A generational change at the head of the Homola Group

The Homola Group, which comprises HOMOLA a.s., Ingstav OSTRAVA s.r.o. and Energotechnické služby s.r.o., handles the complete delivery of linear and technological construction projects, with all three companies working closely together in this field. Since the autumn of last year the group has been led by Michal Homola, one of the two sons of its founder Mojmír Homola. The second son, Ondřej, took the seat of production director, closing the circle of the generational handover at the head of the whole Homola Group. We talked to Michal Homola about the present and the future of the group, and about the vision he and his brother are bringing to the business.

To start with, could you introduce the group?

The Homola Group today consists of eight companies, three of which work on the design and construction of linear and technological projects. The largest, HOMOLA a.s., has been delivering utility networks and technological structures for more than thirty years — gas pipelines, oil pipelines, water mains, regulating and heat exchanger stations, heat distribution networks and the like. Energotechnické služby focuses on designing those structures, and Ingstav Ostrava specialises in technological operations on pipelines such as hydraulic pressure tests, electrical pre-heating of pre-insulated pipe and recycling of pre-insulated pipe. The group as a whole has just under 200 employees and an average turnover of more than 600 million crowns.

What are you working on now, and what is coming in the near future?

At the moment we are fully occupied with preparations for in-line inspection of steel pipelines. It is a non-destructive way of establishing the condition of steel pipe over long routes. This method of in-line inspection using intelligent pigs is the future of assessing the condition of steel pipe in pipeline systems. It can reveal defects in the walls of steel pipe — material loss, cracks or pitting corrosion — which previously could only be found by local testing, or once the transported medium was already escaping. Together with Energotechnické služby and Ingstav Ostrava we will bring a new compressor unit for transferring high-pressure natural gas to market this year. With this technology we will let gas network operators save money on vented gas, and above all cut the volume of methane released into the air. It is worth stressing that methane is up to eighty times worse as a greenhouse gas than CO₂. We developed the technology ourselves and will be operating it from this year.

We build pipeline worlds.

What is your group's biggest competitive advantage?

Our strength is the ability to take on a turnkey contract in full, from design to delivery. That means we offer the client the whole work — from the initial idea and feasibility study, through detailed design documentation with capital cost estimates, to complete professional delivery with our own resources, commissioning and taking care of all the legislation that goes with it.

I mentioned the generational change at the start. Was it a natural step in your career?

My brother and I essentially grew up with pipes. Our father started his business in the yard in front of our house, so it was obvious to us that we would get involved in running the company. There was a period when both of us worked outside Homola — I was building up Energotechnické služby and Ingstav Ostrava, and my brother worked for ČEZ. But we both stayed in the field, and coming back into the company's management was not difficult. Our approach to running the business certainly differs in some respects and comes out of our own experience, but that is exactly the change. We are trying to focus hard on widening the contract portfolio and on new technology in the gas, heating and energy sectors generally. That is our contribution to the group, and it points to where we are heading. The foundation stays the same going forward — building and reconstructing linear structures. My brother and I complement each other extremely well: he looks after production and the complete delivery side, I look after running the company and sales. Where one of us ends, the other begins, and we trust each other absolutely. Our father, with more than thirty years of experience on the Czech market, is still very important to me personally — his social capital in particular is priceless.

You mentioned introducing new technology, could you give an example?

About five years ago Ingstav Ostrava brought electrical pre-heating technology to the Czech market, and to date we have pre-stressed roughly fifty kilometres of pre-insulated pipe this way, mostly in large diameters. The technology saves the customer construction time and replaces expansion joints entirely. On top of that, electrical pre-heating is simple to use and involves no unnecessary technological delays.

What should a layman picture under the term electrical pre-heating?

When building heat and hot water mains from pre-insulated pipe systems, there are two possible approaches to compensating thermal expansion. The first, the conservative one, relies on various types of expansion joints. But any added compensation is a source of future failures and a significant cost. The second introduces pre-stress into the pipeline, which then absorbs and compensates the thermal expansion. Until now, pre-stressing a pipeline could be done with hot water, using mobile boiler houses or heat exchanger stations and fairly complicated water temperature control. The Resitherm system, which we brought to the Czech market and for which we are the exclusive representative, makes thermal pre-stressing far easier. In essence we arrive on site, connect the device to the pipeline and pre-heat it to the required parameters in a controlled way using electric current. All of it „dry", with no water or other medium. It is a very effective and also economical way of dealing with pipeline compensation. Our companies calculate and design the method of pre-stressing, and then carry out all the technological operations and the necessary expansion measurements on site.

You said the foundation of the group, building linear networks, will stay the same. Are new linear structures still needed here? Are the oil and gas pipelines not all built by now?

You are right, they are largely finished — but a large part of the network is more than 40 years old, which means past the service life of the whole system. When the operator runs diagnostics on their system and finds that a section needs replacing, whether because the operating medium might escape or simply because of age, that is our business. That does not mean nothing new is happening in the sector, quite the opposite. Hydrogen technology is arriving, along with biogas plants, cogeneration units, modernisation of heating plants, renewable energy sources and so on.

This issue devotes a lot of space to energy and to completing nuclear power plants. Do you see an opportunity there for your group?

We can offer our design capacity for selected pipework, and possibly its delivery, but I assume that will depend on whether the main contractor for the whole project is interested in working with local companies. That said, if Teplárny Brno agree with Dukovany on taking heat, the way České Budějovice agreed with Temelín, that will be right up our street.

You mothballed the hot water feeder from Temelín to České Budějovice. Why?

The reason for mothballing it was that the contractor left during the job because of insolvency. The feeder was left unfinished and half-built. The investor and future operator was fully aware of that and did not want to cause further damage to the incomplete structure. It was our largest contract in the field of mothballing pipeline sections and technological units. We brought the hot water feeder from the Temelín nuclear power plant to České Budějovice into a state where the company that finishes it later will not have to needlessly repair the parts already built — flooded pipe, unconnected sections, moisture in the insulation and so on.

What other interesting services do you offer within construction?

Among the less standard things, we offer pressure tests and stress tests on steel product pipelines up to DN 1000. To give you an idea, here we developed not only the pressurising and measuring assembly but also the complete evaluation software. Another area we work on is recycling pre-insulated pipe — we are currently developing the third prototype for recycling, but unfortunately we are still not at the end.

Energotechnické služby focuses on design. Could you give a concrete example again?

We are one of the leading specialists in designing the pre-insulated hot water systems we have already talked about. We are the exclusive sales representative for sisKMR, professional software for strength and expansion calculations of pre-insulated pipe, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We supply strength calculations both to manufacturers of pre-insulated pipe and to other design and delivery companies. But we also design technology such as regulating stations, gas and biomass boiler houses or heat exchanger stations. We bought a 3D scanner and now scan most of the technological structures we draw in 3D before we start. That has moved our design work forward again. We use laser 3D scanning on site mainly in technologically demanding environments — boiler houses, gas compression and regulating stations, or transfer stations in hot water systems. It saves us a great deal of time in project preparation, but above all it raises the quality of the final documentation. The biggest advantage is a complete picture of the space where the new technology is going, accurate to the millimetre, in which we can immediately see things like clash points and prevent them.