A career built on collaboration, continuous learning and customer success

What inspired you to join Valmet, and how has your journey evolved since then? 

I had worked with Valmet’s quality department in my previous role at a different company. And of course I had come across Neles^TM valves at process plants. If I’m honest it’s really the people and close collaboration with customers that inspired me. I joined the company seven years ago and have since been fortunate enough to take on larger responsibilities twice.

Can you describe your current role and what a typical day looks like for you? 

I’m responsible for Valmet’s Flow Control services and spare parts business globally. This entails a fair amount of direct daily involvement in sales, supporting our local teams or visiting customers in all industries. I also manage a team of roughly 20 specialists in five countries who ensure our processes work well and make sure we keep challenging ourselve to deliver tangible value to customers in the years to come. 

What opportunities for learning and development have you experienced at Valmet?

I started in an entirely new role and the person sitting next to me, who had joined Valmet as a service technician in 1975, was nearing retirement. Valmet gave me the means to learn fast by pairing me with experienced colleagues and through accelerated training, external certification programs and a lot of time “at the heart of the action” at customer site. It has been a wonderful environment for a lifelong learner like me. 

Can you share a memorable moment or project that made you feel proud to work here? 

I’d have to choose from a dozen maintenance shutdown projects I planned with larger oil refineries and petrochemical plants in my early years at Valmet. That work was extremely rewarding in terms of customer success and personal growth. I’m grateful to Valmet for giving me the freedom to test new ideas and build a structured model from the results.

David in his hometown Monaco.

How does your work contribute to Valmet’s mission or to a more sustainable future? 

We’ve been providing Flow Control services for 50 years, and the process plant challenges we encounter and help address – ageing facilities, reliability, safety, environmental compliance, predictive maintenance, what role AI will play – are more relevant today than ever. This is clear in Valmet’s new strategy. I also see Flow Control services’ steady growth over the last 20 years as a sign that our efforts to put data to maximal use (to make better decisions, to manage risk) have been well invested and will prove even more valuable in the coming years.

What motivates you most about working at Valmet? 

I can genuinely say that I’m learning something new every day. Valmet combines a company culture with an emphasis on continuous improvement, flat hierrarchy, work-life balance – and a truly global work environment and customer base. Working at Valmet has also been a very enriching experience from a personal point of view. I get to see firsthand how process plants operate and evolve, and these trips (and others) have taken me to 120 countries. I also picked up a few languages and other skills along the way. I’ve been teaching myself the tenor saxophone for the last 1.5 year and got a chance to put that skill to use at a handful of Valmet or customer events. 

During his years at Valmet, David has participated in many exhibitions, and given presentations on various topics.

What’s the best thing about working with customers?

I’ve always considered it a priviledge to work with process plants and people passionate about their work. Every plant is different, but the people I meet share a lot of the same challenges regardless of country or industry. If often ask job interview candidates what “speaking customers’ language” means, but all in all I rarely face real language barriers in the literal sense. 

If you had to describe Valmet in three words, what would they be and why?

1. Excellence – we take pride in the quality of our products and in their good performance in the long-term.
2. Accountability – to put it simply, we do not deliver and disappear. 
3. Teamwork – just about everything I do requires contributions from a colleague or two, from customers or even suppliers, often in different countries; it’s true cross-cultural and cross-functional teamwork!