Int­ro­ducing Jyr­ki Jääs­ke­läi­nen, chief arc­hi­tect of the alliance

Ark­ki­teh­dit Oy from Oulu and Ark­ki­teh­ti­toi­mis­to Jääs­ke­läi­nen Oy from Sei­nä­jo­ki are res­pon­sible for the princi­pal and arc­hi­tec­tu­ral design.

What is your role in the Kok­ko­la Sports Park alliance?  

I’m the alliance’s expert in sports con­struc­tion with my wide ran­ge of know­led­ge and skills. We have solid expe­rience in con­struc­ting sports faci­li­ties: our office has desig­ned venues such as IKH-Aree­na in Kau­ha­jo­ki and OmaSp Sta­dium in Sei­nä­jo­ki. Kok­ko­la Sports Park is actual­ly a com­bi­na­tion of the­se pro­jects. We’re joi­ning forces with UKI Arc­hi­tects as they have expe­rience in buil­ding ice rinks.

How do you find wor­king in an alliance?  

The strength of an alliance is coo­pe­ra­tion. We’re joi­ning forces with  UKI Arc­hi­tects to com­bi­ne our expe­rience and exper­ti­se. We’ve found com­mon ground in a very short space of time, and I would say that our col­la­bo­ra­tion with UKI Arc­hi­tects and eve­ry­one else invol­ved in the alliance is smooth. Of cour­se, I’m not the only one from our com­pa­ny invol­ved in this. Eve­ry mem­ber of our staff is wor­king hard on this pro­ject and plays a huge role. Timo (Timo Sivu­la, CEO of Kok­ko­la Sports Park) has done a lar­ge amount of background work and gat­he­red valuable infor­ma­tion that has been very use­ful to all of us.

How is wor­king in an alliance dif­fe­rent from your pre­vious pro­jects?  

This is our first alliance and I can say that we are very ent­husias­tic about it. I firm­ly belie­ve that this is the futu­re of con­struc­tion and, on the who­le, this is a very inte­res­ting model of coo­pe­ra­tion. I’ve explai­ned this model to our staff as very few pro­jects such as this have been car­ried out in Ostro­both­nia to date. UKI Arc­hi­tects, on the other hand, have long expe­rience in alliance pro­jects, and it’s very use­ful to work with them. I think that the alliance model requi­res a lar­ge-sca­le site, such as Kok­ko­la Sports Park. That’s when you get the most out of the alliance, which actual­ly means wor­king toget­her.

Have the­re been any chal­len­ges?

Bud­ge­ting is always chal­len­ging, which is nor­mal in lar­ge pro­jects. But I think that if the exten­si­ve know­led­ge that we have in our team does not make this pro­ject hap­pen, then what will? The who­le team is inc­re­dibly moti­va­ted and we all pull toget­her. It’s great to work with a team that is so com­mit­ted to what we’re doing!

Could you tell us a bit more about your com­pa­ny? 

We’re a fami­ly-owned com­pa­ny, and this is our 50th year in busi­ness. My fat­her star­ted this com­pa­ny back in the day, and we have since been invol­ved in many things: con­struc­ting resi­den­tial buil­dings, hos­pi­tals, industrial buil­dings, super­mar­kets, parish faci­li­ties, just to name a few areas. We have 10 emplo­yees, and I’ve been here for 30 years. The com­pa­ny and ent­repre­neu­rial acti­vi­ties have always been the most impor­tant thing for us, and I slept count­less nights on the drawers in my father’s office when I was a child. So the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, and even my eldest son just qua­li­fied as an arc­hi­tect. He’s wor­king for someo­ne else now, but per­haps he’ll fol­low in his father’s foots­teps one day.