Ihor Bakan received his first national “Enterprise of the Year” award in 2020 — at the height of the pandemic, when construction activity across the country slowed sharply. His company kept working.
In 2021, the title was confirmed for the second time — and that same year, Bakan personally received the “Leader of the Year” title. In 2024, both awards were repeated, joined by the Order “Cross of Honor of Ukraine.” In 2025, the company once again entered the national ranking of top enterprises. Against the backdrop of a quarter of the companies in his industry in the Kirovohrad region either suffering losses or ceasing to exist over this period, such consistency across a struggling regional market warrants a closer look at the company’s operational model.
Bakan is the director of Suchasna Budivelna Kompaniya-Group LLC (Modern Construction Company-Group) and an engineer with more than a decade of experience in building grain elevator complexes — industrial-scale grain storage facilities. Over this time, his team has completed more than 30 facilities in the central, eastern, and southern regions of Ukraine.
In a conversation with CEO Today, he explains why the construction of grain storage complexes is one of the most challenging areas of industrial engineering — and how the system works that allows such facilities to be commissioned twice as fast as the industry standard.
The Silo: Engineering Under Constant Load
Most people ordering grain infrastructure for the first time picture a silo as a large metal container. A silo is an engineering system under constant dynamic load: the pressure of the grain mass changes depending on the fill level, vibrations from grain handling equipment are transmitted throughout the entire structure, temperature fluctuations deform the metal structures, and aerodynamic wind loads at a height of several dozen meters require separate calculations. An error in any of these parameters does not show up immediately — it appears during operation, when the fix costs an order of magnitude more than the original mistake.
The difficulty of managing such a project lies in the fact that it combines several distinct disciplines — structural steelwork, foundation engineering, grain handling equipment installation, dryer systems, and integration of automation and ventilation. Each of them requires its own time, its own contractors, and its own technical solutions. A delay at one stage blocks the next.
Add to this a rigid seasonal deadline. A grain elevator that is not up and running before the harvest season begins leaves the client without storage capacity at the most critical moment of the season. The harvest either has to be sold straight from the field, when prices are traditionally at their lowest, or transported to third-party facilities, paying a per-ton storage fee. For large farming operations, these are losses measured in the millions of dollars.
In Bakan’s experience, four failure points recur across the industry. The first is geology — an incorrect soil assessment at the start turns into foundation rework during installation. The second is load calculation: a fully filled 15,000-metric-ton silo exerts base pressure that most contractors underestimate at the design stage. Third, temperature-induced deformations of the metal accumulate and only manifest during operation. Fourth, supply delays — a single equipment shipment slipping halts the entire parallel work front.
The 72-Hour Stress Test
Bakan’s team commissions grain storage complexes in 6–8 months — twice as fast as the industry standard. The reason lies in how the entire cycle is organized, from the first drawing to launch.
Most contractors build sequentially: once the foundation is finished, silo assembly begins; once the structure is complete, equipment installation starts. Each stage waits for the previous one. Bakan builds in parallel: while one crew assembles the silo wall rings, another is already working on the roof, a third is simultaneously deploying grain handling equipment, and a fourth is preparing the base for the dryers. The schedule is agreed with all contractors before mobilization to the site — everyone knows their scope of work and their entry point into the project.
The critical point in this model is supply logistics. Parallel processes fall apart if equipment arrives late. Bakan builds delivery timelines into the schedule with a buffer, and expedited deliveries are arranged in advance.
The final stage of every facility is 72 hours of continuous testing under full grain load — something most contractors simply skip. For three days, the entire system runs under full operating conditions — grain is loaded, moved between silos, dried, and ventilated as it would be during peak harvest. If there is a weak point in this cycle, it will reveal itself here, and not on the first day of operation. Only after all issues have been resolved is the facility handed over to the client.
A Crisis Project as a Test of the System
The best test of the model comes not under normal conditions, but in a crisis. One such case in Bakan’s practice was a facility his team took over after the previous contractor had failed to meet the schedule. Only a few months remained before harvest, and critically important elements of the infrastructure were at an early stage of completion.
The first decision was counterintuitive: to stop. Instead of immediately ramping up the pace, the team spent several days on a full technical audit — what had actually been done, and where the weak points were. Only after that did a new schedule emerge, with a revised sequence of stages and an increased number of crews.
Ihor Bakan says that this is the essence of systematic project management: under time pressure, the value of analysis only grows. Better a few days on diagnostics than several weeks on fixing mistakes.
The complex was commissioned before peak harvest intake began.
International Experience as Part of the System
Bakan’s team has built several projects using equipment from leading global manufacturers — Canada’s AGI and Italy’s Strahl and Metalmont. For a contractor, working with these brands raises the bar significantly. Technical documentation is maintained according to the manufacturer’s standards, the installation schedule is tied to its production calendar, and any deviation from the specification requires separate approval. When logistics are complicated and the seasonal deadline is fixed, this requires precise control of deliveries at every stage.
Bakan considers this a genuine advantage of Ukrainian engineering teams in the international market. In Europe, demand for contractors like his is emerging in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics — regions with high volumes of grain production, where modernization of storage infrastructure is a strategic priority. The US market is also in an active grain infrastructure renewal cycle, and major operators are paying increasing attention to contractors with experience working with international equipment under tight timelines.
“We are used to working with limited resources, hard deadlines, and a high cost of error. This is a daily practice that shapes an engineering culture that is difficult to replicate in more comfortable conditions,” he says.
According to industry analysts’ forecasts, demand for grain infrastructure modernization in Europe and the US will grow for at least the next five years. For Ukrainian engineering teams with experience working under tight deadlines and international standards, this is a real window of opportunity.
