His working world — big, heavy and powerful

When you walk into the HIF building on the Hönggerberg, you’re entering a world of superlatives. The whole area, measuring 4,000 square metres, is covered in either structural components or the machinery for testing them. This is Thomas Jaggi’s working world. The former road-building and civil engineering foreman has been working at the Institute of Structural Engineering for seven years. He, along with a mechanic and several technicians and engineers, is there to support the students and doctoral students at the Institute with their experiments.

High demands made of the staff

He also often has to deal with requests from outside ETH Zurich – from private industry, for example, and from federal organisations such as SBB. Then Jaggi and the team in the engineering workshop have to work on buildings, bridges, tunnels, dams, props and protective constructions. At the moment, there are about a dozen massive reinforced concrete beams from the Hamburg Opera House standing in the workshop. Their surfaces are crazed with fine cracks – the result of the stress testing that the Institute had been carrying out. Jaggi says that they came to ETH Zurich for a particular reason: “There aren’t many institutes that are as well-equipped for testing materials as ours.” For the staff, this means, above all, that: “We have to know how to use and also maintain lots of different machines.”

Jaggi is one of the few to have these skills, and that’s not surprising: he first came to ETH Hönggerberg as a foreman 25 years ago. At the Institute for Building Materials, Materials Chemistry and Corrosion, he specialised in concrete as a material. He carried out expert measurements of bridges, dams, tunnels and roads. At the same time, he looked after countless students. “The work kept providing me with new challenges, not least because I had to know as much as the students.” Jaggi frequently went on training courses and seminars outside ETH Zurich. But in addition, he says: “I used to attend lectures at ETH Zurich regularly. After all, I had to know what the students were being taught.” Then after 15 years he switched to the Institute of Geotechnical Engineering, where he spent three years working with all kinds of rock and stone, testing them for strength. Here again he was involved in research and education.

Not the least bit weary

His experience in the various institutes has been very useful for his present job, he says. He is able to bring his knowledge of the different materials and test machines to bear very effectively. And more than that: “I enjoy my present job the most.” Big, heavy and powerful is the name of the game at the Institute of Structural Engineering. “That’s my world,” he says. And that’s why he isn’t the least bit weary, even after 25 years at ETH Zurich. On the contrary: “I look forward to going to work every morning.”