Working as a facility manager at VINCI Facilities Italia for the last year, Ornella Aleccia has enjoyed encouragement from her managers and colleagues, as well as the internal training courses. It all helped boost her self-confidence and sense of responsibility.
The past four years have proved formative for Ornella Aleccia. Aged 27, this young engineering graduate from the Politecnico di Milano joined VINCI Facilities Italia as a facility manager in October 2022, following more than three years at abuilding equipment specialist company.
“As a project engineer,” she says, “I learned a lot in that first job about the practical aspects of the construction business, through using building management systems and also in the field”.
“We are on the front line […] and we can raise our customers’ awareness of how to speed up their energy transition”
But after this initial experience, Ornella Aleccia wanted to set herself new challenges. “I applied for a vacancy at VINCI Facilities,” she recalls. “ And from the first time I met my future manager, I immediately sensed their caring attitude and the confidence they might place in me. And my first few months in the business only confirmed that impression. I had important responsibilities from the beginning. My manager and my colleagues really supported me, offering advice and sharing supplier contacts to solve this or that technical problem.”
Balancing the technical and the human
The first major account Ornella Aleccia had to manage was a big company specialising in international freight transport. She was responsible for routine maintenance and emergency repairs for a dozen of the transport group’s warehouses, mostly in northern and central Italy.
“This contract, which came with major responsibilities for me, concluded in June 2023, having helped me understand the various aspects of the business, with its obviously highly technical dimension, but also with an extremely important emphasis on relationships,” she says.
“You need to be able to create a relationship of trust with the customer and with your suppliers. That requires a lot of openness and also responsiveness to requests that can often be urgent for safety reasons.”
Now responsible for a new customer, for which she is managing three sites over a three-year contract, Ornella Aleccia feels she has found the right balance between managing technical matters and human relationships.
“I’m now more confident in myself and more precise, and I’ve increased my technical knowledge.”
Training and internal networks
Ornella continues to consolidate these skills through training courses provided by VINCI Energies, whether on technical subjects (construction, mechanical and electrical engineering, fire safety systems, access control, etc.) or “soft” skills (relational intelligence, communication, interpersonal skills, etc.).
Originally from Alcamo, between Palermo and Trapani in northwest Sicily, Ornella Aleccia also appreciates the contribution her work makes to the fight against global warming and to protecting the environment.
She explains that “We are on the front line in managing climate control and refrigeration systems, and lighting in buildings, and we can raise our customers’ awareness of how to speed up their energy transition. With the installation of sensors and the IoT in general, the building management systems we use can significantly improve our customers’ energy consumption. ”
02/16/2024
