Before joining KONUX, Petra completed her degree in Sustainability Science and Policy and chose to focus on the transportation sector. She worked in the micromobility industry in Prague and London but it was her working experience in the EU Agency for Railways that got her excited for this sector. Read which challenges she is tackling in her work and what excites her:
I am someone who has a passion for mobility innovations and wants to actively contribute to positive changes. I am well aware that ‘sustainability’ and ‘green innovations’ have become frequent buzzwords. However, I do believe that KONUX can make a difference in the railway sector and ultimately improve the attractivity of railway passenger transport. I always aimed to avoid something I call invisible work – having a meaningless job, completing tasks without seeing any results. The thing that motivates me is that we can really make a difference to our customers.
At KONUX, I work as a Customer Success Manager and I am responsible for delivering railway switch monitoring projects, currently focusing on the UK market. As every project manager, I care to build a project to respond to specific customer pain points and deliver it according to a set of goals and objectives that we jointly define. In our projects, this is often related to an increasing difficulty to view assets under load, detecting trends of worsening switch conditions, or understanding impacts of different maintenance activities. However, it is not only about simply delivering a remote monitoring solution without further involvement, I make sure that the customer understands the full capability of the system and its potential. We discuss new use cases and the impact of insights KONUX delivered. My role is to listen to their feedback, channel it inside the company and continuously work with the customer. The dialogue should never stop and must be beneficial to both sides.
KONUX is facing a large task: We want to help the railway infrastructure managers to transition towards remote condition monitoring. Our Customer Success team often challenges the traditional processes and offers a different perspective of how switches can be inspected to maintain the highest standards. No one wants a broken switch, neither the track personnel nor customers who tear their hair out due to the resulting delays. Railways have the potential to truly shape a modal shift and move us towards more environmentally sustainable transportation. Our team happens to stand on the frontline and advocate for the advantages KONUX can bring into daily operations of infrastructure managers whose end-game is, eventually, to increase capacity, reliability, and cost-efficiency.
This is often challenging for many reasons. We are still a rather small company talking to large state-owned businesses and track engineers that have years of experience. And KONUX comes to change the way inspections and maintenance processes have been done for decades. Isn’t this exciting?
There are so many things why I enjoy what I do. First, it is the fact we’re pushing a traditional sector for a change. Secondly, the railway world is not exactly overcrowded with women. In most meetings, I am the only one in the room. The thing is I don’t mind at all and I feel perfectly comfortable like that. However, it gives me extra motivation to deliver my best.
Dealing with experienced track personnel is amazing, and quite frankly, a steep learning curve. It is almost every day when you learn something new. This is not just regular project management, it is about in-depth discussions on how our solution can help to respond to customer challenges.
I always enjoyed giving presentations and speaking to others. That’s what gets me excited at work, it’s the external contact and sometimes the thrill of learning on the go.
I can say for sure that when someone joins KONUX they will face a variety of tasks. Every day is pretty different and my job is never dull or repetitive. There are new topics coming in, so you don’t have time to get too comfortable or even bored.
And there’s always a beer in the fridge and nice colleagues to talk to which is always a great plus.
What was your favorite KONUX moment? I had the luck joining the company in the pre-pandemic era but my most favorite moment was when our CS team managed to meet after months of working remotely. Everyone was really happy to see each other in person.
In one sentence: Why KONUX? Why not? It’s an exciting journey and you’ll get to work with incredibly talented people from all over the world.
Does this sound like an interesting role to you as well? Check our our open opportunities!