For Aidan Kelly, the success of Agri Design & Planning Services (ADPS) has been built on a simple principle — practical experience matters. From his office in Newcastle, Clonmel, Co Tipperary, Kelly has developed ADPS into one of the country’s busiest agricultural planning and design consultancies, while continuing to milk cows at home several mornings each week.
The business, now approaching 14 years in operation, has carved out a distinctive niche in the Irish agricultural sector by combining architectural expertise with hands-on farming knowledge.
In an industry where many consultants come from either a purely technical or purely farming background, Kelly believes the strength of ADPS lies in the fact that he lives both worlds every day, as he told Irish Tractor Agri & Plant recently.
“ADPS is Aidan Kelly myself and when you’re dealing with me, you’re dealing with a dairy farmer who set up his own operation nearly 14 years ago now,” he explained.
“I’m a qualified architect that’s working in the business nearly 18 years. It’s the experience I bring. I don’t think there’s any other operator in Ireland that can offer that kind of experience.”
That dual role continues to define how the business operates today.
While many consultants may leave farming behind as their professional workload increases, Kelly insists remaining actively involved in his own dairy enterprise is essential to understanding what clients are facing on the ground.
“Nobody else in the industry is doing what I do. I get up a lot mornings and I milk my own cows. Then I come into the office at 9am and I’ll be designing jobs for other guys and back out doing my own cows. I even do my own AI, so I’m integrated in two industries heavily and I think that’s the secret,” said the Tipp man.
The consultancy has grown steadily since Kelly first established the business after returning from architectural work abroad.
Initially operating alone, ADPS has now expanded to a two-person team, with the addition of a full-time drafter helping the company manage an increasing workload.
“There’s myself and I have a full-time drafter within the company employed as well. It was just myself, but now there’s a full-time drafter that’s come onboard,” he said.
“It’s probably about 12 months ago now. They were part-time for maybe 12 months, but now it’s a full-time post and moving forward, we’ll possibly be looking for another person just to fill the gap. I suppose, I would have done a lot of the work myself previously, but I was doing unsustainable hours and it’s just got to the stage now where we can take employees and we have a volume of work coming in where I’m comfortable that we could keep two people fully employed.”
That growth reflects both the increasing demand for agricultural planning expertise and the changing nature of Irish farming itself. ADPS now works across most of Ireland on projects ranging from calf sheds and cubicle houses to rotary parlours, slurry storage systems and full farmyard redesigns.
According to Kelly, demand has remained remarkably strong despite difficult weather and uncertain farming conditions over the past two years.
“Last year was extremely busy and this year seems to be on par with last year. It’s the same kind of volume of work and same volume of enquiries,” he said.
“What we’re seeing on the ground is that even though it’s not a brilliant farming year, farmers are still going to do a bit of work and, with our side of the business, there’s a lot of lead in time. Planning permission takes a lot of time and grants then again, you’re talking eight to nine months.
“There’s a big lead in. So if you’re going through a bad year this year, you’re not actually thinking of doing work this year, it’s the following year.”
That long-term thinking has become increasingly important for farmers as environmental regulations tighten and labour challenges continue to intensify. Kelly said much of the work currently coming through the office is focused on improving efficiency rather than major expansion.
“We’re back doing a lot of dairy work. We’re finalising a lot of calf sheds and slurry capacity is a massive part of it, additional cubicles,” he outlined.
“What I see on the ground is that most of the established farmers now are doing the small tidy up jobs — the jobs that needed to be done and now, I suppose, there’s money to do them. A lot of large calf sheds and we’re doing a good number of rotary parlours this year which is purely down to labour and things. Scale herds are just getting bigger and parlours need to increase as well with it.”
The shift toward larger rotary parlours reflects one of the most significant structural changes occurring within the dairy sector. Herd sizes continue to increase on many family farms, while labour availability remains one of the biggest challenges facing producers. Kelly believes farm infrastructure now has to be designed with labour efficiency at its core.
That practical focus is visible throughout the ADPS approach. Rather than pursuing overcomplicated or overly ambitious projects, Kelly emphasises layouts that improve cow flow, reduce labour pressure and make farms easier to manage day-to-day.
At the same time, the business has also seen renewed confidence among beef farmers. Strong beef prices over the past year have encouraged many producers to revisit long-postponed investments in housing and slurry storage.
“Last year there was a very good beef price, so we saw a resurgence of beef men coming onboard and it would’ve led to 30-35% of our work last year being beef orientated,” Kelly said.
“After that, I’d imagine 50-60% would’ve been dairy and the rest would’ve been made up of commercial, residential and equine.
“So the dairy is a very big side of the business, but the beef side has come on in the last two years because there’s a bit of confidence back in that market.”
While equestrian work once formed a larger part of the consultancy’s portfolio, Kelly noted that side of the industry has “petered out a bit” in recent years as agricultural work has surged ahead.
The increasing complexity of farm development projects has also strengthened the need for specialist guidance. Planning regulations, nutrient management rules, slurry storage requirements and grant applications now form a complicated process for many farmers to navigate alone.
Kelly believes his role increasingly involves helping clients steer projects through that complexity while also drawing on a wide network of industry expertise.
“I take great pride in what I do. We’d 180 clients last year and I don’t think we had any disagreements with any of them; everyone was happy,” he said.
“Look mistakes are made and things go wrong, but it’s how we fix them and how we move forward from those things and I pride myself on how we get a client moving forward on that basis.
“I’m able to pull in lot of expertise from other engineers, architects and people I used to get jobs across the line.”
Despite the rapid growth of the consultancy, Kelly has no intention of stepping away from farming itself. At home, the family dairy operation continues to expand, with 195 cows being milked this year.
Although the farm employs a full-time worker, Kelly still insists on remaining heavily involved in the daily routine.
“We’re milking 195 this year and I’m lucky enough I have a full-time man there, but I’d still milk my own cows maybe three or four times a week. It’s something I have a great passion for,” he said.
That passion for both farming and design continues to drive the business forward. In many ways, ADPS reflects the changing face of modern Irish agriculture itself — increasingly professional, technically demanding and efficiency-focused, but still grounded in practical farming experience.
As investment returns to both the dairy and beef sectors, Kelly expects demand for agricultural planning and design work to remain strong. Environmental compliance, labour shortages and evolving farm systems are likely to keep infrastructure development high on the agenda for many producers over the coming years.
Aidan says that he would be lost without the support of his wife Seana and four kids Jack, Billy, Alice and Tom who are a massive help on the farm, along with father Richard and mother Cathy who got him started in farming and helped to develop the herd and ADPS.
For ADPS, the challenge now is managing that growth while maintaining the personal approach that helped establish the business in the first place. With another hire potentially on the horizon and projects continuing to flow in from across the country, the Tipperary consultancy appears well positioned for the next phase of expansion.
Yet despite the increasing scale of the business, Kelly remains convinced that the formula behind its success is still remarkably straightforward — understanding farming because he continues to live it every day.
Agri Design & Planning Services
Molough,
Newcastle,
Clonmel,
Co Tipperary.
Call: 085 746 6211
Email: [email protected]
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 14 No 2, Summer 2026
Agri Design & Planning Services, Featured
