Young Finn on the Path to Earthmoving Excellence

Thanks to our social media platforms, I get to meet all manner of interesting people, especially on Instagram which is where I first came across this young and enthusiastic Finnish machinery man.

Viljami Saloniemi (16) originally hails from the town of Valkeakoski, but these days he lives in Mäntsälä in Southern Finland. Like many of us in this industry, Viljami has been around earthmoving equipment from a very young age as his father Jarno Saloniemi, also works in the heavy machinery sector, currently working for Real Machinery who are the main Develon dealers for Finland.

Viljami who’s Instagram account is @konepoika_07 is attending the Keuda training centre, it’s a vocational school across a number of different locations, offering courses for multiple career paths, among those courses is the earthmoving and heavy machinery class.

According to Viljami, the earthmoving course started at Keuda back in 2008, in those days it was just supported by a few old Valmet tractors, one excavator, but now machinery shed or training field, from those initial days the facility has grown substantially.

The dedicated facility in Mäntsälä, near Hyvinkää, is within the grounds of an old historical mansion, Saaren Kartano, that was once home to a Baron, many of the old buildings remain there to this day, and pre-date way back before World War 2. After the Finnish Winter War, the premises were turned into a physical therapy centre for recovering veterans. Today the Keuda school careers taught at this facility include farming, animal care, forestry, earthmoving and gardening.

The Keuda facility has seen continuous investment, and today there is a large workshop/shed for repairs and storage of the machines, and there are many more items of equipment available for the trainees to work on and with depending on the course they are taking.

On the agricultural front there are numerous Valtra, and Valmet tractors, there is also one Massey Ferguson complete with a whole raft of attachments. On the earthmoving front equipment includes, a Lännen backhoe loader, 3 x Caterpillar excavators, two on tracks and one wheeled. 1 x CASE compact wheeled loader, 1 x Kramer wheeled loader and 2 x Bobcat skid steer loaders.

In addition to those machines, there is also a sprinkling of rental machines on hire from CRAMO including Yanmar and Kobelco examples.   

Earthmoving training is undertaken on a 4-hectare field area, where the students undertake different jobs, honing their skills on the different machines on site. Most importantly in this technological era the students are learning to use Leica Geosystems and Novatron XSite 3D machine control systems, in addition to practice using lasers.

Viljami says the training is a 3-year course which will basically be done in around 2.5 years, after which the qualified students will be able to get a job in the industry. My understanding is that the school is active in finding work for the students for when the course is completed.

It's great to see such a facility training up operators for the future, as we know only too well in this country, there is a massive shortage of young operators, and we must do more to attract young people into the industry.

We wish Viljami all the best with his course, and no doubt we will be meeting up again at some point the next time I am back in Finland.  

Here's some drone footage of this stunning training facility as featured on the Keuda You Tube channel.