Well begun is half done
When planning substantial investments for large factories, patience is a necessity. This idea drives the business at Kokkola-based Merius. The engineering office provides consultation, plant engineering, mechanical engineering as well as project management services.
“We are mainly focused on plant engineering and plant investment, which always begins with a thorough plan,” says Merius CEO Hannu Sarja.
The plan strongly affects the work of the people that implement it. A single project may involve up to 100 workers and this is why Merius involves all the necessary persons already in the design phase. Inviting cooperation on the design leads to a mutual understanding between all parties working on the project. Although the approach may appear slow at first, Merius’ experience shows that in the end it saves time.
“Involving the interest groups is a strength that enables us to get the plan right the first time. This way we can avoid mistakes and save in the total costs, as well as achieve time savings. In the largest scale investments, the savings gained from a thorough design can run into hundreds of millions of euros,” Sarja says.
Merius is also working towards making it easy for interest groups to take part in the design, and for this reason does not use traditional drawings. Visually illustrative methods, such as digital modelling with reality capture, can help clients understand how the plan will work in practice and what issues need to be taken into account in the design.
“We are pioneering the practice of involving interest groups. We want to continually challenge the practices used in our industry and we have a passion for solving problems. This is demonstrated by the fact that over the last four years, we have annually ploughed 13 percent of our turnover back into research and development in new methods. Since our company is of modest size, we are able to adopt new approaches quickly into use for the benefit of our clients,” Sarja notes.
