Infrakit BIM Services team is growing – meet Manu Marttinen

My name is Manu, I’m M.Sc in Civil Engineering, and I just started working for Infrakit, as a Development Manager, on Monday! It feels great to be part of this excellent team, and to be able to develop Infraconstruction field with such a good product, that we got at Infrakit. I know Infrakit and many of the guys working there from past, so I know what I’m talking about now.

I started my career within Infra in 1996, when I was fifteen, at company called Lemminäinen, in my hometown Kotka. I really enjoyed my job, so I spent summers 1996-2002 in Asphalt and Infra works (while I was in school and in military service).

After starting my studies in the Helsinki University of Technology (nowadays known as Aalto University), I moved from Lemminkäinen to a contractor company called NCC, where I worked:
– with quality issues 2003-2006
– in maintenance, paving and infra projects 2007-2011
– in line organization; in own small unit 2012-2014 and part of bigger unit 2015-2016
– as developing and implementing NCC own software 2017-2020

“Infrakit is already a strong brand in the industry and will continue to grow. It’s great to be able to work with the top team and drive industry productivity together with our customers on a platform that takes into account the entire construction lifecycle!”

My first touch to BIM was, when I was building Vuosaari Harbor in Helsinki 2007-2008. That was first site, where we used e.g. total station guided 3D graders, and where we created automatically as-build model from our compactors data. After that, a big leap to my BIM knowledge was, when I participated Infra FINBIM project in 2011-2015 (I continued that work in Building Smart Finland after that).

In my free time, I do CrossFit, dance rock ‘n swing dances, and “work” in referee role in floorball fields (highest level in Finland, Salibandyliiga and in international games, e.g. World Cup in Prague 2018). I live in Helsinki with my wife and our newborn son.

So, in nutshell, I’m sporty BIM expert with 20+ years experiment of working in Infraconstruction field as a contractor / entrepreneur!

Meet our new General Manager of Finland!

As a General Manager of Finland, Janne Paitsola takes over the overall responsibility for sales and key accounts in Finland. Janne has extensive, over a ten-year-experience, in the infrastructure industry, and has previously worked at Avesco Oy / Sitech Finland.

“Project information management is a hot topic today and Infrakit is a pioneer in its field. It’s no surprise that the growth rate of Infrakit has been rapid in recent years”, says Paitsola.

As an expert in his field, Janne brings systematic approach to customer relationship management and sales development.

Welcome Janne, we are happy to have you as a part of our team!

Meet Sakari Maaranen – our VP of engineering!

Next in our introduction series comes Infrakit’s VP of engineering, Sakari Maaranen. He is a deep-rooted professional in software business; his experience ranges from being a freelancer to consultancy and managing a software company. At Infrakit he started in the spring of 2019 after hearing about its interesting story. “I definitely made the right choice, here at Infrakit we have an exceptionally good group full of driven people”, Maaranen states.

Maaranen’s area of responsibility contains developing Infrakit’s software together with his teammates. “In an activity like this, everything comes down to processes; the way we function and develop the software will show in the quality of all everything we do and accomplish”, he explains. Software developing is to a large extent describing and documenting processes and the product, which is done by the whole 10-person team with Maaranen on the lead. “I feel that I get to fully use my vast expertise and knowledge about software business in my current job at Infrakit”, he sums up. Maaranen finds it interesting how groundbreaking work Infrakit does: the digitalization of infra building is taking baby steps and Infrakit is in the front row introducing new ways of doing things – there really aren’t other companies taking the same approach.

Infrakit BIM Services? – Meet our BIM-team!

Photo: Infrakit BIM-team Visa Hokkanen, Ilkka Tieaho, Tero Maijala and Atte Kajander

We are happy to start our introduction series with our brand-new BIM-team, and in particularly with two true professionals in the field of BIM: VP of BIM services, Ilkka Tieaho (second on the left) and Senior BIM Specialist, Tero Maijala (third on the left). Even though both of them started their journey at Infrakit recently, working with Infrakit isn’t unfamiliar to them – in their previous careers both Tieaho and Maijala gained experience working in projects where Infakit was used. Together with the rest of the team one of their primary goals is to serve as a link between the clients and the remaining Infrakit staff. With their previous experience working on the customers’ side, they have gained valuable knowledge of the challenges and advantages that clients may face with Infrakit.

Tieaho, who started last August, says it has been a pleasure to notice how smoothly he was welcomed to his new work community. His working history contains a great deal of experience from designing and consulting, especially in the designing phase of construction projects. ”I see coming to work at Infrakit as a great opportunity to create something new. It has also been interesting to see how working with BIM looks like from a tech company’s point of view”, Tieaho reflects. One of the crucial strengths of Infrakit in his opinion is the company’s flexibility: ”We must continue to provide fast and close support to our clients.”

One of our most recent employees is Tero Maijala, who started his work last November. He says that moving over from working as a land surveying specialist at a worksite, to the other side of the table has felt like a natural choice. ” [before] I was building infra and now I’m beginning to build Infrakit – building things hasn’t stopped.” In his previous job Maijala has worked in close proximity with Infrakit almost daily since the beginning of the 2010s. In the period of the last six months he has seen a change in how the client’s viewpoint has become a stronger priority and wanted to be a part of the solution. ”The thing that me and Tero have in common is that we both believe Infrakit to be an excellent and functional solution in designing and construction projects”, Tieaho sums it up.

The mission of the recently created BIM-team is to help clients use Infrakit in their daily work. Vital in achieving this goal is organizing training sessions, providing consultancy and developing new and more functional customs so that our clients will gain added value with Infakit. Their first task has been contacting current clients and mapping out their needs, but Tieaho as well as Maijala both envision that in the future the BIM-team has also a lot to offer to the technical development.

Infrakit and year 2019 – it’s a wrap!

Year 2019 has been a big success for Infrakit. We opened offices in five new countries, including large markets like France, Germany and Australia, all while staying profitable. Our team grew to a total of 32 construction and SaaS professionals.

Overall, digitalization of the infrastructure construction industry is progressing worldwide, with many governments pushing for requirements and legislation to adopt of BIM, to improve infrastructure construction quality and efficiency.

Infrakit BIM cloud enables an efficient digital production process for construction companies, connecting heavy machinery and all construction project stakeholders with up to date designs and real time view to site progress. In year 2019 we were especially delighted to see our customers win more projects with the competitive advantage they gained by moving faster than their competition.

For year 2020, we are looking to further expand our operations to new countries and to solidify our position as the leading SaaS provider for the global infrastructure construction industry.

On behalf of the Infrakit team, a big thank you to all of our customers and partners for year 2019. I’m wishing you a happy and successful year 2020!

Teemu Kivimäki CEO and founder