"What goes smoothly, quickly wears off" - Lóránt Csehi Engineer of the Month

How did you become a civil engineer?

I was born in Siófok, Balaton, although I left home when I was 14. I went to high school in Pannonhalma, then to Ybl in Budapest, where I studied civil engineering. Starting a family came relatively early, so during my college years I worked in various jobs, which fortunately had a professional direction. I worked as an assistant in an architectural office for a few years and then worked for a geodesy company for a year before graduating. These were experiences that proved very useful later.

I decided as a child that I would go into civil engineering. The master builder character in the cartoon Ludas Matyi really struck me as a very young child, and somehow I stayed interested until I chose a career.

Of course, this was also confirmed by the fact that I was strong in maths and physics, but not so much in humanities. As a student, I did a lot of summer jobs as a labourer, so I could see pits and spoons up close, so I knew what kind of environment I was coming into. I graduated in 1991, at a time when the Hungarian economy was going through perhaps one of its biggest crises: socialist industry had collapsed, there was no organised solution in sight, and mass redundancies were being made. So there was no tempting vision for the future in the construction industry, but I was not motivated by money.

An important stage in the geodesists' work was to sit down at a desk and process the data they had recorded. I found this task very monotonous, so I shut myself off from the design direction. A civil engineer can follow three or four paths: he can become a designer, he can work in public administration, as many engineers are needed in various offices, or he can work in construction. Given the above, it is not surprising that I chose the latter.

It was also decided relatively quickly that I would not become an entrepreneur. I didn't have the risk-taking skills that were essential. Obviously, being an entrepreneur gives you a lot of freedom and opportunity to make money faster or move up the ladder quicker, but it comes at the price of constant uncertainty.

I was lucky. I was living in Sopron with my family, where a job opportunity opened up in a local general construction company. I spent eleven years there: I started as a construction manager and finished my years in Sopron as a regional manager. I worked on several construction sites related to the city and gained a lot of experience, but mainly due to personal changes, my life in Sopron came to an end and I changed jobs. After a few transitional years, I was approached by the owner of a company in Kecskemét to join them as a general manager. I said yes, but I didn't move to Kecskemét, so I commuted for two years from the Transdanubian region - luckily my three sons were already at university.

My cross-country adventure ended with VEMÉV-SZER because I had to find a job in Veszprém county due to family commitments. I looked at the companies in the county and VEMÉV-SZER seemed to be the one I liked. So I applied to see if they could offer me a job.

I met our technical director, Ferenc Steierlein, who listened to me and offered me a job, and I was able to build the athletics centre in Pápa as a facility manager and now I am helping the company as a project manager.

I am now a resident of Veszprém, I have found a home here; close to Lake Balaton.

Can you highlight some of your projects?

People tend to remember the recent past more easily. I felt honoured when VEMÉV-SZER entrusted me with the construction of the papal athletics centre. I was given a great deal of trust because, even though I was relatively new here, I did not have to report daily on what I had done. This trust gave me a sense of responsibility that really motivated me.

I was responsible for all client and subcontractor communication, and indeed all decisions that had an impact on the processes, and of course I had the opportunity. Fortunately for the Athletics Centre I was able to draw on previous knowledge. We had built an athletics track in Kecskemét, and the experience from that was very useful here. I knew exactly how to start such an investment, what the priorities were.

It was a great pleasure to deliver the facility to the satisfaction of the client, we came out of the money and even made a small profit at the end - of course, this also required that the building was carefully designed by the designer and supported by the investor.

This was followed by a few smaller projects at VEMÉV-SZER, and soon after, the first phase of the first phase of the renovation of the Petőfi Theatre in Veszprém began, where a very good working relationship developed with the monument preservationists and the local government, and we were able to organise the construction through very effective cooperation and joint thinking. This was followed by the launch of the huge project to renovate Veszprém Castle in the spring of 2022, so we have been here for almost two and a half years now.

This is a key project in the life of Veszprém, too, as there has not been an investment of this scale in recent decades. As it is the heart of the city, we naturally had to take into account the events of the EKF. Our contract stipulated that by 2023 we had to repair the façades and roofs and then move out of the castle. After the Veszprém-Balaton 2023 European Capital of Culture event, we could return to renew the interior. This is still ongoing.

We have to carry out excavations in the castle, which could reveal many things that could change the whole course of the construction. We see these buildings as assets, including their hidden values. And we have to adapt to how the client intends to change the concept in the light of the new knowledge. A lot of design variations are made here before we get to the final result.

Your career started from a practical basis, as a construction manager is directly involved in the construction works. Where did that shift to?

Our profession is not linked to a job title, although it does come with rights and responsibilities. The operation of a construction company is always project-driven, and the rhythm of these projects determines our lives. Of course, they can vary in scale from a few days to several years, but we always have to focus on the project at hand - I have been involved in more than a hundred. First as a site manager, then as a regional manager, obviously with a slightly different job title, but still basically with a direct presence.

Communication with people in higher positions is becoming increasingly important. As a construction manager, you live in a relatively simple but very tense world: you concentrate on your own work, on the next two weeks; you have to deal with a variety of contractors - masons, carpenters - with whom you have to find a common voice. It's a very raw world.

However, as you move up the hierarchy, say when you have to coordinate the work of three construction managers and a technical preparer, you have to focus more on making that team efficient - the importance of teamwork becomes a stronger constraint as you move up the hierarchy. It is vital that the people involved in a project are able to talk to each other, without any friction or tension. This also means having fun, because then we can work well. Although this is not an aspect that a construction manager has to deal with, it is important to stress that

here are no sharp boundaries, it is not a system stratified by military hierarchy. To this day, I am responsible if someone is doing a bad job, but I also have to supervise the day-to-day things on a construction site. Of course, it is also true that I have to oversee more and more construction sites, which is only possible from further and further away.

A site manager is typically on one construction site, a chief architect can take on, say, two projects. As a site manager, a major job can be accompanied by several smaller ones, but two major ones are not typical, as he has to see the whole economic model of the construction site and whether the site managers are doing a good job of physical management or not. They are also responsible for the scheduling, because if it rains for four weeks, for example, while we have planned external works, we have to reorganise the tasks. A facilities manager has a management role in this.

And as a project manager, my job is to oversee several large projects and ensure smooth communication with clients. As project managers, we are responsible for the quality of customer relations and for accountability to management, in addition to developing the feasibility of customer requirements.

As you work at higher levels, you put more and more effort into coordinating work and building team spirit. Even though VEMÉV-SZER is now a large company, it somehow retains a family atmosphere where you can talk through problems with top managers and work as a team. Friendships are formed with many colleagues here, which is obviously true in other companies, but here I feel it is more common than usual. We care for each other: if one of my colleagues has a problem, he dares to tell me, just as I dare to tell my colleagues my problems, which is not only important for me, but also helps the overall efficiency of the company.

What do you particularly like about it?

Our work always has a beginning and an end. It is a production that leaves a mark on the world. Of course, the spectacular and tangible result is also the tension of having to deliver.

When the investor entrusts us, it is really a situation of trust, because they believe we can do the job. It is a real success if we can deliver the finished facility to the quality he envisages.

The attitude of a designer to a project is different from that of the client, the authority and the contractor. If the investor says he needs a bridge (for whatever purpose), he doesn't know how a bridge is built and what it takes. It is the designer who not only dreams up the structure, but also knows the details, the nodes, the dimensions that will make the structure work. He also looks at how it will fit into the landscape and the period in which it is built. The engineers working for the authority add to this how the building can meet the various community requirements. Even if a developer dreams up a tower block on a Natura2000 site, it will be blocked by the authority, because the rules have to be respected - and they have to be defined beforehand. This is an important task.

The final result will depend on the quality of the contractor: the materials, the number of people and the timeframe for the construction are our business.

There are always many factors behind a budget, ranging from technical solutions to logistical issues. A lot depends on elements that are not visible on the final building: for example, whether scaffolding or cranes were needed for construction.

What I particularly like to do has always been scheduling and reviewing schedules. This has always suited me somehow, so of course I still prioritise these to this day. There's probably nothing in our profession that I don't like, because every piece of work gives me new experiences but builds on the old ones. If something fails - it's not finished to the expected quality, you may have to intervene, you may have to dismantle something - it can be very frustrating, but it's a task that has to be managed. But when you manage to solve a problem like that, it's a particularly great sense of achievement. These are situations that put a lot of stress on you, but years later they're the ones we talk about, because what goes smoothly soon wears off.