The benefits of being different

“We’ve always done things dif­fer­ent­ly,” says Jörg-Uwe Gold­beck (53), manag­ing direc­tor of the Gold­beck con­struc­tion and real estate com­pa­ny in Biele­feld. In 2007, he and his broth­er Jan-Hen­drik (44) took over the com­pa­ny founded back in 1969 by their father, Ortwin Gold­beck, who is now 83. Today, the cor­po­rate group employs more than 8,000 peo­ple, mak­ing it the largest fam­i­ly-run enter­prise in Ger­many. Courage and inno­v­a­tive power are the dri­ving forces behind its rise to become one of the country’s most suc­cess­ful medi­um-sized com­pa­nies. 

The posi­tion­ing of this owner-run con­struc­tion com­pa­ny does not sound ter­ri­bly excit­ing. It is a gen­er­al con­trac­tor for com­mer­cial and munic­i­pal above-ground build­ings, and also pro­vides some relat­ed ser­vices. What dis­tin­guish­es this West­phalian busi­ness, how­ev­er, is its approach. Gold­beck uses sys­tem­at­ic mod­u­lar means to make turnkey halls, office build­ings, and multi-level car parks. It views build­ings as prod­ucts. It devel­ops and pro­duces major com­po­nents itself, then erects the build­ings, and if desired will oper­ate and man­age them as well. Cus­tomers receive every­thing from a sin­gle source. As Jörg-Uwe Gold­beck says, “We don’t build any­thing we don’t plan, and we don’t plan any­thing we don’t build.”