Ansgar Johan Ladstein is a project manager at Omexom Norway. His role sees him managing projects from end to end, with the autonomy and taste for teamwork to match his aspirations.
“The role of project manager is not only essential – it’s fascinating!” Ansgar Johan Ladstein has held this position in the HV Power Systems department at Omexom Norway since 2021 and is clearly passionate about his day-to-day work. He manages projects that vary greatly in terms of both scale and content.
“A Project Manager is like the conductor of an orchestra,” says Ansgar Johan Ladstein. “You have to manage the technical side of the project, but equally its contractual and financial aspects. You define the materials, equipment and time required to complete the project, put suitable teams in place, establish the contract, and ensure follow-up with the customer and with subcontractors, not forgetting the whole human resources dimension.”
At the age of 33, this specialist in renewable energies and electrical engineering found his path following professional experiences with the power supply network, public lighting and rail transport systems specialist Infratek (now Omexom Norway) and the engineering consultancy Multiconsult.
“To reconcile the operational, financial and contractual dimensions of a project while enjoying significant autonomy and broad responsibility”
“I joined Infratek on a post-degree summer placement,” he recalls. “Then the project manager for a huge project on the west coast of Norway took me on as a project engineer. I learned a lot, and it was there that I realised how fascinating this job is.”
Back in the field
Ansgar Johan Ladstein then found a new role at Multiconsult thanks to a former Infratek manager. There, he worked with “extremely advanced” experts on “a huge variety of projects related to problems with electrical substations”.
The desire to get “back in the field” emerged two years later. The young engineer “logically” turned to Omexom Norway, the former Infratek. He explains: “I knew that the VINCI Energies culture would enable me to reconcile the operational, financial and contractual dimensions of a project while enjoying significant autonomy and broad responsibility.”
Ansgar Johan Ladstein has great memories of one of his very first contracts: a substation upgrade project in Dramenn, in southern Norway, for the electrical supplier Glitre Nett.
“I was back in the field and managing a very real project, which was certainly stressful but primarily stimulating, with the pleasure of working in a team,” says the young project manager, who says he found the atmosphere familiar from his time in Norway’s armed forces as a corporal, team leader and dog handler.
Carbon neutrality
His most recent project with Omexom, handed over after two years of work in December 2023, was very different from the Dramenn project, and on a completely different scale. The contract was to equip a bus depot in the city of Oslo with 76 electric vehicle charging points ranging in power from 180 to 240 kW, plus two substations each containing 2×2.5 MVA transformers.
Ansgar Johan Ladstein notes that “The interesting thing about this assignment was that, unlike with most contracts with electricity suppliers, the customer is not an expert in electrical systems, and the project had to be designed from the ground up.”
He also greatly appreciated working with other Omexom business units on this project: “E-Mobility” for the infrastructure, “Distribution” for the substations and transformers, “Excavation” for the civil engineering, “Critical Power” for the temporary electrical power supply systems, and “Lighting” for, naturally, the lighting systems.
He adds: “This was a collective project with a twist, in that there was a strong emphasis on carbon neutrality, so all the equipment used was electrically powered.”
The idea of managing operations sustainably is key for Ansgar Johan Ladstein. Reconnecting with his initial training, the young French-speaking engineer (he spent his youth in the Angoulême region of France, where his French-speaking parents had decided to settle) also privately took courses in sustainable management and finance.
This personal interest also prompted him recently to choose, from the many VINCI Energies training programmes available, a course on risk assessment with a focus on environmental risk.
07/10/2024
