2nd member meeting very successful!

On November 12 and 13, the Center Building and Infrastructure Engineering (CBI) of the Construction Cluster invited all members to Aachen to the RWTH Aachen Campus in the INC Invention Center for the 2nd member meeting. With the key competencies of the four institutes of Building Material Research, Structural Concrete, Steel Construction and Highway Engneering at RWTH Aachen University, the CBI pursues the goal of setting new trends, exploiting current trends and making existing innovations and technologies in the construction industry more efficient, thus enabling faster technology transfers to the construction site. Many new faces could be welcomed as the number of members could be increased to 18 within the first 10 months. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the members for the trust they have placed in us.

The expansion of the community is mainly due to the constantly growing consortium Modulbau, in which CONTAINERWERK and ALGECO as well as the other manufacturers of living space solutions ELA Container, ProContain, Zeppelin Rental, AMTRA and FLADAFI are among the new members. For the central competence of the fire protection engineering, the CBI is pleased to know the local engineering office BFT Cognos as a consequent extension of the consortium in the community. The focus there is currently on lightweight metal construction. Within a consortium project, an application guideline is developed in close cooperation with the Ministry for Regional Affairs, Communities and Local Government, Building and Gender Equality of the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia. This is to provide a submission standard for manufacturers, distributors, planners and building authorities that simplifies and accelerates the examination of buildings made of room cells requiring approval and involving increased expenditure in the building approval process.
In addition, a new consortium project on the subject of sustainability in modular construction was jointly developed at the member meeting and work is now being started on this.

As a meaningful extension of the community, it was noted that a manufacturer of precast concrete parts would be a valuable addition. For this reason, the CBI is pleased that nesseler grünzig, a construction and real estate company based in Aachen with its own precast concrete plant, will expand the community from 01.01.2020. In order to get to know each other and to talk about possible projects, nesseler grünzig was already represented at this member meeting.
Especially in the consortium projects Modular Bridge Construction and Openings, nesseler grünzig would extend the consortium by a missing part in the value chain.

In addition, the community has already held a number of discussions and meetings on the main topic of industrial and segmented building. So far, no consortium project has been started there, as a precast concrete component manufacturer would expand the consortium with valuable expertise there as well. In order to talk about concrete projects, a brainstorming workshop with all members interested from the CBI is planned there at the beginning of the coming year 2020. The main topic “Facade” will also be discussed at the meeting. The topic of infrastructure for autonomous driving was also discussed as a possible consortium topic. Another possible topic was concrete with alternative binders.

Due to the weather conditions, the evening event did not take place outside at the textile concrete pavilion of the Faculty of Civil Engineering of RWTH Aachen University, but in Karl’s Wirtshaus at Aachener Markt.

The discussion of new topics was carried out in smaller groups on the 1st day, but also in the large group on the 2nd day. The discussion was supported by impulse lectures. For this purpose, the three premium members HOCHTIEF, SEH ENGINEERING and WIEGEL presented themselves with current issues in the field of innovations in the construction industry. In addition, the CBI invited other centers of the RWTH Aachen Campus that were interesting for the members to a short impulse to show the further possibilities on the RWTH Aachen Campus. In this case, Dr. Gerhard Gudergan of the Centers Metropolitian Cities and Smart Commercial Building as well as Prof. Markus Kuhnhenne from the Construction Robotics Center, many thanks for the presentation.

The focus of the first day was on the presentation and discussion of the five consortium projects Continuously reinforced concrete pavement, Modular bridge constructions, Shear capacity of reinforced concrete slabs with openings, Hot-dip galvanised reinforcing steel and Modular construction. The results of the first project phases were discussed in detail and possible further work within a subsequent phase was discussed as a new consortium project.

Other interested industrial companies have the opportunity to participate in the research and development and are welcome to contact the CBI at any time.