CEOInterviews.AIRB006 - BauTalk mit Christoph Achammer

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Christoph Achammer0:01

Collaboration and dialogue is what it's all about. Whether someone studied civil engineering or architecture, or came through a different educational path—it doesn't matter. I believe working together as a team and unleashing creativity—that was, I hope, the decisive contribution I was able to make for two or three generations.

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Host0:32

Die Zukunft baut mit—Riederbau Podcast, your connection to the construction industry. Hello and welcome to a new episode. As always, I'm joined by Anton Rieder, managing director and owner of Riederbau in Kufstein, who will once again lead the conversation with our expert.

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Anton Rieder1:02

Hello.

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Host1:03

I'd like to give some background on our guest. He studied at the TU Wien, then returned as a university professor at the Institute for Integral Planning and Industrial Construction. In between, he traveled—looking at construction in the Near and Far East and the USA. He is a founding partner and CEO of ATP Architekten Ingenieure. Our listeners have probably guessed it—we're talking about Christoph Achammer.

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Christoph Achammer1:35

Grüß Gott.

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Host1:38

Today we've set ourselves one single major topic—integral planning. As an opening question: why have you dedicated your entire life and work to this one topic?

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Christoph Achammer1:58

Well, firstly, I'm predisposed—I'm a company founder's son. My father, in the 1970s, embarked on this path together with a civil engineer and a mechanical engineer. Because our background is in industrial construction, they recognized that separating different competencies in planning is counterproductive. The rest of the entire industry wouldn't survive if they did it that way today. In the late 70s, these three gentlemen decided to pursue integral planning. Ten years later, I came back from the USA, where I had worked at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill—who had already been doing this for 50 years. That is, architects, structural engineers, and building services engineers working together under one roof, in one team, on the design and strategic planning of a building. I picked up that ball and dedicated my entire professional life and university career to integral planning. Because I'm convinced that the synergies you can develop between all competencies—when they work together in one room, at one table, without economic barriers—those synergies must not be left on the table.

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Host3:47

You've filled entire books with the advantages of integral planning. Can you briefly summarize the most important points?

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Christoph Achammer3:57

The most important point is that buildings today have a high degree of complexity, and the services of a structural engineer, an architect, and various building services engineers exist in extreme interdependence. To give an example: if an architect glazes a building entirely to the west without external sun protection, an isolated building services engineer must build a dedicated chiller plant to make it habitable. But if the two sit at the same table and the services planner understands the architectural concept and convinces the architect to rotate the building 90 degrees so the glazing faces north, they can save all of that. That's a very illustrative example of why integral planning is such a key term for reducing the enormous waste we have today in the planning phase.

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Host5:27

So it's essentially about more efficient working. Anton, you do something similar in your company, though you come at it from the other side. What advantages does integral planning offer you?

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Anton Rieder5:40

We are fundamentally a classical construction company that has evolved into planning. We were enthusiastic about integral approaches from the beginning. We now have 15 years of experience in this kind of collaboration. For us, the essential aspect is that we consider all aspects, and it goes a step further—since we usually execute the work ourselves, the execution aspect is also very much in focus. We factor it into planning: how can we use simpler shells or walls, how can we help other executing trades achieve efficiency gains. This execution aspect plays a very large role for us and feeds back into the integral planning.

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Host6:42

Can you put numbers on the savings potential through integral planning?

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Christoph Achammer6:49

It's not primarily about savings potential. It's about reaching better solutions faster. The situation in construction is such that we almost always build prototypes, so we can't compare ourselves to the production industry. On the other hand, I'd like to follow up on what Anton said—what still lies ahead is dissolving this completely senseless separation of planning and execution. That's another step of integration: bringing the competence and knowledge that execution has into the planning process, rather than having to redesign our building mid-construction because the contractor says it can't be built that way.

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Host8:04

Will you at ATP also become a contractor in the future?

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Christoph Achammer8:07

We certainly won't bind commercial forces to ourselves. But what we already do is convince building owners to form a connected team—a community of destiny that wins together and loses together—with an executing company in a very early phase, and to approach our planning that way.

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Host8:32

Anton, does that go far enough for you, or do you think it's still a step too short?

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Anton Rieder8:41

I think it's a good first step to dissolve the division between planning and execution. The first approaches are alliance models or early contractor models. But it may need to go further, especially with prefabrication, which makes sense when you can work with standardized, systematized components. Then there are models that go further, like design-build or general contractor. But the world is diverse, and clients decide which they want. What's important is that we dissolve the boundaries and arrive at cross-phase, cross-trade thinking, and develop process standards—instead of reinventing the wheel every time. As Christoph says, we build prototypes—that's our excuse for not thinking things through properly. But you can separate the prototype as an end result from the process that leads to it, and that process can be standardized and systematized. Teams work especially well when they collaborate more often and longer—not as in construction today, where you have a completely new team for every project. That's one of the biggest problems: you constantly shuffle teams and start from square one every time.

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Host10:28

In theory, it sounds wonderful—this collaborative work and coming together early. What obstacles are there in practice?

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Christoph Achammer10:36

The biggest obstacle is the tradition of our culture. The entire construction industry is built on a culture of distrust, which is exactly the opposite of our company's central value: collaboration. Collaboration must be built on a fundamental culture of trust, supported by commitment and dialogue. You can't tackle a complicated mountain tour with someone you don't trust. Changing a deeply rooted cultural tradition isn't easy, but we are in the process. I accompanied two or three generations of architects and civil engineers at the university, and I can see the desire for cultural change is being massively driven by the young generation.

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Host11:53

Anton, is it easy for you to trust in everyday life? Is there reason to trust, or is one sometimes better served with healthy distrust?

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Anton Rieder12:03

I can fully agree. We have a great culture of distrust in construction, and traditions that are very difficult to change. On top of that, we have different interests that have grown over decades. I'm also active in the economic chamber and see interests being defended with teeth and claws—that's often an obstacle to allowing new cultures. That has to be broken through. Every trade considers itself the most important and doesn't look left or right—that can't be the future. Trust culture is the alpha and omega. We have the good fortune in our company to have worked in both the old business model—separation of planning and execution with confrontational contracts—and in the integrated design-build model. You can see the difference and how many fewer resources are needed in a trust culture. We're talking about multiples. If this could be established in the industry, that would be the first major savings potential.

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Host13:41

Earlier, Christoph, you spoke about how construction always works with prototypes and individual solutions. What would one offer instead? To what extent can it be standardized?

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Christoph Achammer13:58

We will never give up individuality. But where I absolutely agree with Anton—we're in the era of Industry 4.0, which is defined as industrially highly productive work in batch size one. And batch size one is nothing other than prototypes. I need to develop standardized, constantly improving processes, individual partial solutions that become standardized, and with this toolkit, I can still build prototypes—batch size one—without giving up the advantages of an industrially improving process.

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Host14:56

In a recent episode, we talked about the BIM process. What role will BIM play in the future?

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Christoph Achammer15:07

BIM is absolutely essential. For over ten years, we've been constructing buildings only in virtual worlds—we no longer draw plans but build virtual buildings before the first spade hits the ground. This offers incredible opportunities to change processes. I can incorporate products and materials at a very early stage with all criteria—cost, delivery, CO2 footprint, circularity—which wasn't possible before. This end-to-end digitalization of a virtual object before building is the prerequisite for tapping enormous waste-reduction potential. It's also a driver of the trust culture we both advocate, because complex digital models simply can't be cordoned off through legal boundaries anymore.

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Host16:28

Anton, do you think the BIM process at Riederbau can be a decisive competitive advantage?

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Anton Rieder16:36

Absolutely. We entered BIM one year after ATP, using the same systems. I was surprised how long it takes for this technology to become established—even today it's more the exception than the rule. But for us it's an incredible advantage: we're very efficient, significantly more error-free, and can pass on competitive planning fees. We can also influence the building better through the model. But it needs to go much further—we keep running into legal and regulatory limits. For example, in building services, we have norms from the analog era where we calculate four heat pumps, but the BIM model shows two would suffice, yet we still have to install four. We need to ensure framework conditions keep pace with the technologies. That's why we're also dealing with building outside the norm, to bring back more creativity and use technologies as intended.

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Host18:11

Would you agree with that?

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Christoph Achammer18:16

One hundred percent. One more thing—the biggest portion of a building's cost occurs after both of us are finished, when it goes into operation. We're still at the beginning of being able to monitor with little effort what we designed beforehand. We'll arrive at entirely new insights, and I believe the future of construction will be much more interconnected between buildings. It's essential to network things digitally—if one building needs heating and another cooling, they can exchange energy. This whole environmental and sustainability topic was honestly characterized in recent years by the persuasiveness of architects and engineers rather than hard data. We were bluffing about what would happen. These things have changed dramatically through virtualization—we now look at buildings over their entire life cycle, to reuse of components, cradle-to-cadle, CO2 footprint. This is easier to examine virtually because what happens in 50 or 60 years, many of us won't be around to assess.

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Host20:36

Anton, does this long-term perspective already play a role in your work?

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Anton Rieder20:41

Absolutely. We've always tried to build things so they endure very long, because a long life cycle is the most efficient thing. A building that can be repurposed without major intervention is the most efficient overall. That might mean what Christoph says: through monitoring insights, we come back to the roots and scale things down. I'm a fan of technology, but we may have overdone it. We save energy in operation, but the maintenance effort for technology is multiples higher than the savings, because technology never has the lifespan of the building itself. I believe the good old virtues our ancestors lived over centuries will regain importance, because maintenance and upkeep costs of modern buildings are enormously high. There needs to be a rethink—technology must be compatible. It can't be that you design the envelope for 100 years but replace building technology five times. When we do use technology, we should make it simple enough to access. I think there will be a rethink that could mean back to the roots, and I'm curious what impact that will have on architectural language.

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Host22:31

The architect who has an artistically valuable building in mind, a vision—does he feel restrictions when he has to account for all these other things?

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Christoph Achammer22:45

Not at all. The artistic aspect is one of three—as Vitruvius said—alongside utility and resource conservation. It plays an important role. But our responsibility toward the world is too great to simply put art buildings out there. Art in Adolf Loos's sense is suitable for monuments, but for everything else, architects and engineers need to work together—and that's how we live it. What Anton said about technology limitations: we provide highly technological buildings but don't have operationally capable occupants. On paper we get incredibly positive data, but when we actually measure what happens, something entirely different occurs—because people simply don't follow what the technology prescribes. We monitored two large residential buildings at the university for several years, and the calculated result had not even ten percent correlation with the practical result, because you can't forbid people from opening the window when they want to hear the birds sing.

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Host24:40

What does a vision of collaboration between executing construction companies and architects look like from your perspective? What would be the optimum?

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Christoph Achammer24:54

This vision isn't that far away—it already partly exists. Just today in our acquisition meeting, we learned that a good portion of large public-sector projects in Germany now use these collaborative models. A handful of planners, executors, and consultants are reviewed in an elaborate procedure, and an ideal team is assembled in a temporary company where the client is also a partner, pursuing a shared goal. I believe this is one of the best configurations for using the legal framework to steer this cultural change onto the right track.

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Anton Rieder26:07

One has to be a bit careful with these models—IPs or whatever they're called—that they remain SME-friendly. We participate in them, and the effort for bidding is incredibly high, with pre-qualification requirements often so that we can't even qualify. I think these are good models for large, complex projects, but there may need to be other models for what we typically build—residential complexes or manageable commercial buildings. These models may be too complex for those. We need to find the right balance.

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Christoph Achammer26:54

You're completely right—there isn't a one-size-fits-all process. I only mentioned it in response to the question about the vision. It's a process for very large, complex projects capable of changing cultural understanding. What's set up so elaborately could, in smaller projects—a 'beauty contest'—be done in three weeks: take two or three construction companies and planners, present the goal, and in one afternoon workshop try to generate the best team. What all these processes have in common is creating economic and legal framework conditions to align participants toward a shared goal.

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Host27:59

What do you think that does to the industry structure? We currently have an interesting structure—if we take the Tyrolean building industry association, we have 2,000 members, and only about 12 are SMEs; all the others are sole proprietors. Similarly for structural engineers and architects—hundreds of tiny offices and a few larger ones. What will these developments do to this structure?

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Christoph Achammer28:28

In the next phase, we'll face significant consolidation. The large firms will get larger, the SME sector will grow significantly, and the many very small ones will decline considerably. I deliberately say 'in the next phase,' because in the phase after that, if digitalization continues and cultural change is complete, it could break back down to the individual working in virtual associations. But these virtual partnerships require a strengthened culture of trust and collaboration—otherwise it doesn't work. This intermediate step of consolidation is quite justified.

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Host29:27

You once said—for residential construction, no architect is needed anymore.

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Christoph Achammer29:35

Not that absolutely. I said there are certain residential types where that applies. For inner-city, socially compatible residential construction, I take the Gründerzeit building in Vienna—one of the most successful typologies of the last 100 years. A standard model: two exterior walls, one interior wall, room typology 5×5 facing the street, 3×3 facing the courtyard. Individualization happened in the facade and stairwell. I quote Otto Wagner: such a building is sold through the facade and stairwell, and nobody cares what it looks like behind the apartment door. In highly regulated social housing, there's no reason to design a new bathroom for every project. That way you can reduce planning costs from well above 10 percent to probably 2 or 3 percent.

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Host31:00

What do you think about that, Anton?

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Anton Rieder31:04

I can see the appeal. We try to do that—though not at 2-3 percent yet, we've gotten to around 5-6 percent, already significantly below the industry. Construction is highly regulated—building codes, zoning plans, client requirements. The scope for design is limited, so you can save quite a bit. They try to make each project a new highlight, but what stands there usually has little to do with the original vision. A Viennese architect once told me: 'I think we'll end up being balcony railing designers'—and he wasn't entirely wrong. It's apparently only stairwells and facades, and even less than in the Gründerzeit. Those buildings still have great appeal and remain very sought-after.

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Host32:14

What happened in social housing since then that it became so much worse to live in?

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Christoph Achammer32:22

It's partly a consequence of our architects. In the 1920s, the most famous figures—Gropius to Le Corbusier—promoted the famous principles: air, light, sun—revolutionary for their time, but causing us to abandon many criteria we'd appreciate today. Monofunctionality of neighborhoods, absolute individuality of freestanding buildings. The second story is that we've lost our generosity. Through heavy regulation, a bean-counter mentality set in, measuring in square centimeters. We're lagging decades behind. Austria still has outdated parking requirements—1.5 spaces per apartment, even next to a subway station. These absurdities leave us miles away from what the Gründerzeit achieved: configuring urbanism, creating magnificent urban spaces, allowing flexibility from grand bourgeois living to medical offices to subdivided apartments. We've forgotten all of that. A children's room where today's child moves out is usable only as a storage room.

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Host34:35

What values have you passed on to your students to evoke a positive development?

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Christoph Achammer34:45

Collaboration and communication. Collaboration and dialogue is what it's all about—whether someone studied civil engineering or architecture, or came through a different path. Working together as a team and unleashing creativity—that was, I hope, the decisive contribution I made for two or three generations.

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Host35:17

Anton, you also have architects employed at your company. Were those central selection criteria for you?

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Anton Rieder35:25

Our architects were classically trained and socialized no differently than others. We had to work hard at getting them to understand each other—the structural engineer and architect sit across from each other and didn't initially click. But we worked on it, and it really worked out, especially from the moment one of our architects built a house themselves and then asked 'where can we save something?' Then I knew they understood both aspects play a big role. At my home university of Innsbruck, where architecture and civil engineering faculties work very separately—that's not a good prerequisite for working together in the world. It must begin at universities and schools. It must become part of the culture, and that will take time, but it's absolutely essential. The methods exist, but it hasn't penetrated everywhere yet. I'm very optimistic it will happen.

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Christoph Achammer36:39

The institute I left behind now has four professorships at TU Wien: building construction, integral planning, industrial construction, and integral building technology. That's already a signal. I believe we're the only institute in the German-speaking university landscape that covers all of these areas, and it's very attractive because young people recognize the need.

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Host37:14

Would you like to give us a final thought for today—a wish?

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Christoph Achammer37:18

I wish that there will be more companies on the executing side led the way Anton Rieder leads his. He ran this chamber organization, which I viewed very critically—he's now stepped away, but I hope his influence remains intense enough to bring many of his peers to where he already is. That would make our lives significantly easier.

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Host37:54

Thank you very much for this conversation. Anton, would you like to add anything?

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Anton Rieder37:58

Also, thank you for the conversation. I'll continue to make an effort. Our doors are open—hardly a week goes by without someone visiting. We show everyone what we can do and what ideas we have, hoping to make a small contribution to the change that's important and necessary in the industry. Everyone is welcome to look and hopefully replicate it—that's our contribution to bringing this industry into a good future.

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Host38:30

Wonderful. I'd like to point to our website, www.riederbau.at/podcasts, where all previous episodes of Die Zukunft baut mit are available. We look forward to the next episodes. Tune in when you hear once again: Riederbau—Die Zukunft baut mit.