Maximilien Ast (Drees & Sommer Luxembourg) : Create a world we want to live in

How do we find the right path in a world full of opportunities? How can we respond to great challenges with innovation? It requires awareness. We are advisors, planners, engineers - people with an eye on the big picture in order to use competence in the right way. For a world of tomorrow, creating a world we want to live in.

Can you present your company in a few words?

As a European consulting, planning and project management company, Drees & Sommer supports private and public clients in all matters relating to real estate, infrastructure and industry – analogue and digital. With its pioneering and future-shaping consulting, the company offers solutions for successful buildings, high-return portfolios, efficient infrastructure and liveable cities. Drees & Sommer provides all services under the premise of combining economy and ecology, communicated as “the blue way”. The company, which has been partner-managed for over 50 years, has its headquarters in Stuttgart (Germany) and more than 5,000 employees at 51 locations worldwide. Drees & Sommer has been established in Luxembourg for 20 years with a steadily growing team of currently more than 100 employees.

  

How are your customers’ needs evolving?

The EU goal of “climate neutrality by 2050” and the accompanying ESG criteria play a key role in the construction and real estate industry. Without an ESG strategy that runs through all parts of a company, serious economic consequences will follow in the future. Investors and stakeholders are motivated to make investment decisions according to ESG criteria. Another megatrend in the sector digitalisation. Many companies see the potential as well as the necessity and are investing large sums in digitalisation. They feel the time pressure and do not want to lose out to the competition – not only in terms of orders, but also in the competition for skilled workers. New Work is a third important trend topic for our clients. The work of the future is characterised by flexibility and mobility. Control and supervision play a subordinate role. For this, a technical infrastructure is indispensable that enables mobile working on an equal footing. A trend that will become standard in the future. Nevertheless, the office is not a discontinued model. It retains its appeal and brings colleagues together in a physical place where exchange and collaboration, chance encounters and events are given their place.
  

How do you see your company evolving in the next 5 years?

Big data and platforms add new technological concepts to extend the traditional lifecycle of buildings with the phases of development, construction, operation and removal / upcycling. This will rise to innovative clusters which can already be recognized. It also means that in 2030, we will be faced with completely new challenges and requirements in the construction and real estate word. And this will also affect the nature of work and the tasks which must be undertaken. Due to the transformation in the market, the interests and needs of our customers are shifting faster than ever. To this end, we have launched the Drees & Sommer Innovation Center in collaboration with international start-ups. With it, we bundle, prioritise and develop our innovations in order to achieve an efficient and targeted digitalisation of our current business models and to develop completely new ones. In this way, we can continue to offer our clients solutions that are ahead of their time.

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