More than sixty years ago, in 1948, the most illustrious experts were invited to join the state-owned company which had been founded as a legal predecessor to UVATERV. In forming its ideas concerning infrastructure development, each of the consecutive ministries just in charge of transport have been relying upon UVATERV ever since. It particularly holds true in respect of the national road network and the development of air transport in Hungary, but our company also had a significant role in the planning and design of facilities for both of the remaining sub-branches, such as, rail-bound and the water-bound transport. Urban and suburban transport have also been offering a considerable number of tasks. Having a national monopoly, UVATERV employed a great majority of the engineers specialising in this special field, and staffed 2200, by the mid 70ies it became one of the top engineering consultants in East Central Europe. The company of 6 engineering departments was a workshop indeed, where generations of engineers grew up and received the empirical "post-graduate" training which is essential after having graduated from university. There is hardly any region, or trade-related supervisory, or project management, or contracting, or consulting agency of the country where one would not come across with an ex-colleague of ours.
The recent decade brought about significant changes. Following the political changeover we turned from a state-owned company into a company limited by shares (Co. Ltd) as from 1st January, 1993, successfully completing the privatisation procedure in November 1996. The majority of the company shares is in the property of the company management and staff. Meanwhile, we succeeded in keeping - now under market circumstances - our leading role in the planning and design for transport infrastructure of our country on the one hand, and our global character on the other hand: even with a reduced staff we are self-sufficiently capable of performing any design assignment.
UVATERV is proud of the results having been attained so far, in particular, of the road and motorway networks of Hungary, of the bridges across both of the rivers Danube and Tisza, of the facilities of the Budapest-Ferihegy International Airport as well as of the metro lines II and III in Budapest, all of which were implemented on the basis of designs prepared by UVATERV.
Our company has always paid a special attention to designing for export. Based on our designs, the full range of transport infrastructure is encountered in 37 countries of the world. Export market opportunities are influenced a great deal by political changes taking place in the world, nevertheless, we would like to continue making good use of our 50 years, professional experience and the professional skill and knowledge of languages of our engineers in our globalizing world as well.
The greatest asset of the company lies in the intellectual capital, represented by our fellow engineers comprising more than 50 % of the staff of 200 employed by the company. In no other way, but through continuous training are we capable of keeping up with the extremely rapid progress taking place in our days. Regular technical training, language education and quality assurance training allow us to keep our engineers' skills at an international level.
30 of our 104 engineers have more than one university degrees, and 33 of them have passed proficiency examinations in various languages. Mostly colleagues with skills mainly in English, and also those speaking German, French, Russian, or Arabic are in charge of the jobs abroad.
The development of UVATERV is well represented by the per capita sales revenue during the past 8 years. Although this process is sometimes broken by the annual changes in investment volumes, the increase in productivity achieved by improving the design technology is markedly visible.
UVATERV Ltd. is featured by stability in every field. Most of our colleagues have been working for the company for a couple of decades. The excellent atmosphere and loyalty are self-evident. Similar safety is provided by the pattern of company assets. We work in head offices of our own. In addition, our company has recreational facilities in Tihany, one a the most famous beauty spots of the country. Moreover, our vehicle fleet and the computer hardware and software belonging to the company represent a considerable value.
All engineers working for UVATERV are featured by creativity and constant innovation. The results of research/development activities are proven by our inventions and innovative solutions in every field of engineering. We are using the latest CAD methods in performing our responsibilities. We are ready for facing challenges both in the country and abroad so that we can contribute our work to the matter of an environment-friendly sustainable transport development.