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.”

Better, faster, more economical

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.

Thinking outside the box

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.”

Steel versus carbon

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.”