The participants arrived on Monday the 23rd of September. The host of the visit was Markku Leino, who drove the quests to their hotel at Tikkurila Sports Center. Tikkurila hotel was chosen because of its cheap price and near location. The hotel will be also an accommodation place for the students who come to Varia within the project. The evening continued with evening snacks and getting to know each other better.
Day started at 9 am with coffee and principal Pekka Tauriainen's welcoming speech and introduction of Varia and Finnish education system. Afterwards the meeting continued with the concrete project work and scheduling.
Project manager Markus Wendt introduced the internet site for the project which is located under Emil-Possehl-Schule's website.
Then moving on to project scheduling and contact info. All the materials will be uploaded into Drop Box or such. Make made an Excel-sheet which is accessible for all. Brian Vestergaard from Denmark promised to create the box and told that he had already made a Facebook group for the project. Go Brian!
Next on schedule was the budget; it was decided that all the expenses are spent from each participant's own Leonardo money. For example the lunches are paid separately by each participant by themselves. There's no use for armsrace on the matter.
November's groups: Holland 1-2+4, Germany 1+4, Finland 2+4 and Denmark 1-2+4.
Students are either 2nd or 3rd year students.
After the general discussions was time for lunch. The lunch was eaten at the student cafeteria so that the quests could see the school lunch system in Finland.
Project meeting continued with Markku Leino's introduction to project which would take place at Varia on November. The project would be a furnishing installation which consists of sink, shower, water heater and a hot water radiator with all its components. The learning method would be as follows:
Teaching method would be adapted project learning method; four similar training projects will be made with four different joinings. The materials will be copper pipe and composite pipe. The installation will be installed to the training walls of the workshop by mixed groups. Varia's students will install the surface mounting angles of shower, the water heater and the sink beforehand and the materials will be ordered also beforehand.
Last scheduled work was to get to know Varia Tennistie. The general opinion was that the building was clean and athmosphere was relaxed. Students were well-behaved.
The evening continued with Finnish smoke sauna and swimming at Kuu-sijärvi.Some of the quests it was the first time at Finnish sauna. The sauna and swimming in the ice cold lake was a good experience. This very Finnish experience will be introduced to students also. After the sauna the host took the quests back to the hotel around 6 pm.
In the morning Make came to pick up the quests from the hotel to visit at the construction site in Tikkurila station. The house technics are covered by Caverion Finland Ltd who is also a project partner. Timo Mikkonen has organized a tour around the site and the site manager Marko Liutu introduced the work done at the premises.
The key point of the visit was to show the Finnish way of doing pipe works. The methods in every country are quite similar but the differences can be found. After the tour it was time for coffee and saying goodbyes to our friends from Holland. Markku Leino's colleague Vesa Kolehmainen took the Holland quests to visit at his house and then drove them to the airport.
The afternoon was spent at AhlsellOy (www.ahlsell.fi) in Hyvinkää. Ahlsell's logistics and head quarter was located at Hyvinkää and they sell HVAC and electrical components. Our tour guide at Ahlsell was Jarno Hatakka, who used to work at Varia and be part of the project. At first the lunch was eaten at shopping center Willa and afterwards the quests were taken to visit at Ahlsell's self-service shop.
Jarno works as a Sales Manager at AhlsellOy and his responsibility is the Southern Finland sales. The Quality manager told us about the company in general as well as their main focuses and future plans. Jarno had ordered us some coffee and cinnamon rolls while the Quality Manager held his presentation. After the introduction we got to see the brand new warehouse robot in action; it was amazing.The visit was very eye opening experience for our foreign quests. Thank you Jarno for the arrangements and of course for the cinnamon rolls!
From Hyvinkää Make drove the quests back to the hotel to get some rest for the dinner and evening program. Dinner was eaten at restaurant Zetor in the very heart of Helsinki. The food was very good and atmosphere relaxed. The German guests were amused over the Oktoberfest theme at the menus and restaurant. Some Bavarian atmosphere in Helsinki :-)
Afterwards the guests were taken to see more of that Bavarian action and then back to Vantaa.
In the morning we started from CaverionLtd headquarters. Timo Mikkonen and Caverion's Human Resources Manager Aimo Virtanen introduced us the company and discussed about the project. Guests were happy about the visit. More about Caverion in German: (www.caverion.de/de/deu) and in Danish: (www.caverion.dk/da/dnk)
After the visit the group headed back to Varia Tennistie to work on the project details. The schedule for November was checked again and some minor adjustments were made, for example the floor ball game changed sauna and so on. The small problem was Varia's reconstruction of the sports hall. The lunches will be paid beforehand if possible and the Tikkurila hotel was booked for the teachers and the students. Markku promised to find out the travel card prices for the three days. The Facebook group was agreed to be the information center and Markus also promised to join Facebook for that. In the afternoon the guests were driven to the airport.
Afterwards it was so great to notice how amazing our project group is and we are looking forward to meet again and work on this project!
Text: Markku Leino
Pictures: Markus Wendt
