Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way

ROZHOVOR Mrs Halfarová, it is still quite unusual to meet a woman at the top management of an engineering company. What is the story of your family enterprise? There are two storylines here: one is the story of my husband Pavel, who founded IPH, and the other is the story of Yvona. My husband’s story starts in January 1994, when he established a company to provide advisory services in engineering and energies. He had already had five years of experience in the field and believed that creating technological procedures to repair or upgrade devices to work more efficiently would be a very prospective business. The first clients were companies producing cellulose and paper and, step by step, he acquired clients operating in energies. My story begins with me being a wife and educator at an elementary school. I wanted to provide the best support to my husband when he started his enterprise and I was at home on maternity leave. My husband got me more and more involved in company operations: I helped with administration, economics and human resources. I found my job rather variable and most enjoyable. I studied at the Business Academy and VŠB–Technical University in Ostrava to upgrade my expert education. 14 ǀ POSITIV 2/2020 This is how our independent stories became the history of Pavel and Yvona, husband-and-wife team running the Halfar family company, IPH. We learnt to share and divide jobs and responsibilities in the management: my husband was responsible for technical, production, and sales issues, while I processed economics, finance, and HR. Our little family company hired more employees, developed a larger portfolio of products and services, and built our company’s premises. In 2011, the company became the capital company IPH Servis Morava, s.r.o., and I am currently its corporate agent. Your family company has grown out of a vision: how successful are you in making that vision come true? At the start of our enterprise, we had our dreams, great enthusiasm and had made the decision to work on interesting projects. Our vision was to provide services and solutions with high added value, to introduce new saving technologies, innovation and service. We wanted to cooperate with people who would enjoy their jobs and find them fulfilling so that we might together share the values we cherish. We expressed that in the name of our company. I – inovace (innovation), P – profesionalita (professionality), H – hospodárnost (efficiency). After many years in business, I admit that keeping our values and vision has not always been all that easy. What matters is that we have always had a good team of employees eager to join us in these efforts. Without such an allegiance, without the support of all our family, including both of our children (now adults), further progress would not be possible. That makes us very grateful and happy. The stage of growth undoubtedly brought an increase of production capacities but also the introduction of new services on the market. Who are your current clients and products? Nowadays, our clients include power plants, incineration plants, and cellulose and paper producers from the Czech and Slovak Republics. We started advisory services and solutions in energies and currently our main activities are in supplies, assembly, maintenance and compensation service technologies, smoke dampers, and technologies cleaning heat transfer surfaces. We also develop and produce technological machinery customized for