In conversation with Santhosh Kumar for completing 30 years with us

Tell us a little bit about yourself, and your early days with RMM

My name is Santhoshkumar and I am the production head of RMM & PMM LLC Oman. I started my journey with RMM on 2nd of Feb 1991. I joined RMM at the age of 22 and started my career within the technical department.

I was always curious & wanted to learn and master the various activities happening in a Readymix plant. I trained very well under the leadership of Mr.Alan Richard and Mr.George Russell who were heading the Sales and Technical teams at that point in time. I took this training personally and very seriously to learn as much I could and to move forward in my career aspirations.

How has your journey been (for the last 30 yrs), in terms of achievements, challenges, friendships and your overall experience of working with RMM/LH

The overall journey has been wonderful, filled with opportunities & challenges. I was assigned the responsibility of handling a project plant with a volume of 150K m3 & the successful completion of the project resulted in me getting promoted and enjoying the opportunity to work in various roles within Sales. I was able to introduce ready mix concrete in many rural areas in Oman replacing traditional mixing of concrete by opening commercial plants.

I can proudly say that we have completed many iconic projects in Oman ranging from Power, Road, Stadium to Water reservoirs and overhead tanks. I distinctly remember one project that was especially challenging – building a water network and overhead tank (about 120k m³) in Ibri – under the leadership of Mr. Grant in 2000. The challenge was the fact that the project was scattered across various locations, in the radius of 80km from the plant, but we successfully pulled it off.

I also had the opportunity to undergo several training sessions with Lafargeholcim - Lafarge Sale Academy, IOSH certification in HSE, Stepup2 HSE program, HABC – to name a few!. These training changed my perspective completely and enabled me to approach the business side of things very efficiently. The best part of our company is our focus on employee health & safety and the fact that we strive to continuously improve the H&S culture within.

Anything else you would like to say?

The challenges in Ready-mix industries keep varying from time to time with respect to productions, day to day customer engagements and managing people from various ethnicities. In my experience somehow we can overcome the challenges by maintaining good relations with customers, proper planning, sincere approach and good team work.

Oman is a very peaceful country and I am lucky to experience the hospitality of Omani people, especially in the rural areas. They are very innocent, kind and supportive. I’m thankful to several members of the management starting from 1991 till date for supporting me & also my family who has been there for me through tough times..

I’m proud to work for this company and enjoy doing my job. Hope we overcome the current challenges due to the pandemic with good teamwork!