My HM story: Klaus Hammerl, Laboratory Manager
To be perfectly honest: spending his entire working life at HM wasn’t Klaus Hammerl’s dream. “I wanted to pick up a bit of knowledge and then go out into the big, wide world. That didn’t happen. But instead, the big, wide world came to me here at HM.” As a laboratory manager, he carried out pioneering work and supported research. Looking back, he says: “I’ve turned my hobby into my job here!”
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The big, wide world at HM
Getting things (and people!) moving: that could be a motto for Klaus Hammerl’s career. The laboratory manager works at HM as a technical inspector. He is also a member of the HM Sports team’s Executive Committee.
“At HM, I’ve had complete freedom and opportunities for development right from the start. You can pursue innovative ideas yourself. You can always find someone who’ll jump at a good idea.”
Before deciding to move into the civil service, Klaus Hammerl was a shift supervisor at a manufacturing company. He started at the HM as a laboratory technician in the design laboratory. “I was supposed to produce drawings for the professor. Then computer technology came along and suddenly we were developing networks and building computers! At the HM, I witnessed the entire development, right up to the World Wide Web. No one else in the world has had an experience like that. I can say: the wider world has come to me.”
When Klaus Hammerl fancied a change, he moved to the Laboratory for Aerodynamics, Aeroacoustics & Fluid Engineering – AFF for short. Here, researchers and students work on practical applications: How can wind turbines be aerodynamically optimised? How can winglets (i.e. wing tips curved upwards) increase the efficiency of aeroplanes? How can the drag on an aircraft fuselage be reduced? As well as the technical challenge, what he particularly enjoyed about the laboratory work was “interacting with the young people. They are often so eager to learn and so keen to gain knowledge!” Just like the lecturers, the laboratory manager also passed on his knowledge to the next generation of academics.
“This is the best job in the world – if you can handle the freedom. If you want to choose your own field of work, this is the place for you. The end result has to be right; you choose the path yourself.”
Getting ahead through initiative
Klaus Hammerl also found the work in the AFF laboratory fascinating. But then “my career sort of stalled. The opportunities were there, but I didn’t see them. I didn’t know, for example, that there was the option of modular qualifications; I only discovered that later.” Klaus Hammerl began to get involved in the Staff Council. There, he rose through the ranks to become a member of the executive committee. “Today, I spend 90 per cent of my time on the Staff Council and the remaining 10 per cent in the lab – so that I don’t lose touch.”
These days, he also views the HM through the critical lens of a staff representative. He says it’s typical that you only get ahead through your own initiative: “At the HM, you have complete freedom and the best job in the world – if you can handle that freedom. You have to take care of everything. You have to find the drive within yourself. If you want to carve out your own area of work, this is the place for you. Incidentally, I suspect this is also the case in administration. Take the faculty secretariat, for example: here, colleagues can organise all their own processes and choose their own technical tools. As long as the result is right, they choose their own path.”
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