Juhani Penttilä, MSc (Civil Engineering), has been appointed as Länsimetro’s Maintenance Manager. Penttilä’s responsibilities include coordinating tunnel and track maintenance operations and quality control along the West Metro’s operational section between Ruoholahti and Matinkylä.
“Ensuring passenger and traffic safety is one of the most important objectives of maintenance. Maintenance operations must be carried out to a high standard and in a timely and cost-effective manner, taking the entire life cycle of the underground system into account”, Penttilä says.
The new stations and track have been property of Länsimetro since the completion of the Ruoholahti–Matinkylä section, but the operator – Helsinki City Transport – is responsible for station and track maintenance. The Helsinki Regional Transport Authority is responsible for the planning and provision of public transport. Penttilä will be working in close cooperation with both Helsinki City Transport and the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority. Once the Matinkylä–Kivenlahti section has been completed, Penttilä will also be responsible for second-phase maintenance operations.
Penttilä has been interested in rail technology since his student days: he graduated from Tampere University of Technology in 2013 and wrote his master’s thesis on a comparison of observed and calculated frost penetration depth and frost heave of track structures.
After graduation, he worked at Roadscanners where he specialised in roads and railways. He also had international assignments, such as scanning roads in Azerbaijan and Papua New Guinea. In addition to the Finnish rail network, he has taken ground-penetrating radar measurements of railways in Sweden, Slovenia and Croatia.
Penttilä has spent the last three years working at Ramboll as a Railway Maintenance Manager authorised by the Finnish Transport Agency to oversee a specific maintenance area. His responsibilities included maintenance project management and quality control as well as track condition monitoring.
“I believe that my previous experience will serve me well at Länsimetro, as I am already familiar with all aspects of railway maintenance, monitoring and development. However, I am also looking forward to learning new things and facing new challenges. The scale of the West Metro project makes it unique in Finland”, Penttilä says.
