47 THE CEO INTERVIEW Mr Feizlmayr was born in 1937 and was raised on a farm in Upper Austria. He studied petroleum engineering at the Montanuniversität Leoben, Austria. At this time, in 1956, CO2 emissions and climate protection were no issues at all. On the contrary, the industry was concerned that the oil reserves would be exhausted within the next 40 years, or before the end of the century. After completing his studies in 1961, Mr Feizlmayr joined the Transalpine Pipeline (TAL) in 1965, which was the most challenging crude oil pipeline project in the world at the time. At 29, he became assistant project manager for the Austrian section of TAL within Bechtel, which acted as Owner’s Engineer. There, he met Pius Lässer, a professional civil engineer who founded his company in 1967. Two years later, Mr Feizlmayr joined him to set up Ingenieurgemeinschaft Lässer-Feizlmayr (ILF) in Innsbruck, Austria and Munich, Germany. Together they built up the company which today trades as ILF Consulting Engineers. As an engineer, Mr Feizlmayr has been involved in all large-scale projects of ILF in his field of expertise. From 2016 to 2019, he was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the ILF Group. In recognition of his lifetime achievement as a pipeline engineer, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from his Alma Mater University in Leoben and the honorary ring of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He’s set up the Adolf Feizlmayr Foundation to support talented and dedicated students in technical universities and to promote science and research on climate protection. Mr Feizlmayr still enjoys offering advice to ILF’s engineers. We speak with him about his long career and his company over the next pages. Adolf Feizlmayr ILF Consulting Engineers has been in operation for over 50 years. What inspired you to start this company, and how has it evolved over the years? The origin of ILF is the Transalpine Pipeline project. This was when I met Pius Lässer and when we decided to test our ability to cooperate and quickly build up pipeline engineering competence in a very challenging project as members of the Bechtel organisation. The idea to start an engineering company was on my mind long before the TAL project. But the TAL experience gave the idea the decisive push. The main driver for this decision was to work as a creative professional engineer on challenging projects and have the strong ambition to execute them excellently. Our first projects as a startup company have been in the business area of oil and then natural gas pipelines. Then we wanted to expand our portfolio to civil infrastructure. As we had no references we prepared
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk3Mzkz