Jan Leenheer

In 1985 I applied for the positon of work planner / purchaser at Bayards. Both work planner and purchaser were new functions within Bayards at the time. I had already worked for four years selling pumps and pump installations for a small company and back then I already did some work planning and purchasing of components required for the orders that I had booked. So the job at Bayards fitted well with my experience. After two years working in that role, I was asked to switch to the sales department and carry out external sales work such as visiting our clients, making quotations and of course booking orders.

Over the years my job has transformed into more of an office function. I am now the Proposal Manager. This basically means that, together with my colleagues, I make cost price calculations and quotations for all the markets that we serve like offshore, civil industry, defence etc. The department has become more supportive to the area sales managers who are now spread all over the globe and visit our clients there and I'm still very happy here. I like working at Bayards because of the wonderful products that we produce. Aluminium as a material with all its extrusion possibilities, make it possible to come up with creative solutions with profiles. Our products are often used in large projects that regularly feature in newspapers, magazines or other media and are often very recognizable. They are also challenging projects to build and to budget accurately, so that keeps things interesting."