Meet Our New Sales Director of Web Sales, Toni Lahtinen

I strongly believe in the destiny. Therefore, it feels like my previous positions have prepared me for my current role at Infrakit. After graduating from the Helsinki University of Technology in 2005, I got first job as a purchase engineer and then as a service engineer in Metso Automation. A few years later I was promoted as a Service Manager in Metso Endress+Hauser Finland. Metso Endress + Hauser was a joint venture between Finnish Metso Automation and Swiss Endress + Hauser. The company was a very unique combination of family owned Endress+Hauser and stock listed Metso Automation, which both were market leaders in their own business fields. Both business cultures had own benefits and I think our Managing Director was able to combine them both in a very delicate way.

It was a good start for my career. You learn a lot when you work in the customer interface in the multinational matrix organization, with the leading products and services of your own field. I feel very privileged that I got a change to work in such an environment and responsible role almost right after graduation. Working life is continuous learning, but the personal growth has been easy to build on that strong foundation. Therefore, I will always be thankful for those skilled colleagues and clients I got to work with during that time. I learned a lot from them.

In 2013 I experienced a crisis in my working life. First our highly respected and beloved Managing Director suddenly passed away, and right after that big changes happened. That made me think thoroughly the principles and values involved in work. We spend at least half of our waking hours at work – what if the end comes suddenly? My conclusion was that it is the journey which is worth of enjoying not only the target. I believe that back then I took my first step towards Infrakit.

I decided to join Sintrol Oy as a sales director. Sintrol is a family-owned company that sells products and services to the process industry, NDT solutions and the world’s leading dust measurement solutions. Sintrol was very flexible employer, had strong business in the background and I enjoyed my time there. All the elements for the pleasant working life was in place. So why did the journey continue towards Infrakit? I think it was because I needed new skills.

Over the years, I have made friends with many people who are more or less marinated entrepreneurs. All of them have a strong vision why their companies exist. They are also very flexible and dedicated. One of those people is Teemu Kivimäki, the founder of Infrakit. Maybe I became a like, but entrepreneurship had always been also something worth trying for me as well. I just never really had a chance to do it before. Thanks to Sintrol I got the change and I had a vision about digitalization.

I founded the company, eqTAG Oy, with five other people. Our target was to make the best SaaS based software for the Field service management for the small and mid-sized customers. For us it was obvious that the digitalization of field service processes would take place globally in the near future.

Four and half years later, after founding the company, we can say that the obvious became reality very quickly in our target market. Today the digitalisation level of field service processes is very high, regardless the size of a business. Therefore, the Corona came at the right time for us. It forced us to stop running and gave us time to think. When we started our business, our vision was to become the global and best system supplier in our field. Would it still be possible? What were the conditions in 2020?

When creating something new, there is always only limited time when the door is wide open for the success. Frankly, the momentum was gone. The reality was that within a few years the business had seen a tremendous change. There were many similar SaaS solutions available. Too many of those SaaS providers had also been able to raise millions of investor money and had tens of thousands of users already. But the thrill was still there and when one door closes another opens. It was time for Infrakit. My personal journey to Infrakit was needed that I could better understand how to digitalize complete industry processes and to get the needed skills to serve customers better.

Joining Infrakit feels like coming back to the roots, but with the boosted skills. The circle has closed. Here I am working again in the company which is the technology and market leader and has a very unique business culture. — Toni Lahtinen, Sales Director of Web Sales

Infrakit is a phenomenal company and has a groundbreaking service. It has revolutionary impact on the development of model-based construction, which plays significant role in the digitalisation of whole infrastructure construction business. Joining Infrakit feels like coming back to the roots, but with the boosted skills. The circle has closed. Here I am working again in the company which is the technology and market leader and has a very unique business culture. No wonder that I am as excited as I was back then in the early years. Digitalization and model-based construction is happening now in the infrastructure business. I am really happy to be part of the journey and looking forward to work with our customers.

Meet Our New BIM Specialist & Customer Support Lead Mikko Siivola!

Hi, my name is Mikko. I am a Bachelor of Engineering in Land Surveying from Rovaniemi University of Applied Sciences. I joined Infrakit team earlier this summer and I am super excited to work with this team of experts. In these past few months, I have noticed that this is a company where everyone works with everyone and everyone shares the same values. This really is a team with a capital T.

So, I will be the guy that you can contact if you have something on your mind. It can be anything from feature request to a simple question. Don’t hesitate to ask or suggest. We are here for the customer!

My main focus is at Customer Support and customer projects. So, I will be the guy that you can contact if you have something on your mind. It can be anything from feature request to a simple question. Don’t hesitate to ask or suggest. We are here for the customer!

My previous job was with Sitech Finland where I worked as Field Service Manager, so I also might know a thing or two about machine control and 3D modelling. Especially if it is related to Trimble portfolio.

Biggest part of my working career I have spent with surveying. I worked close to ten years as Survey Foreman in all sizes of infra projects around Finland.

We have 4-month-old, happy and very energetic son at the home, so nowadays he reserves most of my free time. Any time left over from work and being a father, I spend at the gym. I used to compete in powerlifting and bodybuilding, but for the past few years my training has not been so focused on competing but mainly for keeping a healthy mind and body.

Hannu Varjoranta joins the Infrakit team

Hi, my name is Hannu. I have recently joined the Infrakit team as a Lead Scalability Engineer. My previous job was with Spotify in Stockholm where I worked for almost seven years, focusing on databases and general scalability of the Spotify platform. As we are returning to Finland with my family, I was happy to find such a great fit from Infrakit.

Watching our baby daughter grow has made me conscious of the environmental challenges we face in the future, and Infrakit’s mission on making the infra construction industry sustainable convinced me on my decision to join the company. Everyone on the team has positive professional attitude and one of our values is taking care of each other. What a great setup!

I have a Master’s degree on Computer Sciences from TKK (now Aalto University), and I started my engineering career early 2000 working at F-Secure and running my own small consulting business on the side. I have 20 years of experience from many different aspects of software engineering, working on smaller startup doing everything one can imagine when short on staff, and also having exposure to very large systems with demanding uptime requirements and large internal and external user groups.

For example, at Spotify I was maintaining the now decommisioned Hadoop cluster that was for a short while the largest Hadoop installation in Europe with around 2500 servers, and later on helped moving the data processing workflows to the cloud. My deepest specialty lies on (OLAP/OLTP) databases, large scale processing and making things scale.

At Infrakit I will be looking after the backend systems, making sure we scale as we improve and grow our platform globally. Happy to be at your service!

Infrakit in a Pilot Collaboration with Estonia’s Road Administration

Infrakit is in use in many different infra projects around the world. We operate in nine different countries: Finland, Estonia, Sweden, Norway, BeNeLux countries, Germany, France, Australia, and Serbia. Usually BIM projects are started by piloting Infrakit to see how it works and can be used.

Picture from Road nr 25 Mäeküla, Estonia – project construction works, picture taken by Mikk Mutso, the site supervisor Esprii OÜ

For a great example of our pilot projects, Infrakit Estonia’s Country Manager Ingmar Aija has worked with Estonia’s Road Administration, and he had the privilege of talking with Estonian Road Administration’s Project Manager Erko Puusaag.

Here is how Puusaag describes piloting Infrakit in their recent infra project:

“The first two years of piloting have been completed and we will take the next step and create common technical requirements for the design and construction of BIM projects; we can rely on the experience of both ourselves and other pilots (Tallin Harbor, Rail Baltica)”. Puusaag continues, that specialists from all regions of the Road Administration as well as the Centre are involved in the preparation of the requirements, working as a unified team. Cooperation between private and public sector continues in developing BIM requirement for procurements. An action plan is under construction on implementing BIM requirement in ERA ordered projects.

As for the Estonian Road Administration, “Infrakit has been one of the important tools used by the Road Administration to discover the world of BIM.” Puusaag sums up the piloting project.

“Infrakit has been one of the important tools used by the Road Administration to discover the world of BIM.”

Aija sees many opportunities implementing Infrakit in the Estonian infra construction business. Printing cross-sections on paper, measuring slopes manually and storing photos hectically without geolocalization in folders is not a very modern and lean way to work nowadays.

Video of Infrakit

Changing processes takes time, we know! Infrakit has solved most of the infra-construction data-flow pain points and Aija just mentioned some of those. Proper tools are ready to work with and so are we at Infrakit team to help you to gain most out of it!