We make interior designers' ideas come true - László Dombi Engineer of the Month

How did you get to Hungary?

I was born and educated in Târgu Mures, but the mid-to-late 90s in Romania were not about opportunities. At that time, even if you loved your profession, it was difficult to make a decent living. A lot of people emigrated abroad, like me. At the turn of the millennium, I came to Hungary with the bold goal of eventually settling in the United States. My colleagues and friends made it there, but unfortunately I was refused a visa - I sometimes wonder how my life would have turned out if I had been granted permission, but I think I turned out OK anyway. In the meantime, I applied to a Canadian-owned woodworking company as a technical preparer and draftsman, and they hired me quickly, and I ended up staying there for 13 years. The company was later acquired by LAKI Épületszobrász Zrt.

My first job in Hungary, at Patella, was to draw up the construction plans for the ballroom conversion of the Intercontinental Hotel, after which I was given the task of designing the fabrication of the sample room for the Gresham Palace (Four Seasons Hotel). In AutoCAD, not many companies in Hungary at the time, apart from Patella, could produce production drawings for interior design projects, so we had to produce the production drawings digitally. This work was my heart's desire, and I have never done anything more beautiful than the woodwork for the interior of the Grasham Palace. A really special element was the special wall cladding of the rooftop swimming pool, which, although resembling curtains, was made of wood and rigid. We couldn't find a manufacturer in Europe who would take on the task of making them - Thonet, famous for its curved furniture, turned us down. So we had to do it ourselves, and I came up with a unique technology to make them, and that's how we finally made it happen.

As it was a Canadian-owned company with an international reach, I was able to work in a number of locations from London to Moscow over the years. I've had my hands on the interiors of the Metropol Hotel in London and the Radisson SAS Hotel in Kiev, as well as a department store in Paris and a mansion in Moscow.

In the field of art, interior design is a profession that is close to my heart, if only because I went to art school, so I have a lot of knowledge about colours and the psychological effects of lines. So it was easy to integrate myself into the world of interior design.

Did you want bigger tasks?

I felt that after 13 years, it was time to move on, so I joined a woodworking group called Linea, where I first became a business manager and later a technical director. I gained a lot of experience in the overall coordination of projects, and then I was approached by KÉSZ. Finally, in 2016, I decided it was time for a change.

As they saw that I had already been involved in many projects, I was immediately given the interior design project management of the Aura Hotel in Balatonfüred, while at the same time I was working on the redesign of the offices of the NATO airbase in Papa. It's a different world in interior design, as you have to put together everything that already looks good on the plans from an architectural direction. From making sure that the walls are properly constructed so that the furniture already in production fits exactly into place, to ensuring that the paint and wallpaper are of the right quality and shade.

I had a special job at KÉSZ Chopot, and I'm very proud of the Marriott Hotel, where we built 369 rooms in a seemingly impossible short time - we had four months to tear it all down and rebuild it. KÉSZ's then competitor would have taken six months to do the work by indicating in advance that it might not be sustainable. We did it in four months, handing it over a week ahead of schedule, while having to stop construction for 10 days because an American company had rented the whole building.

Since then, I have worked on several projects at KÉSZ Csoport, including interior design, suspended ceilings and flooring for Hungexpo.

When we look at a floor, we only perceive that it has been covered with a tile of a certain size, but if it is placed in a beautiful and well thought-out way, it can add real quality to an entire interior - and that means it has to be worthwhile to order. It's no small job.

We have now created a sample room for the Intercontinental Hotel in Budapest, which is in the process of being inaugurated. Here we have 402 rooms to be completely rebuilt, including corridors and connecting rooms. It will be a multi-billion dollar project, where the choice of materials will make a big difference.

How did design come into your sights as a furniture designer? What are your main tasks?

The wood industry is linked to interior design in many ways. I graduated as a wood engineer. Interior designers dream up the furniture or even the cladding, but it is the wood engineers who come up with the actual product design and construction. We make the interior designers' ideas come true, if you like. The work we do now is also essentially design, but the final stage of design is preparation for implementation. After all, when an interior designer thinks up a space, he cannot give a solution for the small details, because they have to be adapted to the specific room - the technological part of interior design is typically already linked to the implementation. It is the same with other professions, I believe that when designing a plasterboard, the structural frame has to take into account where the fittings will be placed.

So in my work, it's not just the design of the furniture that matters, the environment around the furniture is just as important.

If we didn't have the wall design or the paint delimitations, we wouldn't be able to do a sufficiently precise job. Precise planning in advance has proved very successful for the Marriott Hotel, so we prepared for the Ensana Hotel on Margaret Island in advance. Here, too, the method of keeping the interior design in the hands of a team proved its worth: we had to stop construction for two years because of COVID, but when we were able to start work we could pick up where we left off, as we had all the information at our disposal. All the production and design plans were in the "drawer" waiting to be pulled out. Likewise the business plan I had put together, which we can use very well and I try to make sure that it can be used in other parts of the project, because a business plan is to the financial side what a production plan is to the construction side. Not only can you plan ahead, but you can also see very quickly if you have slipped somewhere with the costs.

How big a team do you manage?

When I get a job, my tight team of four interior designers - a manager, two project managers and a technical preparer - price the work, draw up the plans and schedule. When construction starts, we call on KÉSZ Építő Zrt. to provide construction managers and project managers to help us. On a major construction project - like the rebuilding of the rooms in the Marriott Hotel - we have 150-200 people working under us at any one time. This system is now well established.

Of course, for a job as big as Hungexpo, you had to manage an even larger workforce. I was in charge of the interior design part of this project, but of course each building had its own person in charge, with whom we constantly coordinated the tasks. Every part of the work on a building of this size is a challenge, because, for example, adapting the electrical plans to the interior design - because the light is never where the interior designer intended it to be on the electrical plan - requires a lot of time and attention.

Putting together the different parts of the work is perhaps the most complex part of our job.

So what is the most important part of your job?

The most important thing is to get all the little things right, because only then can I put everything together. I also have the mechanical, electrical and architectural design packages, and these three have to be aligned, because only then can everything be in place for the construction. Secondly, I have to take care of the contractors. It is important that everyone is happy to do the work, and if I see that the contractor is not able to carry out the task with the necessary precision, I have to take action as soon as possible. The different competences must be taken into account when setting up the teams, this is one of the cornerstones of efficiency.

What do you like most about your very broad spectrum of activities?

You have to move a lot of people at the same time, which is a motivating challenge for me every day; but perhaps what I like most is to see the end result.

It's a real sense of achievement when you finish an interior and walk through it and see that everything is in place - you can't beat that feeling. That's why I love my job, and why KÉSZ Csoport is the most appreciated of all the jobs I've ever had.

Although I am not the designer (as I do the design) I am satisfied. I feel that I have tried everything in my profession - although I have never worked on a skyscraper - and I am still happy to do it because it gives me many challenges.