Career stories: Olavi Heikura, Head of Section – Geology

Olavi Heikura became the head of Palsatech’s geological section in the spring of 2023. Read below Olavi’s career story, how he progressed to his current position after starting work at the company in 2018 as a project geologist:

“I started at Palsatech as a project geologist in the summer of 2018 and for the first time I got to log drill core samples at our PalsaCenter in Kemi, which I really liked. It was very rewarding for me to be able to study and report on various drill core and moraine samples with new clients and projects. I also got to work at our clients’ own premises, when this was a more suitable solution for them than sending samples to our Center for processing. And field work wasn’t left completely unfamiliar to me either, when I got to do, for example, drilling supervision and go snowmobiling on beautiful spring snow.

I became the supervisor of geological work in the fall of 2021. I got to improve and optimize our work practices and gained a lot of experience in project management. The supervisory work related to this has given me a completely new perspective on the importance of our skillful geologists and the quality work they do. In cooperation with our geotechnical section, we have managed to carry out high-quality logging projects that have been meaningful for our employees and cost-effective for our clients. I also got involved in product development to develop new ways to analyze and examine samples and to make safety-related improvements through risk assessment and updating work instructions.

In the spring of 2023, I became the head of Palsatech’s geological section, and the position has really given me the opportunity to influence the work we do. It is important to me to be able to offer our clients the quality service they deserve and thus to be able to enable a wide variety of interesting projects for our personnel. In addition, sample research methods based on new technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence/machine learning) are an interesting concept, and it is a pleasure to be a part of making them possible. Although I sometimes miss drill core logging, I can trust that we have an expert group of geologists gathering valuable data for our clients from their samples.”