The young consultant of the year is an enthustiastic developer who questions old practices
The Finnish Association Of Consulting Firms, SKOL, has chosen Perttu Valtonen, Sweco’s BU Director, as the Young Consultant of the Year. Valtonen has managed to combine his work on construction contracting and development with a challenging leadership role.
His wife says she knows this, too. The man is very patient, but he also has a natural tendency to throw himself into new situations. These are undoubtedly good qualities to have as the father of two children, who will soon turn 3 and 5, but living in the moment is also an advantage in the fast-paced construction design industry.
“In this work, you need to react quickly to changes and incoming challenges,” Valtonen describes the design and consulting sector.
This is surely one of the reasons why Valtonen has achieved top places in the Young Consultant of the Year competition and succeeded in his career. He went from Project Engineer to Project Manager, becoming then an Accountable Area Manager in 2016. He has spent the last few years as a Business Unit Manager.
“The best thing about working at Sweco is the culture: you get both freedom and responsibility, but you are also required to commit to the job. Sweco has such great, smart people who are extremely inspiring to work with. This has encouraged me to move forward in my career.”
Valtonen has been a member of the executive team of Sweco’s Project Management business segment since 2017. In the team, he is known for his fresh ideas, but also for his critical insights. Working with Valtonen involves plenty of dry humour and ‘masterful witticisms that can defuse any situation.’
Under Valtonen’s leadership, Sweco has achieved great things, such as building an expert team on information models, which has developed unique innovations in the utilisation of BIMs. In the City Rail Loop project, Valtonen led the development work on combining infrastructural models and BIMs, and in the Finavia project the team used virtual technology for cooperation with interest groups. There are plenty of ideas for future development projects as well.
“Next, we want to develop the internal communication of projects and start truly using information models in the processes during the maintenance phase. Students will start working on Master’s theses on both of these subjects this year.”
Leading by example
The ‘Buildings Helsinki’ unit led by Valtonen will, for its part, be in charge of Sweco’s construction contracting projects in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The unit’s turnover was over 5.3 million euros in 2018. Perttu is in charge of the unit’s performance, the acquisition and implementation of projects, client relationships, quality and development work, and HR matters.
However, Perttu enjoys being able to also work on projects. He says that project work also has a different kind of value:
“Specialist work is led by example. I want to create an atmosphere where everyone feels they can succeed through their own work and where we do our jobs responsibly. Everyone should be in it together: a supervisor should not be a wallflower.”
This young BU Director has managed to combine construction contracting and development in a challenging leadership role. He has over 40 employees working under him, and in the staff survey of last year, his rating as a supervisor was 4.5/5. His colleagues believe that Valtonen’s greatest strength is his excellent interaction skills – his ability to listen, encourage and motivate.
Inflexibility is the enemy of real customer value
This year, the theme of the Young Consultant of the Year competition was ‘sustainable value creation for the good of your clients.’ According to Perttu, value can be created sustainably if the company sees the value flow through the work done for the client, up to the end user. Sweco has a ‘flat organisation.’ The advantage of such an organisation is that the decision-making is decentralised, meaning employees can largely make the necessary decisions by themselves and spend their time on serving the client – not the parent organisation.
“Inflexibility is the enemy of real customer value,” Perttu states.
He says that you need to respect your own work and do everything as well as you can, but you cannot polish things forever – that is not sustainable value creation for the client. A common problem in our industry is that the information and wishes of the client do not reach the person doing the actual work.
According to the jury, Valtonen has also proven that it is possible to balance family and a challenging job. Valtonen says that sometimes some arrangements and flexibility are required, but after a day of work, he sets work aside and focuses completely on his children. For the last few years, he and his family have spent their free time building their house. Next summer, the family will travel to Joutseno to plant trees at their family farm.
The Young Consultant of the Year competition is intended for engineering and consulting experts up to 33 years of age, and its purpose is to showcase young talents’ efforts in the field and acknowledge the best professionals. The competition has been held since 2014. This year’s winner was announced in Helsinki Central Library Oodi on 26 April. The competition’s theme for this year was ‘sustainable value creation for the good of your clients.’
The members of SKOL are design and consulting firms who aim to solve the most significant future challenges of society and business. SKOL is a member of Technology Industries of Finland.