The Adam Clark floating crane showed that this is his way - interview with the Engineer of the Month

Duna Group has gained a lot of valuable experience in the Polish construction industry over the past years, where it has been present for several years thanks to WKS Duna Polska, a steel structures manufacturer. Gábor Csikós, who manages the subsidiary, revealed a number of interesting facts about the success factors of the European involvement, while also talking about his exemplary career in many respects as June's Engineer of the Month.

He was at the birth of the Adam Clark floating crane

When asked about the early milestones of his career, the mechanical engineering graduate from the Budapest University of Technology recalled a visit to a university factory as a defining memory. "They took us to the Hungarian Ship and Crane Factory, where the Adam Clark floating crane was being built at the time: that's when I saw that this was the way for me."

Another defining experience is that

In the 1980s, as a graduate student in Moscow, he gave a lecture on sensors for welding robots, a very new topic at the time. "This direction has remained, as I am basically involved in the production of welded structures from the very beginning until today."

Becoming a leader in the automotive industry

In the early stages of his career, the Engineer of the Month made a significant impact in the automotive industry. "I was producing aluminium weldments for premium companies such as Ferrari, Porsche and Aston Martin."

He spent a crucial decade and a half at ALCOA (Aluminium Company of America), the automotive division of a US multinational: "After a while, I was in a management position and learned not the business but the management of a manufacturing company. So I gradually acquired the knowledge needed to manage an organisation."

It's not what they do that's extra, it's how they do it

In addition, in the automotive industry, it has mastered the LEAN method developed in this sector, which is now also spreading in the construction industry. which our newspaper has reported on in several news articles and interviews as a tool for creating competitive advantage and increasing efficiency. In one article, we described LEAN as a method for transparency, advance planning and open information, and Engineer of the Month highlighted the second of these factors.

"The automotive industry is not a pull sector because they are doing something extra, but because they are doing it in a very thoughtful way. You have to know that a car is an incredibly complex, multi-component thing that the average person has to be able to afford. So you need a very low cost structure, which is only possible if you have a very well organised process from design to sale."

He added that this approach still helps him a lot in his work today.

He also explained that the automotive industry is no longer a world of rigid mass production. "It has become a very flexible sector, capable of rapid changeovers: it operates according to a standard, but with continuous adaptations to newer and newer models and corrections to the previous ones. We need to follow this in bridge construction, as each successive bridge structure is different."

He also worked 500 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle

After a period in the automotive industry, he continued his career abroad for six years in the early 2010s, also as a driver, to learn and gain experience. "I have worked in the chemical and oil industries, including Finland, Germany and Belgium, the latter in a major oil refinery project."

He specifically mentioned Norway, where he worked under special conditions in the northern tip of the country, at the Hammerfest gas processing centre of the state oil company Statoil (now Equinor - ed.), 500 kilometres beyond the Arctic Circle.

The world is not here anymore!

He then decided to end his adventure abroad, which is when he came to Duna Group. However, his return home was not final, as shortly afterwards he was offered the job of driving the WKS Duna Polska, which was then part of the group. During his first trip to Poland, he spent a whole day inspecting the factory in Będzin in southern Poland. "I saw that the company's mindset was still reminiscent of the 1980s. It used to be a state-owned company, and when it was privatised it remained the same under the socialist regime.

I had all the makings of a good company, but it all had to be coordinated, and on top of that, I had to push it forward twenty years."

At the same time, he took over the management of the company and eight years ago began to build a modern operation based on principles carried over from the automotive industry.

"In Eastern Europe today, many companies are still trying to implement the philosophy of the 1980s in a new guise, i.e. professionally and efficiently. That's what the former Polish management did: they stuck to the old pattern and wanted to do it well. But the world is not there anymore!"

Starting from near bankruptcy, they were able to grow into a European company

Founded in the 1950s, the Polish company used to manufacture steel structures for coal-fired power plants, and after the change of regime it entered other sectors as a structure manufacturer, but eventually came close to bankruptcy and was taken over by Hungarian ownership. "On my first day, some of the company's assets were already in the hands of the bankruptcy trustee, and we started from there."

At our request, he outlined one of the elements of the LEAN strategy that has successfully replaced the old corporate culture.

"We only do what the customer pays for. For example, you pay to weld two parts together; you don't pay to put them together, no good, take them apart, adjust them and put them back together. Think about it: there is no money for these operations! If it does happen, a very serious effort has to be made to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Today they no longer need to prepare for the arrival of the auditor

He said that they had used external organisations to deliver LEAN training to their staff. "After two or three years, everyone was familiar with the basics, but it's a never-ending process." The most important achievement for him is that the methodology is now self-sustaining.

"Sometimes, when I'm walking down the hall, I come across a task that I may not have heard of, and I see a solution being brought in that is LEAN-based and the result of forward thinking."

He also gave an important example of a change in approach: in the past, the company used to prepare for the arrival of the auditor for 1-2 weeks. Today, however, they work on a day-to-day basis so that anyone can check the production process and quality at any time, whether it is an auditor or a potential customer. "Customer audits are very common with us: before they send us a request for proposal, they spend a day with us. They look at the company's operations, from production to safety engineering to environmental protection." On the latter, he added, there are now requirements that if a certain percentage of the energy they use is not certified green energy, they cannot even bid.

Operating successfully in ten countries

Thanks to the new approach, the company, under the leadership of the Hungarian expert, was able to emerge from bankruptcy and gradually expand its customer base. "In addition to the Hungarian and Polish markets, which are our home markets, we have managed to gain work in other markets over time: today we are present with our products in a total of ten European countries."

He highlighted one of their first foreign projects. „It was a bridge construction project in Iceland, and since then we have built four bridges in the island nation, and we are now in the final stages of negotiations for the construction of a fifth bridge. But we also have bridges in Finland, Sweden and Norway.” Our newspaper also reported on one of the projects implemented in the latter country: in the city of Trondheim, last June, the Saupstad Bridge was inaugurated, spanning the railway and motorway passing through the town, whose steel structure was manufactured at the WKS Duna Polska factory.

Although WKS Duna Polska manufactures 90 percent of bridge structures, it also produces crane structures, lift shafts and other auxiliary steel structures. "We have crane structures in France and Austria, and tunnel steel structures in Germany," he explained. As background, he said, they have managed to obtain many of the certificates needed to manufacture a wide variety of bridge structures - including country-specific certificates. "My colleagues take the obstacles in their stride, because whether we are working to technical specifications in Hungarian, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic or Slovakian, it is now taken for granted and we are able to meet the requirements to the customer's expectations."

On a wavelength

When examining the background of the successful change of mindset, the question arose as to how difficult or easy it was to harmonise the Hungarian and Polish mentality in the Polish company that joined the Hungarian group.

"Throughout my career, I have worked with professionals from many European countries, as well as Asian and even African countries on major projects, which has always created a multicultural environment that is great to work in. At the same time, the kind of good sense of direct mentality that characterises Hungarians is unique to Poles"

- explained Gábor Csikós.

He mentioned, for example, that in other European nations, everyone is very friendly, helpful and cooperative during working hours, but this does not extend beyond working hours and work-related issues. "At the same time, in Poland, it's quite natural to have lunch together or to go out for a beer or bowling after work; in that sense, Poles and Hungarians are very much on the same wavelength. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the historically good relationship between the two peoples."

They switched to high capacity cranes to reduce the work on site

The change of approach and market expansion described above has of course been accompanied by the modernisation of the company's equipment, with major investments. "These included the installation of a grain spraying machine in a separate building; the acquisition of a state-of-the-art plasma cutting machine for three-dimensional steel cutting; and, more recently, the installation of a four-head welding machine."

The company's cranes from the 1970s have also been replaced: the 20 and 32 tonne cranes have been replaced by 50 tonne cranes. "The latter was necessary because, whereas in the past a bridge was built using 20-30 tonne bridge elements, today 50 tonne or more elements are used. The reason is that in all countries it is increasingly important to reduce the amount of work on site."

Some bridge installers recommend the Duna Group factory

When discussing customer satisfaction, it was also revealed that for the WKS Duna Polska, the customer is not only the client of the project, but also the contractor who installs the bridge on site. "Our product is a series delivery of bridge elements that need to be able to be assembled on site. If they can do the on-site assembly smoothly, easily and with few problems, the customer is satisfied."

He added that it is not easy to work with the high precision needed on the ground:

"The kind of mentality that it will be fine, they'll sort it out on the spot, can't work!"

It is a very good feedback for the company that sometimes it happens that the installers themselves suggest to build the bridge in the Duna Group factory rather than in another one.

What a dream job means for a bridge manufacturer

The company is present in the Hungarian construction industry thanks to the infrastructure projects carried out by Duna Group.

"We have been involved in major bridges such as the Danube Bridge in Komárom, the Tiszaug road bridge of the M44, the Southern Connecting Railway Bridge, the Tomori Pál Bridge in Paks and now we are also involved in the Danube Bridge in Mohács. This is the 100th bridge we are helping to build! In addition, we have also built the cycle path on Lake Tisza and several bridge structures on the M4 and M44 motorways."

Although it was an extremely large investment in terms of size, he cited the example of the Southern Link Railway Bridge because of its relative simplicity. "It was a very well thought-out construction with excellent designers. In addition, we had to build three identical bridges in succession, which is very rare. It was not easy, but it was a very achievable task, a dream job in fact," he adds with a smile.

It's a beautiful sight, but when they saw it, they threw a backhand

He also highlighted one of the most complex jobs of the last eight years. "The bridge over the Eger stream at the end of the cycle path around Lake Tisza was built with a sine wave-like pipe support. It's a beautiful sight, but when colleagues first saw the technical drawing, they threw a tail wag. We sweated through this project, solving a lot of serious technical challenges.

I always told my colleagues that we would work on it a lot, but when it was finished we would be very proud of it - and we were."

In general, he added, the design of bicycle-pedestrian bridges requires the most "sculpting" work. "Of course, large bridges also require a lot of attention, but in this respect, 'design' bridges are more complex tasks."

Giving young engineers back what they got from their elders

When asked at the end of the interview about the driving force that keeps him going in the toughest situations, he answered honestly: "There is no such thing as the toughest situation. I don't want to say this out of pretension, but the tasks I've always had - even in the automotive industry and in the chemical industry - have always been such that you really 'just' have to work at them. If it wasn't like that for me, I wouldn't be doing it. Of course there's a degree of difficulty in the tasks, but you also need the size and seriousness of the challenges to keep you interested."

In addition to the above attitude, he also formulated a specific intrinsic motivation. "I used to get a lot from the older engineers, so I always make sure that I'm always looking after the young people in the same way that they looked after me. Since the late 1980s I have been teaching welding and materials testing at the welding engineering faculty of the BME; I also taught at the University of Dunaújváros." He added that he also regularly has young graduates.

Even during the years abroad, it managed to keep its roots in its home country

He also pointed to his wife's great resilience as the basis for his success. "I consciously arranged my life so that I would only have temporary residence abroad, and I always kept my home in Hungary. This is still the case today, when we have grandchildren: my wife lives at home and I come to visit her every weekend from Będzin, not far from the Slovak-Polish border. The principle of 'behind every successful man there is a woman' is as true for me as it gets: if my wife wasn't like that, this strategy wouldn't work."

In closing, he set out as a further core value the diversity of his career.

"I've worked on a wide range of things from aluminium automotive suppliers, to steel structures for the oil industry, to natural gas processors and bridge structures. Each field is different, but they all involve mechanical engineering, fabrication and welded structures; that's what gives them their beauty."