The bigger the better Főmterv

ThE BIggER ThE BETTER

Főmterv, Hungary’s leading engineering consultancy, has more than 60 years’ experience in civil engineering and infrastructure design. Due to its extensive specialist knowledge and highly trained design engineers with exceptional problem-solving skills, the firm is often invited to work on large-scale and challenging projects worldwide. Edina Beale reports.

Főmterv was established by Budapest Council in 1950 for the restoration of the capital city after the war. All centralised specialist design and development units were set up to work in the city on civil engineering projects including road systems, utility systems and bridges. When privatisation took place in 1992 the employees accessed company shares and have become the owners of the firm.

Today Főmterv employs 300 people; from this, 240 are professionally trained specialist design engineers. The activities of the firm have been extended over the decades, but the preparation of transport development strategies remains its core activity. From the total of 1100 qualified design engineers in Hungary, one quarter works for Főmterv; this is reflected in its market position as Főmterv is dominant in most of its activities, taking about 25–30 per cent share of the domestic market.

‘We solve problems’

Most projects Főmterv is involved in are large-scale, challenging assignments. In fact its philsophy is: the bigger the project the better. The company is eager to utilise its specialist engineering knowledge and decades of experience to resolve difficult engineering tasks. It was Főmterv that prepared Hungary’s national transport development and transport strategy plan, but the majority of the capital’s sewage system planning has been designed by the firm too. The renovation of the Margaret bridge, the rail link between the International Airport and Budapest inner city, many motorway systems, Zalaegerszeg proving ground for autonomous vehicles, the Budapest–Belgrade rail upgrade and the engineering design of Metro line 4 are just a few of the company’s more recent assignments. Clearly Főmterv is the first choice when it comes to large-scale and complex projects.

“Főmterv has remained in the market for so many decades because we not only complete the given tasks, but more importantly we solve problems,” says CEO Tibor Keszthelyi. “We are not cheap but guarantee the highest standards and therefore partners with serious and risky projects invest in us.”

exporting the knowledge

Owing to its excellent reputation, Főmterv has managed to build relationships abroad and has worked on several foreign projects in recent times. It has planned large water systems at the Austrian border and designed gas transport pipes towards Slovakia, while important projects in Romania included sewage system design and motorway planning from Cernavoda and Constanta.

The Doha Metro in Qatar is one of the world’s largest metro systems currently under construction, and Főmterv took part in this massive development project, as Mr Keszthelyi reveals: “We

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are present in Saudi Arabia and we have a joint venture in Qatar for which we worked on the Green metro line; an 18km track passage was designed by Főmterv. We gained exceptional knowledge and valuable experience in the field of underground transport systems in Budapest. This was the reason one of our partners in Qatar approached us with this task.” The project provided the opportunity for Főmterv to work with local partners using the BIM (Building Information Modelling) process, an intelligent 3D model-based process.

“Transport system planning is about developing ideas to fine-tune different methods of transport and city development so that they support each other and create a positive energy,” adds Mr Keszthelyi. “We are good at this as we have excellent backgrounds in modelling and economics, and employ economists and specialist design engineers so we can export this activity for a very reasonable price compared to western European rates. The Arabic countries want to introduce a centralised transport system concept and it looks like we will take part in producing this.”

Arising opportunities

Mr Keszthelyi believes there will be demand for the company’s services all across Europe as he sees opportunities in the reconstruction of old railway systems and new markets in the developing countries. “We have a dominant position in the domestic market and I believe we will be able to maintain this if we continue to train our engineers so they have up-to-date IT knowledge. I trust in our neighbouring countries; I look forward to Serbia joining the EU, and hope to see peace in Romanian politics so we can work with our neighbours. There could be a shortage of engineers in Romania as many of them went abroad to work. We are also in contact with our partners in Western Europe who often call for our help; recently for example we have been bidding a bridge construction project in Norway.

“The opportunity to provide maintenance support once a project is completed is already recognised in Hungary; however, it is not in practice yet,” explains Mr Keszthelyi. “There is a growing interest in energy economics in our business, too. In Hungary new construction developments have started in the past few years but today those have to adhere to strict environmental requirements and our task is finding out how to create the most energy-efficient system using either geothermal energy or district heating. This will be an exciting challenge in the future, even in other areas like underground transport system design, as metro systems require enormous energy resources and there are plenty of technological solutions now available to reduce the energy consumption of these complex systems. I see great future opportunities in these types of projects.”