Who?
Petteri Mäkelä, Head of Project Management. I’m from Hollola, a neighboring city to Lahti. I lived elsewhere for 10 years but moved back to Hollola afterward.
History?
I attended primary school in Hollola and vocational school in Lahti. During my time in vocational school, I also worked as a sheet metal welder in a machine shop. After that, I started my studies at a technical institute in Lappeenranta, focusing on mechanical and structural engineering. This was in 1991, just before the economic recession in Finland. So, one could say I was lucky, as I spent the recession years studying. When I graduated in 1995, all of us from our class found jobs.
After graduation, I worked at a sawmill and plywood factories as a plant service engineer, mainly dealing with machine repair and development. In 1997, my wife and I moved to the Helsinki metropolitan area, Espoo, and I began working as a project engineer at Outotec. I designed copper processing equipment for the copper smelters. At that time, the workload in the company was so high that I soon became a project manager. In 1998, I went to Poland to work on my first international project.
Since then, I’ve had numerous international assignments all around the world, with the majority of them being with my current employer and its predecessors. In 2000, I started working for LGT’s predecessor, Raute Precision. For the first five years, I was a project chief engineer, and most of the projects were related to the glass industry. From 2005 to 2007, I worked as a project manager, which involved a lot of traveling. Afterward, until 2014, I held the position of engineering design manager, which required less travel. Before my current role, I worked as a project manager for a few more years, during which I also did some sales, although I ultimately didn’t become a salesperson. Since 2018, throughout my time at LGT, I’ve been working with the title: Head of Project Management.
My current role is to follow up our projects and especially co-operate with project organizations responsible persons. During busy periods, it is crucial to take regular breaks for thoughtful planning. We must always remember that our goal is to ensure the customer can confidently operate the equipment and systems we provide. This concern also the project where I work as a project manager.
In practice the work requires planning for the project well in advance, including resourcing and time schedules for engineering, fabrication, logistics, site installations and commissioning.
Our project core team works mainly from Lahti to kick-off and control of several different activities abroad. This all requires decent communication which is vital and at the same time it keeps up the personal work very interesting and myself smiling and motivated.
LGT?
I enjoy my work here. It allows me to stay in contact with customers and suppliers daily and, of course, with my own team. The social aspect balances out the independent work. The combination is just right.
I’ve been working at LGT and its predecessors throughout the entire 21st century, which in itself says a lot about the company. I’ve had the opportunity to do a wide variety of jobs within the same company, which is one of LGT’s strengths. You can certainly tailor your job to your evolving skills.
Another significant aspect is team spirit and collaboration. We help and support our colleagues here, and assistance is always available when needed. LGT clearly looks forward and strongly envisions the future.
