Ylva’s Lyyra as a development project on inclusiveness in the Finnish construction industry
12.2.2020
In August 2019, Ylva was accepted into the Business 4 Inclusive Growth (B4IG) business coalition, which works for sustainable growth and is backed by the OECD. One of Ylva’s two B4IG projects is Lyyra, which focuses both on a more inclusive construction site and on sustainable construction. The Inclusive Construction Sites steering group put together by Ylva began its work on Thursday 30 January.
During December 2019, Ylva interviewed a number of experts on immigrant employment, the construction industry and construction site practices in order to establish an overview of what Lyyra’s construction site experiment should particularly focus on.
Ylva wishes to offer its construction site as a platform for experiments to solve challenges related to the inclusiveness, diversity and equality of the construction industry. The aim is to later spread the lessons learned through the experiments to the entire construction industry.
Steering group sparring the development work
We wanted to tackle the work with the best possible experts. In addition to Ylva itself, the organisations represented in the working group are the Confederation of Finnish Construction Industries RT, the Finnish Construction Trade Union, the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions SAK, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, and Lyyra’s main contractor, Haahtela-rakennuttaminen. The discussion and work are facilitated by Demos Helsinki. New members may also join the steering group to complement its composition.
‘The focal point of sustainable construction is always the people – without committed and healthy workers, we would not have thriving projects or a better city’, sums up Ylva’s CEO Antti Kerppola.
‘The goal of our work on inclusiveness is a construction site where people work together as a team, trusting each other and doing their best to ensure a successful result. Our view is that inclusion on construction sites is built on three pillars: fairness, cooperation and pride in one’s achievements. Cooperation is also at the core of our entire development process: the results that the steering group gets back from the new experiments on the construction site are enriched by everyday experiences’, Kerppola continues.
Sharing the lessons learned
The project aspires to have an extensive impact: with the help of the acquired information and experiences, and by communicating about them, we could speed up the transformation of the entire Finnish construction industry towards a more inclusive direction.
The Inclusive Construction Sites steering group will meet four times during the project to have a facilitated discussion on set themes. The steering group will also produce communication material for societal discussion.
Ylva will publish all the results of the work to ensure that as many people as possible get to utilise the results emerging from the experiment.
Further information
Antti Kerppola, CEO, +358 45 353 2187
Jannica Aalto, Marketing and Communications Director, +358 45 1347 636 (media requests)
Ylva’s goal is to build the Helsinki of the future. The Helsinki of the future is an international and sustainable city of science and economy. Our business operations focus on the real estate and restaurant industries. Our owners are the students of the Student Union of the University of Helsinki. In 2018, Ylva’s turnover was 33.5 million euros and operating result 5.5 million euros. Until 20 March 2019, Ylva was known as HYY Group.
