Rune Holm

The engine room

I knew from the age of twelve that I would one day be a Chief Engineer on a vessel. It ran in the family -- my father held the same certificate -- and there was never really a question about the direction. What I did not know then was that the training required to get there would give me a way of reading the world that I would carry into every room I have since walked into.

I joined as a cadet and worked up through the ranks: Second Engineer, First Engineer on steam ships before I took a U-turn and started the same path on motor ships, and at twenty-nine, Chief Engineer -- the youngest in the company -- on a vessel operating outside Brazil. The Norwegian maritime programme is thorough to the point of being unforgiving. Seven years of technical education covering motor systems, steam, LNG, leadership, and economics.

What the certificate does not capture is what the engine room actually teaches you. A ship is a closed system. Every component depends on every other. There are no external resources to call on, no waiting for a specialist to arrive, no meeting to schedule about the problem. You find the solution, or the ship stops. That disciplines your thinking in a specific way: you stop asking what went wrong and start asking what needs to happen next. I have not worked differently since.

I also learned that optimising one part of a system changes everything else. Adjusting a pump on a ship affects energy consumption, heating, and pressures across the whole vessel. Understanding those dependencies -- feeling them, almost -- is not something you learn from a diagram. You learn it from running the system for years, watching it respond, and correcting your assumptions when it surprises you.

I worked as a Project Manager, part of a management team of four overseeing the construction and completion of two ultra-modern offshore service vessels -- innovative hull design, a new type of bulb-bow, diesel-electric propulsion, and a state-of-the-art power management system. Total project value: approximately €63 million.

The port years

After Farstad Shipping, I moved ashore, first as Chief Engineer at the Port of Ystad, with infrastructure project management. The shore power installation at Ystad was the world's largest of its kind at the time -- a genuinely new system, with no manual for several of the problems it created. Regulations governing safety and grounding in a marine environment had to be navigated from first principles. Spare parts for equipment that had never been installed at this scale took months to arrive. I solved the downtime problem by drawing on the backup crane's components. Not elegant. Effective.

During these years I led several projects, including smaller energy initiatives that reduced energy consumption at one of the terminals by over €10,000 annually.

The project that defined this period was the 86,000 square metre port expansion -- new hardened area, two storage buildings, civil infrastructure for a working harbour that could not stop operating during construction. The original budget was $5.6 million. The final cost was $5.67 million -- a variance of less than 1.3 per cent. The board told me afterwards that they had assumed there would be a second ask. Every project they had run before had come in at multiples of the estimate. What I did differently was not complicated: I planned each step the way I had learned to plan on ships, held weekly meetings with the contractor built on genuine trust and shared purpose, and kept communication clear enough that problems surfaced before they became costs.

The property chapter

After the port expansion, I was headhunted by Ystads Industrifastigheter to run their €33 million commercial portfolio. When I arrived, occupancy was somewhere between 55 and 60 per cent. The company had a reputation for deferred maintenance -- money saved in the short term, value destroyed over time. I recognised the pattern immediately. On a ship, you maintain constantly and upgrade during maintenance windows. The asset holds its value and you avoid the far more expensive emergency repair. The same logic applies to a building.

I started by visiting every tenant. Listening, not presenting. Over the following months, the reputation changed, and calls started coming in rather than going out. Occupancy reached 99 per cent. The energy agreements I built with tenants worked because they were designed around shared value creation -- modest lease extensions, slight upward adjustments, and genuine improvements to the asset for both sides. GreenBuilding and Miljöbyggnad certifications followed. The portfolio was worth materially more at the end than at the start.

Strategic operations leadership for 50+ tenant industrial property portfolio. Part of the management team reporting to the Board of Directors. Contributed to tenant business growth through strategic connections and acting as a sounding board for expansion planning. Involved in property acquisition, including multi-year political and sales processes of approximately €13 million.

What I am building now

Everything I have done throughout my career has reinforced the same principle.

Complex systems rarely fail because of a single component. They succeed when every part works together.

The engine room taught me how systems behave under pressure. Ports taught me how critical infrastructure shapes long-term growth. Industrial real estate taught me that the value of an asset is rarely limited by the building itself, but by how intelligently it is developed and operated.

Today, my work sits at the intersection of industrial real estate, energy infrastructure and long-term capital.

I focus on identifying opportunities where these disciplines can be combined to create assets that deliver stronger operational performance, greater resilience and long-term value beyond what conventional underwriting often recognises.

I don't see energy as a utility.

I see it as infrastructure.

And I believe the next generation of industrial real estate will be valued not only by its location or rental income, but by its ability to generate, store, manage and monetise energy.

That transition has already begun.