20 Years of the Green Building Cluster of Lower Austria

Issue

How do you manage to plant future-oriented ideas and concepts in an industry in such a way that they become the guiding principles for a large number of projects and partnerships?

Approach

20 years of continuous work in the ecoplus Green Building Cluster of Lower Austria and its predecessors, the Wood Cluster and the Eco-Building Cluster, have been able to achieve this for a whole range of topics. On the occasion of this milestone birthday, the Cluster, together with long-standing companions, looked back on milestones in its commitment to the industry. One of the first flagship projects to be coordinated by the Cluster was the office and seminar center SOL4, which was built according to the passive house standard and covers the remaining energy consumption with photovoltaic panels and solar thermal energy. The driving force behind the project was master builder Klaus Kiessler, who still emphasizes the moderated cooperative planning process as a special feature.

The cooperation with the climate protection initiative “klimaaktiv” was subsequently extremely successful. Numerous companies were able to qualify for this initiative in the field of renovation of old buildings as part of the Lower Austrian renovation offensive starting in 2009. Johannes Fechner, from 17&4 Organisationsberatung GmbH, still considers the “renovation alliances” formed by companies from different trades to be a sustainable concept for designing such a project as a whole.

For many years, the Cluster has also been committed to transferring the concepts of “Continuous Improvement Process” (CIP) and “Lean Management”, which have proven themselves in the automotive industry, to SMEs in the construction industry, thus helping to increase the efficiency of operational processes. The cabinet maker “Schrenk” from Vitis has been a Cluster partner from the very beginning. Throughout the years they have been able to reduce the production time of a wooden staircase from eight weeks to just eight hours. “The Lean mindset cannot be installed with just a single workshop. It takes time, patience and sometimes failure to get the entire organization on this path,” says owner Stefan Schrenk. A total of 102 companies have been reached in 37 cooperation projects over the past 20 years with this initiative alone. In a similar manner, Helmut Mitsch, Lower Austria’s Provincial Guild Master for Carpenters and Wood Designers, has been committed to the exchange of experience and benchmarking between trade businesses for many years.

The LEAN cooperation projects were sponsored by Dept. WST3 of the Province of Lower Austria.

Result

Topics of environmentally friendly construction and operational efficiency in trade companies have been firmly anchored in the Lower Austrian construction industry over the past 20 years. The motto of the Cluster “Innovation through cooperation” has been substantiated in countless projects. Helmut Mitsch can only agree: “There are issues and challenges in business that can only be solved together.”

 

Contact

Green Building Cluster of Lower Austria
Michaela Smertnig
+43 664 601 19664