The factory’s history

Regional committee’s decree

The first stone for the factory was laid in late 1970s, as part of the Plan for the Non-Black Soil region’s development. Together with other enterprises in the city, the factory was intended to become a manufacturing facility for grain elevator parts.

However, while its construction was still underway, a decision was taken to change the factory specialization. A shortage of housing in settlements and villages became an extremely urgent issue, and the factory was eventually built to manufacture residential buildings of the so-called Baltic type.

The factory was constructed under personal supervision of Ivan Klimenko, chairman of the Smolensk Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, which meant that any problems emerging during its construction were solved immediately and at the highest level.

The Vyazemsky Rural Housebuilding Factory — the name it carried at the time — became operational in May 1980. In the first year after its launch, the factory manufactured 11.2 thousand cubic meters of reinforced concrete products. It took just one more year to triple this figure. The factory’s output continued to grow steadily, until it reached its peak of 43 thousand cubic meters in 1987.

Between 1980 and 1993, a total volume of 350 thousand square meters of housing was built. One-, two-, three- and four-storey buildings constructed with the use of structures produced at the Vyazemsky Housebuilding Factory can be found practically in every settlement in the Smolensk region.

A durability test

In the late 1980s- early 1990s, the factory suffered a sharp setback in production, just as other industrial enterprises throughout the country. People abandoned villages by multitudes, and construction of new housing wasn’t on the regional authorities’ agenda. However, the tough labor discipline, exacting quality standards, and social responsibility of the factory’s management helped keep the factory operational even in the most difficult years.

To keep the factory afloat, the management had to change its specialization. Within a very short period of time, the factory started manufacturing general-purpose reinforced concrete products. Accordingly, new metal moulds were purchased and all personnel retrained.

Special attention was given to streamlining the manufacturing process and cutting costs. In the mid 1990s, housing construction in the Smolensk region practically stalled. The management, however, managed to find a new market – construction firms in Moscow and the Moscow region were eager to buy the factory’s products. Already in 1996, the output was on the up again, and by 2008 it reached 77.7 thousand cubic meters — twice as much as during the pre-perestroika years.

The story goes on

At present, the Vyazemsky Housebuilding Factory is one of the region’s biggest enterprises of its kind. The factory’s range of products includes over 250 high-quality items. The factory runs several workshops, equipped with cutting edge equipment.

But the factory’s biggest asset is its personnel — over 200 highly-skilled professionals, many of whom have been working at the factory for several decades and have mastered every little trick of the trade.

The factory’s head, honored builder of the Russian Federation Galina Suleymanova, has first-hand knowledge of the needs of her employees. She has been working at the factory since its opening day and has risen through the ranks from being an ordinary worker to the CEO. She has made every effort to create favorable working conditions — the factory boasts a canteen where workers can have a free meal and a state-of-the-art medical facility. All employees get decent fringe benefit and holiday bonuses. But more importantly, they enjoy steady, competitive wages.