Interview with Marco (44), Profit Centre Manager in the Railway Technology BU
Marco actually wanted to turn his back on the railway industry after completing his training as an energy system electronics technician. Today, he has management responsibility and is happy with the status quo.
Marco, you have been part of EQOS Energie for several years now – how has your career with us developed?
I started at EQOS Energie in 2013 as a site manager. Two years later, I was promoted to project manager. However, I wanted to take on more responsibility, so I became Deputy Profit Center Manager in 2018. When my boss at the time retired, I took over the full Profit Center management in 2019. In general, a lot has changed for me in the last twelve years: At the very beginning, I worked alongside the construction sites at our former location in Nuremberg, which was relocated to Erfurt due to a major project, and for the past ten years I have been jumping back and forth between Erfurt, Berlin and the home office.
Surely it’s not just your locations and job titles that have changed, but also your areas of responsibility, right?
Definitely. As site manager, I took care of all sorts of things on the construction site: organising and instructing our fitters and subcontractors, measuring, invoicing and all that sort of things. In project management, the focus was more on the figures – I did cost controlling, took care of the contractual details and helped calculate offers. And today, although I still do a few projects on the side, I mainly take care of issues such as employee training, recruiting, occupational safety, tender audits, customer care and much more. I used to be responsible for only myself, but now I’m also responsible for the work of others and everything else that comes up.
Is there anything you miss from your previous jobs? And conversely, something that you would not want to miss from your current position?
I miss the proximity to the construction site that I used to have. I still try to be outside a lot and close to the fitters, but it’s not always so easy in terms of time. But I wouldn’t want to miss working independently any more: I like being responsible for the employees, making decisions and organising. In my current position, I can still develop, because you face new challenges every day that you have to deal with. And when I get stuck, I look for help. Asking and be tenacious, it doesn’t work any other way. Burying your head in the sand is not an option.
The topic of employees seems to be very close to your heart?
Managing employees is the most strenuous and at the same time the most enjoyable part of my job (laughs). Every person is different and you have to approach everyone differently. I want to treat everyone equally and to do that I have to know how to reach the different characters. Every person reacts differently and that’s probably the hard part: it requires me to engage fully and equally with all the different characters. But that’s also the most fun part, because you should take the most time for your colleagues.
“There is no standardised approach when dealing with people.”
You have remained loyal to EQOS – even in difficult times. Why is that?
Shortly after I was hired, Alpine was facing insolvency before our part was sold and restructured as EQOS. But no matter how dark the times were back then, I never had to worry about my job. Despite the difficult situation, I never had the feeling that everything was going down the drain. Of course, there were some doomsayers, but generally people were always positive about the future and I was always encouraged that things would go on. And if we look around today, we were right. EQOS is doing brilliantly.
So you still seem to feel at home with us after all this time?
I think the company is great and I really enjoy working here. I feel comfortable, I always have; even when Alpine went bankrupt, I stayed and went along with everything. Why? Because the company does a lot for us and our department. We are a small, personal department in a large company and that’s great. We enjoy the security of the size of EQOS and the close-knit atmosphere of a small company. I value that a lot!
As not everything was always good and you have experienced a lot: Do you look back on any success or highlight of the last few years with particular fondness?
Due to our history, we naturally had major problems on the market at times. This was also reflected in our customer base, which we had to rebuild over time. For a year or two, we travelled a lot to rebuild our reputation with general contractors. Today I can say that we have managed to rebuild our customer base. The general contractors want to work with us and it’s even better when the customer base that we have worked hard to rebuild continues to grow.
Finally, is there anything you would like to see for the future of your department?
Quite simply: the long-awaited growth in the number of staff in my department. We have enough to do and are very well integrated into EQOS, but we have to think about which projects we can take on and to what extent. It would be great to welcome new colleagues who would make such a selection superfluous.