Riihimäki will begin on March 11, based at RB’s headquarters in Riga, Latvia.
Riihimäki previously held several management positions at NRC Group, and at VR Track, which was acquired by NRC Group in October 2018. At NRC Group, he was involved in leading the Finnish railway engineering, construction and maintenance division, including as a member of the management board and vice-president of material services and track machinery.
Riihimäki replaces Ms Baiba Rubesa, who resigned suddenly on September 27 2018 citing poor oversight and a different and irreconcilable vision for the project’s management and implementation. An audit was launched two weeks later, looking into the management of the internal systems, procurement processes and financing of the project with the report expected to be completed at the end of 2019.
The RB project involves the construction of an 870km mixed-traffic standard-gauge railway with a design speed of 240km/h from the Estonian capital Tallinn, via Riga and Riga Airport in Latvia, and Panevezys and Kaunas in Lithuania, to the Polish border, with a branch from Kaunas to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
“The supervisory board welcomes Mr Timo Riihimäki to this key position of the Rail Baltica project,” says chairman of RB Rail supervisory board, Mr Karolis Sankovski. “He has broad international and domestic knowledge in railway infrastructure construction, maintenance services and railway heavy machinery operations.
“In addition, he is experienced in corporate and business turnaround strategies and management of international companies and organisations. As for the present priorities, the RB Rail shareholders and supervisory board expect Mr Riihimäki to strive for timely implementation of the detailed technical design phase on different sections of the RB railway. We trust that thanks to his personal and RB Rail team’s involvement and devotion, the project will continue to accelerate.”
“It will be a privilege to accept the challenge to coordinate the RB global project,” Riihimäki says. “The economic and social importance of RB as well as its scale makes it one of the most complex and at the same time interesting projects in Europe to be involved in. RB will positively impact lives of millions of people and it is important to implement this project within the budget and on time.”
Prior to working at VR Track, Riihimäki held leading positions at Finnair Group. He holds an MBA from the Henley Management College at the University of Reading in Britain as well as a diploma in marketing from the Institute of Marketing, Finland.
