A hand-me-down box of tools and a first morning on site.
The first morning, in a site office outside Stavanger, the founder did not have a set of hand tools. The chief engineer handed him one — a borrowed box, dented at the corners, the wrench sizes scratched into the lid. The rule attached to the loan was the firm’s first rule: measure twice, mark once, sign every drawing you turn in. The founder kept the toolbox for thirty-one years. It is on the chairman’s desk today, behind the framed 1993 founding charter.
A laborer’s hour, a foreman’s responsibility, a chief engineer’s signature.
The next seven years were spent on site — rebar, formwork, falsework, deck pours — always within earshot of the chief engineer. The chief engineer walked every active site, every week, for his entire tenure. Drawings left the office with his ink signature or they did not leave the office at all. That rule did not soften when the firm grew. It hardened. The founder became a foreman at twenty-six, a discipline head at thirty-two, and a chief engineer at forty — and signed his own drawings from that day forward, in ink, never in pencil.
One Stavanger office in 1993. Seven markets today.
The firm began with a single Stavanger office. Stockholm followed in 2006. London, Frankfurt, and Rotterdam opened in the years after, in that order, each with a regional chief engineer on the floor. Dubai opened in 1998, Kuwait City in 2001. Houston opened in 2009 for the energy and interchange programmes. The firm runs roughly 1,500 staff today across these seven markets — and has, by written policy, never opened an office outside the markets the chief engineer can still walk. The rule is the same rule. The toolbox is the same toolbox. The signature is still in ink.