For almost 26 years, Pia Johansen has worked for FORCE Technology as a specialist in chemical analysis. Pia is a qualified industrial laboratory technician.

All-round detective work

 
“In the chemical analysis department two of us deal with damage investigation and consultancy with the help of our advanced Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope. You could compare our work to that done by a detective – we clear up mysteries. The mysteries that come under my microscope stem from a broad cross section of sectors and industries, though primarily from manufacturing companies, which wish to discover why their systems or machinery has broken down or, perhaps, find out why there are iron filings in their products."

Available 24 hours

“On the face of it, outsiders might find our working conditions harsh: I am at our customers’ disposal 24 hours a day throughout the year. This is particularly true of the assignments we carry out for the aviation industry, where the presence of foreign bodies in one of their motors must be investigated immediately, both on the grounds of flight safety and because of the enormous costs associated with cancelling flights.”

“Nevertheless, I feel enormously privileged to have a job where I set my own agenda. I have the freedom to hone my professional expertise and it is entirely up to me and my colleague to coordinate the finances of our area. If everything goes as it should, we are left alone, and if obstacles should by any chance arise, we help each other inhouse within the company.”

No waiting time for customers

“Yet another important reason for me having been in the game for almost 26 years is that I obtain enormous satisfaction from being able to deliver a professional piece of analysis work basically whenever the customer requires it. We are the only company able to offer our customers live “Electron Microscope sessions” via the Internet, so they can watch us and keep up while we carry out the actual analysis. This has the great advantage of saving customers a lot of useless coming and going and of giving them precisely the analysis results they are looking for.”

No days alike

“Finally, the great thing about my job is that every day is different because the assignments given us by our customers vary extremely widely. For example, I have taken part in forensic investigations together with the police, to mention just one of the more unusual collaborative efforts.”