Foresight visit: An international two-week exchange program for Skanska Commercial Development colleagues

Michael traveled to our Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest offices for two weeks to learn more about our CDE market and apply any new ideas to our development projects in Boston.

“It’s inspiring to see firsthand the global perspective of our company. There is a tremendous opportunity for further knowledge sharing between our CD organizations. In just a few weeks, I met with many teams and learned more about CDE’s approach to a wide range of focus areas—including acquisitions, divestment, leasing, project management, HR, marketing and communications,” says Michael.

While our Boston and CDE teams work in different areas of the world, Michael noticed some similarities to how they operate.

“Despite the geographic difference, our teams share the same passion for our projects and our customers, and also share many of the same struggles,” he adds. “There are so many concepts that I brought back to CDUS, and I know there is even more knowledge out there to gain.”

Johanna who works out of our Gothenburg, Sweden office, visited our CDUS team in Seattle, Washington for two weeks. After spending time in a new place, she believes it’s beneficial to question the way we develop, build and investigate others’ solutions to see more alternatives.

“At Skanska, our teams face the same challenges but approach them in different ways, and we could learn a lot from reaching out more to each other,” says Johanna.

One of her main takeaways after participating in this program is that both her CDN team and our CDUS team in Seattle are very similar.

“Though there are some differences in how we’re organized and how we build—including customer demands related to our different markets—I could really feel that we work for the same company with the same values,” she adds.

Adam visited our CDN team in Stockholm, Sweden, where he expanded his knowledge of sustainability and innovation and learned how ideas are implemented differently among our CDN team.

When asked what his biggest takeaway was from the program, Adam said it was hard to pick just one thing.

“I really liked the idea of innovations starting on a small scale and growing from there. As a result, many diverse ideas are put into practice organically.”

According to Adam, the program itself was very inspiring.

"It was great to see such successful and ambitious projects in Sweden and meet a team of committed people who are driven towards a common goal that they all believe in.”