Christian Patterer

Professional reorientation usually comes with a price and it’s hardly ever as easy as changing your trainers for a pair of dress shoes. Stepping from the crude world of flue gas treatment into the sterile environment of pharmaceutical facilities posed a considerable challenge to my technical and managerial skills. After a short introduction phase into my future field of activities I was appointed project manager of a 60 million Euro investment in Vienna, only taking the ZETA portion into account.

Over the years I’ve become very much invested – intellectually as well as emotionally – in both Andritz, the team I’ve been part of for over a decade and the technology I was responsible for. But the collapse of coal fired power production in both Europe and the US in combination with a growing lack of meaning in my work assignments after our return from the US to the Austrian parent company forced me to rethink my career path.

I was given the task to spearhead the introduction of Andritz SCR NOx reduction technology on the US market. Anybody familiar with the underlying conservatism in large-scale plant engineering and construction in the power industry will appreciate the complexity of this endeavor. Working with the gifted people of the Andritz US sales team towards the common goal of booking the first SCR contract on US soil taught me many a lesson about customer relations, bidding strategies and simply about people.

Where AE&E was great in supplying flue gas treatment equipment to the power industry, Andritz was and of course still is a company with a very strong presence in the field of industrial applications. It was a major concern of Andritz’s top management to have inexpensive flue gas treatment equipment for their pulp and paper plants and steel projects readily available. Therefore, a small and highly motivated team was installed to cover exactly these markets and industries, with me in charge of it.

I’ve started in the power business as a process engineer for flue gas DESOX plants. This challenging task gave me a first taste of coal combustion and power generation. It wasn’t love at first sight but over the years I grew fond of the complex plants and the people building it. I didn’t have the time of my life commissioning plants in the middle of nowhere but the months spent on construction sites taught me many lessons about my job and life as such.

- Management of international research projects - Responsibility for the field of thermal cold production - Generation of new orders for the field of thermal cold production

Process optimization for semiconductor production

Process and Project Management

Process, chemical and system engineering