Sustainability at SSF Ingenieure

They introduced the Sustainability Working Group in October 2023, and various working groups have been working intensively on the topic of sustainability since the end of last year. What exactly does that look like?

» Marwin Kalkum: There are nine working groups that deal with different topics – from building materials, construction methods and use to recycling or corresponding standards and guidelines.

Marwin Kalkum

How did you initiate this, and how are these working groups organised?

» Marwin Kalkum: A company-wide survey was conducted among employees to find out which topics are important to them. Sustainability and climate protection were at the top of the list. And as a result, the Executive Board pushed ahead with the issue. » Helmut Wolf: People were able to register for collaboration via the Intranet. The calls, survey, and list were all well received.

Helmut Wolf

This means that not only interest in the topic but also the motivation to make a contribution is generally high.

» Julian Rabenbauer: Absolutely. This is why employees from almost all areas and departments are active in the various working groups. A group leader was elected for each of these working groups. And in order to be able to optimally coordinate the work of the individual groups, we regularly exchange information at this management level and discuss the next steps.

Julian Rabenbauer

Is there one topic that applies to all working groups?

» Marwin Kalkum: There really is such a thing as ecobalance. After all, this issue affects building materials and construction methods as well as our own CO₂ emissions.

And where has the most happened so far?

» Marwin Kalkum:Working group 4, which is primarily concerned with the topic of recycling, is currently a good example of initial results. We use the Madaster software to create a building resource passport. The software compiles what is installed in a building. This also makes it possible to determine what can later be removed and reused in the sense of the circular economy. We are currently setting up the interfaces to our planning programmes. The aim is to be able to create the resource passport as automatically as possible using our BIM models.

What about the company’s own sustainability development?

» Franz Seyfarth: Working group 8 is responsible for external sustainability certification for SSF or the sustainability report, which will be mandatory for us as a company from 2025. It also prepares the greenhouse gas balance sheet of the company. This results in a switch to green electricity. The working group also identifies ways of achieving long-term sustainability transformation. Also social sustainability plays a major role here.

Franz Seyfarth

And what major strategic goals are you pursuing with the working group?

» Julian Rabenbauer: We are working to consider all aspects of sustainability so that we can demonstrate the benefits of resource- and climate-friendly solutions to all our customers and partners.

» Helmut Wolf: However, although many clients – especially those in the public sector – aspire to meet climate protection targets, there is currently no money for this in the infrastructure sector. With projects for the railway or motorway, our hands are often somewhat tied. That’s because solutions that are more economical and not more sustainable are still regularly awarded contracts. However, after Baden-Württemberg set the CO₂ shadow price in 2023, we are seeing the first developments here.

Developments that need to be supported.

» Franz Seyfarth: Definitely. We want to ensure that we can comprehensively assess our projects and include this assessment in the comparison of variants. So that we can also show that the supposedly less expensive option is not necessarily the most economical solution in the long term but rather that a more sustainable option is better in the long term.

» Julian Rabenbauer: We hope that sustainability considerations will become standard in all future tenders and variant analyses. And we firmly believe that climate-friendly and sustainable planning and construction will become a natural part of our engineering profession.