Ed. Züblin AG and the University of Stuttgart have concluded a contract on establishing a foundation junior professorship “Digitalisation of construction processes”. The interdisciplinary junior professorship is to bring the traditionally more separate fields of construction planning, building operations and building construction as well as property management together more coherently. It is located at the Institute for Construction Management (Faculty 2 Construction and Environmental Engineering Sciences) at the University of Stuttgart. The foundation junior professorship, planned for a period of six years, is being funded by ZÜBLIN with a sum of around 1.4 billion Euros. One focus is on simulation and modelling.
Klaus Pöllath and Jörn Beckmann, members of the Board of Directors at Ed. Züblin AG, as well as the Rector of the University of Stuttgart, Professor Wolfram Ressel, signed the relevant contract in the senate hall of the University of Stuttgart on 26th June 2017.
University Rector Wolfram Ressel expressed his thanks for the farsighted commitment of ZÜBLIN. As one of the largest German construction companies, ZÜBLIN has always shown a great interest in a strong scientific foundation of its own activities in the field of digital construction and in the timely implementation of research results in practice.
Professor Ressel added: “The Institute for Construction Management at the University of Stuttgart is perceived as the engine in the field of construction at the interdisciplinary interface between research and practice. The foundation professorship will therefore contribute towards researching and implementing the potentials of the rapidly progressing digitalisation in the life cycle of building structures.”
Klaus Pöllath emphasised: “Our long-term experience has shown how important it is to also anchor new developments from construction practice in research and teaching as early as possible. With the foundation professorship ZÜBLIN will be able to make a concrete contribution towards observing the digitalisation of construction processes in an even more scientific way.“ Jörn Beckmann added: “The topics of digitalisation and BIM, Building Information Modelling, are changing our sector like no other topic ever before. We are delighted with the foundation professorship to make the students of the University of Stuttgart into important know-how carriers.”
The planned orientation of the new foundation professorship “Digitalisation of construction processes” is to especially serve to cover essential fields of digitalisation in construction planning, construction and building management processes, to date only researched at the edge. The questions that will be dealt with in the framework of the foundation junior professorship in future refer to the demands on the entire construction sector, in particular in the industrial nations. At the centre is the planning and building of structures, particularly taking into account efficiency as well as sustainable resource and environmental protection – for example feasible through lifetime analyses.
The University of Stuttgart with its 28,000 students was founded in 1829 as a Technical University. Today its special profile as “Stuttgart Way” stands for the consistent interlinking of complementary specialist disciplines and partners as well as the integration of engineering, natural sciences, humanities and social sciences. Its excellent position as a globally networked research university is reflected, among other things, in the excellent cluster “Simulation Technology“, the Graduate School “Advanced Manufacturing Engineering“, the cooperative research campus ARENA 2036 as well as numerous special research fields and the Graduate College.
Ed. Züblin AG with headquarters in Stuttgart employs around 14,000 staff and with an annual output of over 3 billion Euros counts among the leading German construction companies. Since the company was founded in 1898 ZÜBLIN has successfully completed demanding construction projects at home and abroad and is the number one today in German architecture and engineering. The performance spectrum of the company comprises all tasks relevant to construction – from engineering, bridges and tunnel construction to the complex turnkey structures to wood engineering constructions and the field of public private partnerships. ZÜBLIN attaches great importance to cooperations based on partnership and with the ZÜBLIN team concept has offered a tried and tested partnering model that has been on the market for over 20 years. Current building projects of the company that belongs to the globally operating STRAGAG SE are, for example, the new Axel-Springer building in Berlin, the Trade Fair Hall 12 in Frankfurt/M. or the Albabstieg Tunnel on the new line Wendlingen–Ulm. Further information at www.zueblin.de