A New School
in 12 Weeks

The future of school con­struc­tion stands next to the park­ing lot for plant 2 at Kleus­berg, a mod­ule-man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny in the east­ern Ger­man town of Kabels­ke­tal near the city of Halle/Saale. This pro­to­type build­ing is a sin­gle-story rec­tan­gle with a flat roof and wood­en façade. It is a prod­uct of the company’s “school con­struc­tion kit,” whose pre­de­fined mod­ules enable short­er con­struc­tion times while main­tain­ing or increas­ing archi­tec­tur­al flex­i­bil­i­ty. The pro­to­type con­sists of a mod­ern class­room, aux­il­iary rooms, and san­i­tary facil­i­ties. In addi­tion to their short­er con­struc­tion times, the company’s new schools also score points for sus­tain­abil­i­ty. If need­ed they can be moved to new loca­tions, and are near­ly 100 per­cent recy­clable at the end of their ser­vice lives. Kleus­berg and the Porsche Con­sult­ing man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy present a joint­ly devel­oped need-based and sus­tain­able con­cept here. Long-stand­ing prob­lems in the con­struc­tion indus­try thus appear to be solvable.

The under­ly­ing idea is the fol­low­ing: schools of the future should no longer be planned and built as unique projects — in pure­ly tech­ni­cal terms — but rather be eas­i­ly con­fig­ured from stan­dard­ized mod­ule seg­ments. Kleus­berg is there­fore tak­ing a deci­sive step beyond the type of mod­u­lar con­struc­tion that has exist­ed for decades: it is tran­si­tion­ing from a project- to a prod­uct-based busi­ness model. Thanks to its mod­u­lar design prin­ci­ple and online con­fig­u­ra­tor, devel­op­ers can select and com­mis­sion their new schools with­out hav­ing to sac­ri­fice any design pos­si­bil­i­ties. Kleus­berg takes all the require­ments for a school’s dif­fer­ent func­tions into account dur­ing the prod­uct devel­op­ment phase. In short, it stan­dard­izes the parts that the stu­dents and teach­ers do not see. Every­thing else relat­ed to the lay­out con­fig­u­ra­tion and inte­ri­ors can be indi­vid­u­al­ized with­in wide limits.

“This prod­uct-based approach is new for the indus­try. Con­struc­tion gen­er­al­ly calls for indi­vid­u­al­i­ty — for many rea­sons, includ­ing indi­vid­ual site prop­er­ties and dif­fer­ences in local zon­ing and devel­op­ment plans,” explains Oliv­er Hart­mann (born in 1970), an archi­tect and Kleusberg’s CEO Mod­u­lar Con­struc­tion. “Instead, we work with 44 pre­de­fined mod­ule seg­ments that allow for just about any con­ceiv­able con­fig­u­ra­tion. Despite the stan­dard­iza­tion, that enables us to ful­fill our clients’ exact wish­es. Right now we’re using our mod­u­lar approach for school exten­sions and for new pri­ma­ry school build­ings with up to four class­rooms per grade.”

Rec­tan­gu­lar, L‑, or Z‑shaped school build­ings with four to 16 class­rooms and up to three floors are pos­si­ble. They can have approx­i­mate­ly 500 to 2,500 square meters and accom­mo­date 100 to 420 stu­dents — for very dif­fer­ent edu­ca­tion­al strate­gies. The mod­ule seg­ments can be com­bined in dif­fer­ent ways, enabling tra­di­tion­al lay­outs with same-sized class­rooms off a cor­ri­dor as well as lay­outs with dif­fer­ent­ly sized class­rooms or a cen­tral space with indi­vid­ual rooms grouped around it. Kleus­berg can there­fore con­struct con­tem­po­rary edu­ca­tion­al land­scapes — includ­ing rooms for indi­vid­u­al­ized instruc­tion, for exam­ple, or for the inclu­sion of chil­dren with spe­cial needs.

To sim­pli­fy its clients’ selec­tion pro­ce­dure, Kleus­berg offers four pack­ages: Basis, Best Sell­er, Design, and Nature. They dif­fer in the design of their light­ing ele­ments, for instance, as well as their win­dow frame mate­ri­als, type of heat­ing sys­tem, and ener­gy effi­cien­cy. Those who asso­ciate Kleusberg’s pack­age approach and con­fig­u­ra­tor with the auto­mo­tive indus­try are on the right track. As Hart­mann notes, “When devel­op­ing our prod­ucts we did have car­mak­ers in the back of our minds. They, too, can offer high­ly indi­vid­u­al­ized solu­tions from a pre­de­ter­mined range of con­fig­u­ra­tional pos­si­bil­i­ties, guide their cus­tomers with pack­age options, and use series pro­duc­tion lines to make their products.”

Yet there is one major dif­fer­ence to the auto­mo­tive indus­try: Germany’s 16 states fol­low a sin­gle set of reg­u­la­tions for vehi­cle autho­riza­tions — but each has its own set of reg­u­la­tions for build­ing new schools. As such, one of the biggest chal­lenges for prod­uct devel­op­ment con­sist­ed of meet­ing all of these offi­cial require­ments at the same time. “We want­ed to devel­op a school con­struc­tion kit that func­tions in every region,” says Jonas Beuth (born in 1993), Kleusberg’s Head of Prod­uct Devel­op­ment, Mod­u­lar Con­struc­tion. “We there­fore had to find the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor for all of the reg­u­la­tions.” Not an easy task. For one thing, the num­ber of build­ing reg­u­la­tions in Ger­many has risen from 5,000 to 20,000 from 2005 to today alone.

Nev­er­the­less, Kleus­berg did not have to start from square one. Hav­ing already built more than 160 schools with a mod­u­lar sys­tem and project-based approach, it was very well acquaint­ed with the wish­es of both state and pri­vate clients. The com­pa­ny also sought input from archi­tects, teach­ers, and build­ing care­tak­ers. “Suc­cess­ful­ly tran­si­tion­ing to a project-based busi­ness model requires a deep under­stand­ing of the mar­ket and cus­tomers — espe­cial­ly if the prod­uct idea is com­plete­ly new, as is the case here,” says Tobias Michels (born in 1989), Senior Man­ag­er in Con­struc­tion & Real Estate at Porsche Con­sult­ing. Michels and his team sup­port­ed Kleus­berg in tai­lor­ing the school con­struc­tion toolk­it to meet every­day school-build­ing needs. “Some­times it comes down to what can seem like details,” he observes. “For exam­ple, the loca­tion of the teacher’s desk can affect whether it takes only two or as many as ten min­utes for the stu­dents to set­tle down and start con­cen­trat­ing on their lessons.”

The school mod­ules are man­u­fac­tured in a way that opens entire­ly new hori­zons for sav­ing time. In the future, just three months should tran­spire from start of pro­duc­tion to hand­ing over the keys. By con­trast, con­ven­tion­al school con­struc­tion projects can take sev­er­al years before the build­ing is ready for use. Series pro­duc­tion of the build­ing com­po­nents, which is done in a 500-meter hall at Kleusberg’s plant in Kabels­ke­tal-Döl­bau, is what makes it pos­si­ble to short­en the time. Pre-spec­i­fied steel beams for the bear­ing struc­ture are deliv­ered to one end of the hall. At the other end, up to 80 com­plete mod­ules — each with the req­ui­site seg­ments — leave the hall every week. Pre-pro­duc­tion lines assem­ble com­po­nents such as floors, ceil­ings, and walls, which are installed in the basic struc­ture on a step-by-step basis. Viewed from above, the lay­out has a “her­ring­bone” char­ac­ter, lead­ing some experts to in fact call it that — which is yet anoth­er inspi­ra­tion from fac­to­ries in the auto­mo­tive industry.

When the mod­ules are com­plet­ed, heavy-duty vehi­cles trans­port them from the east­ern Ger­man state of Sax­ony Anhalt to their respec­tive des­ti­na­tions, where Kleus­berg then assem­bles them into a school build­ing — pri­mar­i­ly using a plug-and-play prin­ci­ple, because the pipes and elec­tri­cal lines have already been laid and only need to be con­nect­ed. Even the toi­lets and sinks for the san­i­tary facil­i­ties have already been installed when the mod­ules reach their sites. “The high degree of pre­fab­ri­ca­tion means there’s a lot less to do at the site itself,” explains Beuth. “That’s where we con­cen­trate on the cor­ri­dor areas, class­room mod­ule inter­faces, façades, and roofs.”

Series pro­duc­tion not only saves time. Because of the high piece num­bers, Kleus­berg can pur­chase items such as bath­room fix­tures at lower rates and nego­ti­ate bet­ter con­di­tions with sub­con­trac­tors. This is expect­ed to lower costs by around 15 per­cent com­pared to a project-based approach. More­over, a prod­uct-based approach should near­ly elim­i­nate cost explo­sions and delays, as well as qual­i­ty issues. With pro­duc­tion tak­ing place under con­trolled con­di­tions at the plant, includ­ing qual­i­ty checks at every step, and with all the prod­uct experts there and quick­ly avail­able for ques­tions, the mod­ules should have large­ly uni­form qual­i­ties. “Cars, after all, also come from a fac­to­ry and are not con­struct­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly in each customer’s garage — which would sure­ly lower their over­all qual­i­ty lev­els,” says Hart­mann, draw­ing anoth­er com­par­i­son with the auto­mo­tive indus­try from an architect’s per­spec­tive. “If a prob­lem should occur in our series pro­duc­tion, we can quick­ly iden­ti­fy it and take reli­able cor­rec­tive action.” The prod­uct approach can even help to counter the grow­ing short­age of skilled con­struc­tion work­ers. Fewer peo­ple are eager to build walls or apply exte­ri­or insu­la­tion in any and all weath­er con­di­tions. At Kleus­berg, how­ev­er, most pro­duc­tion takes place in a fac­to­ry hall, which could con­sid­er­ably raise the appeal of jobs in the industry.

This approach to build­ing schools offers yet anoth­er ben­e­fit that is espe­cial­ly close to the hearts of Kleusberg’s devel­op­ers, name­ly sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Because the exte­ri­or and inte­ri­or walls as well as floors and ceil­ings are made large­ly of wood, the mod­ules have a pos­i­tive car­bon foot­print. They bind more car­bon diox­ide than aris­es in their pro­duc­tion. In addi­tion, after many years of use, the mod­ules can be eas­i­ly taken apart and used else­where. “If a par­tic­u­lar region no longer has enough stu­dents, we can dis­man­tle the school and set it up where there’s a greater need,” says Hart­mann. “You can’t real­ly get any more sus­tain­able than that.”

Poten­tial cus­tomers have been respond­ing very pos­i­tive­ly to the school con­struc­tion kit idea. “There’s often a lit­tle skep­ti­cism at first because we’ve depart­ed from the con­ven­tion­al path,” says Beuth. “But thus far we’ve been able to address all the con­cerns and con­vince any inter­est­ed par­ties. Advan­tages such as short con­struc­tion times and lower costs are very appeal­ing to builders.” And there is a big need. The KfW bank group, a state-owned devel­op­ment bank, expects school build­ings to be the largest field of invest­ment for munic­i­pal­i­ties in Ger­many. It esti­mates that around 47 bil­lion euros need to go into build­ing new schools and mod­ern­iz­ing exist­ing ones. In addi­tion, by 2030 the num­ber of school­child­ren is expect­ed to rise by about nine per­cent, an increase of around one mil­lion pupils.

It’s there­fore no won­der that Kleus­berg has already reached agree­ments with its first cus­tomers. Over the com­ing months, the com­pa­ny aims to bring in more orders for its mod­u­lar schools. Its prod­uct devel­op­ers are nat­u­ral­ly also think­ing beyond this ini­tial mar­ket, because the idea behind the schools is trans­ferrable to build­ings such as hos­pi­tal wards, col­lege dor­mi­to­ries, and refugee hous­ing. It should come as no sur­prise, there­fore, if Kleusberg’s series-pro­duc­tion class­rooms are fol­lowed by many other tai­lor-made build­ings from the company’s configurator.