The Benefits of Being Different

“We’ve always done things dif­fer­ent­ly,” says Jörg-Uwe Gold­beck (53), manag­ing direc­tor of the Gold­beck con­struc­tion and real estate com­pa­ny in Biele­feld. In 2007, he and his broth­er Jan-Hen­drik (44) took over the com­pa­ny founded back in 1969 by their father, Ortwin Gold­beck, who is now 83. Today, the cor­po­rate group employs more than 8,000 peo­ple, mak­ing it the largest fam­i­ly-run enter­prise in Ger­many. Courage and inno­v­a­tive power are the dri­ving forces behind its rise to become one of the coun­try’s most suc­cess­ful medi­um-sized com­pa­nies. 

The posi­tion­ing of this owner-run con­struc­tion com­pa­ny does not sound ter­ri­bly excit­ing. It is a gen­er­al con­trac­tor for com­mer­cial and munic­i­pal above-ground build­ings, and also pro­vides some relat­ed ser­vices. What dis­tin­guish­es this West­phalian busi­ness, how­ev­er, is its approach. Gold­beck uses sys­tem­at­ic mod­u­lar means to make turnkey halls, office build­ings, and multi-level car parks. It views build­ings as prod­ucts. It devel­ops and pro­duces major com­po­nents itself, then erects the build­ings, and if desired will oper­ate and man­age them as well. Cus­tomers receive every­thing from a sin­gle source. As Jörg-Uwe Gold­beck says, “We don’t build any­thing we don’t plan, and we don’t plan any­thing we don’t build.” 

The sys­tems approach taken by this indus­tri­al com­pa­ny in the con­struc­tion sec­tor derives from prac­tices in the auto­mo­tive sec­tor. The lat­ter is con­sid­ered a pio­neer in man­u­fac­tur­ing dif­fer­ent mod­els on a sin­gle plat­form. “A lot of our com­peti­tors made fun of our course in the begin­ning,” recalls Jörg-Uwe Gold­beck. But that soon changed when the coura­geous fam­i­ly met with suc­cess. “A sys­tems approach has made our work bet­ter, faster, and more eco­nom­i­cal,” says the com­pa­ny head. Gold­beck­’s own plants pre­fab­ri­cate 80 to 90 per­cent of the com­po­nents used at its con­struc­tion sites—includ­ing seven-ton roofs and 18-meter con­crete pil­lars. The com­pa­ny has ten such plants. Some make con­crete walls and roofs, and oth­ers pro­duce sup­port­ing struc­tures, win­dows, and doors from alu­minum and steel. It has more than 70 branch loca­tions through­out Europe. 

Despite the mod­u­lar con­struc­tion, every build­ing is an indi­vid­ual cre­ation with dif­fer­ent floor heights and its own façade. Around 50 per­cent of the approx­i­mate­ly 500 projects that Gold­beck han­dles each year are logis­tics halls; the rest are office com­plex­es, park­ing garages, and other build­ings. The com­pa­ny is the undis­put­ed leader in its sec­tor—around half of Ger­many’s multi-level car parks are “devel­oped and made by Gold­beck.” A spe­cial coup was the con­tract to build Tes­la’s gigafac­to­ry in Grün­hei­de, near the cap­i­tal city of Berlin. After win­ning the con­tract in June 2020, Gold­beck was able to hand over the plant to the Cal­i­for­nia-based elec­tric car­mak­er just eleven months later in May 2021—on sched­ule and with­in bud­get. The plant was a flag­ship project. “It would not have been pos­si­ble if we did­n’t have our own indus­tri­al capac­ities to pre­fab­ri­cate con­struc­tion com­po­nents,” notes Gold­beck. 

Inno­va­tions are another key to the com­pa­ny’s suc­cess. And Gold­beck­’s lead­ers think out­side the box here. What do com­pa­nies in other fields do bet­ter? What can Gold­beck learn and adapt for its own pur­pos­es? As just one exam­ple, two years ago it sent a small R&D team to Sil­i­con Val­ley to assess poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tive ven­tures with start-ups that com­bine con­struc­tion with dig­i­tal­iza­tion. Gold­beck also main­tains ties with the Cen­ter for Inte­grat­ed Facil­i­ty Engi­neer­ing (CIFE) at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, which spe­cial­izes in dig­i­tal­ized con­struc­tion. “Our vision is to build intel­li­gently with new tech­nolo­gies,” says Jörg-Uwe Gold­beck. In short, the com­pa­ny seeks future-ori­ent­ed pro­duc­tion. Advances such as robots are already play­ing a role at its con­struc­tion sites. They are being test­ed for tasks such as drilling and paint­ing, while a “dog­like” robot scans and doc­u­ments progress on site. 

Yet anoth­er rea­son for the suc­cess of the com­pa­ny lies in how its two lead­ers work togeth­er. Jan-Hen­drik is pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for tech­nol­o­gy, dig­i­tal­iza­tion, and inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion, where­as Jörg-Uwe is in charge of mat­ters like finances, per­son­nel, and pro­duc­tion. “We com­ple­ment each other very well,” says the lat­ter. The broth­ers place a pre­mi­um on teams with smart and moti­vat­ed mem­bers. “It’s extreme­ly impor­tant to us to use the dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties and skills of our employ­ees in the best pos­si­ble ways,” he empha­sizes. They should be prob­lem solvers, inven­tors, guides, and teach­ers with a high level of com­mit­ment and depend­abil­i­ty. Founder Ortwin Gold­beck’s say­ing holds to this day: “We write our strate­gies with pen­cils and our val­ues with foun­tain pens.” The recruit­ment process active­ly seeks these val­ues. As Jörg-Uwe Gold­beck explains, “We make sure to have a broad range of tal­ent and peo­ple who want to go the extra mile.” The con­struc­tion com­pa­ny with the blue logo devel­ops its man­age­ment per­son­nel in large part inter­nal­ly. Yet it delib­er­ate­ly fills key posi­tions in pro­duc­tion with exter­nal man­agers, for exam­ple from the auto­mo­tive indus­try. “To remain suc­cess­ful in the future, we have to look beyond our own ranks and bring in some top indi­vid­u­als with objec­tive views and fresh ideas.” 

The same is true for sus­tain­abil­i­ty. This qual­i­ty has always played an impor­tant role for the Biele­felders, whom the Intes Acad­e­my named “fam­i­ly-run com­pa­ny of the year” in 2019. This can be seen in the ques­tion of steel ver­sus car­bon. Anti-cor­ro­sion, high per­for­mance, and reduced weight are the goals—not only in con­struc­tion but also in avi­a­tion and auto­mo­tive engi­neer­ing. Indus­tri­al­ly pro­duced fibers made of car­bon ele­ments are a good 20 per­cent lighter and 40 times stronger than steel, and can with­stand extreme loads. “By using car­bon in con­struc­tion we can reduce the size of our foun­da­tions and lower the amount of con­crete we use,” says Gold­beck. “Car­bon con­crete does­n’t cor­rode, so it also has a longer ser­vice life and does­n’t need much main­te­nance.” 

Demands con­tin­ue to rise for durable sub­stances, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and long-term flex­i­bil­i­ty based on con­struc­tion meth­ods that also sim­pli­fy decon­struc­tion. “As soon as we start design­ing a build­ing, we’re already envis­ag­ing an aver­age life cycle of 30 or 40 years.” When­ev­er pos­si­ble, there­fore, the com­pa­ny uses mechan­i­cal con­nec­tors that make decon­struc­tion eas­i­er and recy­cling more pre­cise.  A sus­tain­able approach that tran­scends prod­uct life cycles means that Gold­beck­’s experts are already account­ing for demo­li­tion even before con­struc­tion begins.   

Con­struc­tion projects in the pub­lic sec­tor are a promis­ing future field for Gold­beck. The com­pa­ny already enjoys a good rep­u­ta­tion for its schools and admin­is­tra­tive build­ings. In 2017, it added res­i­den­tial build­ings and has com­plet­ed its first ref­er­ence projects. “We want to gain expe­ri­ence and incor­po­rate as much exper­tise as pos­si­ble from other areas,” says Jörg-Uwe Gold­beck. The com­pa­ny is expect­ed to grow, espe­cial­ly in Ger­many and its neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. “Wher­ev­er you go, peo­ple wel­come high lev­els of per­for­mance.”