Laila Olesen is a project management assistant, and she is employed at DS Flexhal, where she celebrated her 40th anniversary in 2025

DS has become a very large company. When I started, everyone knew each other, including across the office and production. Today we are so many colleagues that it can be difficult to know everyone, even just at DS Flexhal, where we are spread across several locations and construction sites.

My second family

New things are happening all the time, and there has been development all the way through. I never get bored, and the sense of community means a lot. One of my really good colleagues says: “You are my second family,” and I can fully relate to that. I have been, and still am, really happy working at DS, so I have not felt the need to look elsewhere. I have only applied for one other job in my entire working life, and it was my sister who got that job.

I have “changed jobs” three times, even though I have been at DS for 40 years (August 2025). For the first 18 years I was at DS Stålkonstruktion on Jyllandsvej, then 10 years at DS Flexhal from when they moved into Samsøvej, then another nine years at DS Stålkonstruktion when they moved to Samsøvej, and most recently three years at DS Flexhal, since they got the new building on Samsøvej.

Everything is now stored in the cloud

I started by typing quotations and order confirmations on a typewriter, later on a PC with floppy disks, and today everything is stored in the cloud. In the past I worked from long drafts, and I became quite skilled at reading handwriting and learning “construction terms” in plain Danish. One of the major changes is also communication: previously everything was done by post, so mail was a large part of my work, and tender documents had to be sent physically. Today everything goes by email.