps within Teams’.

The forward-thinking technology is the next step in helping businesses return to normal in a post-Covid-19 world, Paul said.

The Evros team has spent the last year working closely with global enterprises in order to refine the technology and ensure it meets the needs of Irish businesses today.

With the app, employees can choose how they work while ensuring safety policies and social distancing guidelines are met. Users book their desks in advance from any device, giving them a safe place to work, while employers get a complete overview of who’s in on what day so they can manage their capacities.

Enabling the app for any given business starts with creating a digital office space. This involves the uploading of the organisation’s desk data to the platform. That will allow employees to see which desks are available at any given time. Once a desk is selected, all other desks in close proximity are removed from selection in order to comply with social distancing guidelines.

It also supports an effective hybrid working model by allowing employees to view which colleagues are working from home or in the office, enabling greater collaboration between team members.

In addition, this new technology can also enhance an organisation’s sustainability efforts by updating employees on their carbon footprint as they travel to and from the office.

The app includes self-declarations of health and safety and clean desk policies. It enables contact tracing and car parking space reservations. It tracts the company’s reduction in carbon emission. It also offers screening of visitors, monitoring capacities and staying in touch with guests.