Solstein – a sunny story

Every week they have prepared and sold 1,000 lunch sandwiches to the workers on Johan Sverdrup P2. To top it all off, they baked 800 buns for the sailaway ceremony for the platform. Thank you, Solstein!

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All photos: Aibel/Øyvind Sætre

Solstein in Karmøy is a company that employs people who for different reasons need an adapted workplace. The company’s catering service was asked to make and sell lunch sandwiches when the work on P2 intensified and there were more people working on board. This meant that employees did not have to spend their lunch breaks walking to and from the canteen.

“A barrack served as a temporary canteen. Solstein employees had to complete safety training and wear helmets and protective equipment to access the yard to sell their 200 delicious sandwiches every day,” explains Leif Inge Sjøen, Integration Manager for P2.

Jan Olav Sørlie, HR Manager at Solstein, is very pleased with the impact the project has had:

“Several of those who have worked with Aibel have experienced excellent development and have gone from never having been in working life before to becoming experts when it comes to selling packed lunches. Some of them now excel at making small talk with customers. And they also meet very positive Aibel employees,” he says.

Watch the video of Solstein serving lunch at Aibel Haugesund.

Creating practical tasks
At Solstein, most of the food is made from scratch to ensure top quality and to create suitable tasks for employees. For this reason, they bake the bread themselves, they fry the bacon instead of buying it precooked and they make dips and hamburger patties from scratch.

“For us, the request was unusual as it was so large. Aibel wanted 200 delicious, filling sandwiches for their employees every single day,” explains Reidun Høines, who is responsible for food quality.

It takes more planning and logistics to solve a particularly large order, so it felt great to succeed at the delivery.

“I am so impressed by our employees! Many of them have had the opportunity to try completely new tasks and, since the lunches had to be ready for delivery at a set time, the work has been more hectic than usual. It was nice to see that we can work under pressure and that we quickly found routines for everything,” Høines says.

The task of delivering packed lunches involved many people at Solstein, from those who bake the bread to those who prepare the sandwiches and those who deliver and sell the food.

“This was the perfect assignment for us. Getting jobs where we can do the same task repeatedly and get really good at it is exactly what we need,” HR Manager Sørlie explains.

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Sweet treats for the sailaway
The task of providing 800 “sunshine buns” for the P2 platform celebrations was also no small task for the company.

“We usually make 100 buns a day, so some of the people who work at the bakery had to come in extra early to help us reach the finishing line. This makes it more like ordinary work and the employees feel that the work they do is important and valuable,” Høines explains.

The HR Manager is pleased that the business community has included Solstein.

“At Solstein, we believe that everyone can contribute to working life and try to give people a chance to do so. It means a lot to us to be part of the value creation when Aibel and Equinor develop a platform that will be used in the North Sea,” says Jan Olav Sørlie, before adding:

- What is also a bit unusual is that Aibel was so keen to have us on board and that they are proud of collaborating with us. At Solstein, our mission is to help people develop and Aibel has contributed to this with the assignment.”

Also supplied by Solstein

Solstein has also supplied a number of other products to Aibel and Equinor in connection with the construction of the P2 platform.

“Among other things, they have sewn cloths to cover the gaps between pipes and deck before these are sealed, thereby reducing the risk of falling objects. This is something we will reuse in other projects too,” says Leif Inge Sjøen, Integration Manager for P2.