Successful winter road maintenance strategies

Rachel has over 25 years’ experience in understanding the impact of weather on the roadway. An Environmental Science and Geography honours graduate, with a post-graduate diploma in Marketing, Rachel started working at Vaisala in 1994 in the Thermal Mapping team. It was through this experience that she learnt the fundamental importance of the impact of weather on roadway mobility and safety.

Since then, she has been privileged to work with and learn from transportation professionals throughout the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the Americas. Today, Rachel leads Digital product development for winter maintenance, focusing on data-driven solutions delivering road weather intelligence to support highway operators to make decisions that minimize the impact of weather on mobility and safety.

Andreas Bäckström is a business developer and contract engineer in the operations department at Svevia. In his current role, he focuses on the development of operations, maintenance and construction contract issues. With over 15 years in various roles at Svevia, Andreas has gained extensive experience of operation and maintenance of roads and infrastructure.

Andreas has a master's degree in engineering from Chalmers University of Technology and is passionate about cross-competence innovation and sustainability issues. He is chairman of the working group "Winter Operations", which is part of NVF - Nordic Road Forum and he also leads an R&D project around forecast-driven dynamic winter road maintenance, that has received international attention.

Erik Sucksdorff heads Vaisala’s sales teams in the UK and Ireland, as well as Ground Transportation in Western Europe. Prior to this, he was responsible for the strategy and business development of Vaisala’s Weather and Environment Business, where he was the key driver for many of business initiatives and acquisitions.

Before joining Vaisala, Erik held several management positions to help technology companies commercialize award winning products and services and pilot new business models and partnerships. Erik has a master’s degree in industrial management from Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland and a degree in economics from the University of Reims, France.
 

Petter Semrén has been working in winter road maintenance at Svevia for over three years and is currently a Site Manager. Petter holds a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering and Management, from the University of Linköping.

Petter has experience from various R&D projects and related change management. For example, Petter has worked with the Swedish Transport Administration around the development of automation and decision support for winter road maintenance.