If you can do something, you can say it!

steelconcept

The Chemnitz-based company steelconcept stands for ideas in steel. "Steel construction is a passion," says Managing Director Roger Herold. He and Kerstin Schreier run the company, which they both founded in 2001, on an equal footing. Constructions and buildings are created on Neefestraße that have that special something in addition to practicality. Herold, his wife Ines, who manages personnel and marketing, and Kerstin Schreier once studied at Chemnitz University of Technology. steelconcept now operates worldwide from Chemnitz.

Mr Herold, what makes steelconcept special?
My experience shows that I often drive to a new customer for an initial meeting and don't immediately recognise the building in which their production or office premises are located. The exterior does not yet reflect the top products and services that are created inside. For the new building, this is a great opportunity to reflect the CI or the product. This awakens motivation, interest and high feelings in new customers and employees and they then only need to be kept at this level with the products - this is our train of thought and we also try to explain to the customer that it's not just about technology. Our aim is to develop technology in design.

So you also offer design?
That is our approach. There is this bottleneck concentration theory. Take an egg timer. Who is to blame for the sand trickling through so slowly? The narrowest point. You always have to look at where the narrowest point is and you have to widen it. That's where we start. One possible bottleneck is the customer's perception. Our team provides ideas, with architecture, technology, an energy concept and, of course, a price proposal.

Is energy-efficient construction also a starting point for you?
Absolutely, because they belong together. That's why I drive such a car (there's a brand new little electric car in the yard).
We are currently in the process of developing a joint research project with Professor Erfurth from Erfurth Projektdesign. We want to produce a reference project with a snow-load-free roof for Chemnitz.
This is particularly interesting in Chemnitz, where we have a lot of snow in some years. If you are able to build the roof in such a way that the snow melts on approach using its own energy, then the disc load would play a different role. That would be a cool thing. In addition, heat is released downwards, which can also be utilised.

You must have designed your company building yourself?
Of course, our company building is exactly what I want to show customers. We are modern, straightforward, no-frills, but also cost-optimised. The office building, which looks very attractive from the outside, has the most favourable façade you can ever build with. To ensure a good indoor climate, we used clay plaster on the inside. Old and new are not mutually exclusive.

Have you won an environmental award for your company building?
Yes, the Energy Award 2013, when the building was newly constructed. That was for the use of innovative energies. Other nominees were VW, Continental, Agfa, Airbus and others. At the award ceremony, I jokingly remarked: if I add up the sales figures of all the competitors and then add steelconcept's sales on top, then - oho! - something was added to the eighth digit after the decimal point.

You have 33 employees, are they part of the secret of your success?
Absolutely! There is a nice parable for this. Three stonemasons are each carving a large stone. A traveller comes along and asks what they are working on. The first one says, "I have to carve a block, it bores me. For him, it's a pointless job. Pointless work leads to depression in employees. The second replies, I'm building a door lintel here, quite difficult, but I can do it. He knows what it is and does it with fervour, but he's also glad when the day is done. The third one says I'm building a cathedral. He has his stone in mind for the entire building.
I want my employees not just to work on a piece of steel, but to roof a temple, like in Malta, for example. There, we are roofing the Tarxien temple with a steel girder spanning 78 metres. I explain the archaeological task to my employees and that we are protecting a 5,000-year-old structure that is being damaged by wind, sun and rain.

Where did you get your vision from?
From my wife Ines, of course. (laughs heartily) We also talk about our work at home. It's very relaxed then, she has a completely different perspective. She has an outside perspective. It's important to me that our studies can be implemented one-to-one in reality. To this end, I sometimes tempt our clients to look for differences between the commissioned study and photos of the finished building.

You are more of a structural engineer and less of an architect, so perhaps that characterises your practical approach more than the theoretical?
Empathy is an important factor in my work. I don't just have to know the customer's technology, their product, the processes and the requirements for the new building, I'm also interested in their priorities, hobbies and what is important to them. Together with the right architect, we then try to design an idea that is customised for this customer. They can sometimes be out of the ordinary. If our structural engineer raises objections, I come back into the game: and if we push the top there or add a joint here and a rigid corner there, is the idea destroyed? No. Can we do it statically? Yes. And only then do we go to the customer. Not with the first draft, but with the one that can be realised.

Then it makes sense to give the customer the time to analyse this study. Perhaps he wants to discuss it with his wife, discuss it with his employees first?
What I mean by this is that technology and expertise are one side of the coin, the other is communication and empathy. These lead to success or failure.

How did you come up with the idea of founding a company back then?
I ended up in Bavaria during the turmoil of reunification, a forced expatriate so to speak, because I wanted to continue my studies in Munich. By chance, I ended up in a small company run by one person with 25 employees. The head of production, an older gentleman, simply liked me. He encouraged me and said, I like the way you think and I'm going to show you for three years what's not in the books. Back then, he taught me how to deal with people, what empathy is. Then, unfortunately, he fell ill and, at the age of 27, I was allowed to run the company as operations manager. Later, when I was 30, I asked myself, what's next? Do you go to a big company or do you stay here until you retire? Then came the opportunity to set up something in Chemnitz - it could have been in Dresden or Leipzig, but never in Bayreuth - because funding was only available in eastern Germany. Ten years as an employee were not enough to build up the start-up capital. We needed a million in equity capital to get off to a reasonable start.

Why did you decide to come back to Chemnitz?
Why we chose Chemnitz and not Leipzig is simply because it's true what they say: people do business in Leipzig, there's culture in Dresden and people work in Chemnitz. The environment here in the city is much more pleasant for me than in Dresden. I have everything I need: mechanical engineers, coating centres, large galvanising plants, transport companies and much more. Above all - and this was 13 years ago - we have found employees who are really experts and know how to process steel. The first of them will soon be retiring, so we are also training our employees ourselves. It is important to us that we train young people in our philosophy. It's a process that never ends.

You have expanded into Ukraine and are promoting business contacts, why Ukraine?
One day I received an uncomplicated invitation by e-mail. It said, come on, let's go, we have contacts, take a look at production facilities and talk to company owners. That sounded interesting and exciting. It's a beautiful country. The investment was manageable. Our company there, steelconcept-UA, is now quite independent. We are now discovering Macedonia; we founded the company steelconcept-MK there and have already gained initial experience in building a factory building.

You have already organised a business forum for entrepreneurs from Chemnitz or the region to promote contacts in Ukraine.
Yes, back then it was important to me to take away the fear of this unknown country from business partners and entrepreneurs from other sectors. Calculable risk is my keyword. We were happy to pass on our experience.

What is steelconcept's biggest reference project?
In Chemnitz, it's clearly the euro.Courier company building. This is the most complex overall project that we have realised in terms of EU buildings. Of course, we have grown with the customer's requirements. Heckert Solar, the Wirkbau Tower, the new bridge at the Haasefabrik in Chemnitz or the roofing at AWM always remain interesting and design-orientated for us. This project was awarded the German Steel Construction Prize - an honour for us to be involved in its construction. Our business areas also include mechanical and plant engineering, and we also supply these steel structures throughout Germany and worldwide.

Can today's success be measured in figures, such as turnover?
The exact turnover figures are not my first priority. It can reach between €6 and €9 million per year, depending on which projects we produce. Gross profit is more important to me - it has to remain stable for all projects.

You don't live directly in Chemnitz, what is home for you?
That's quite clear. I grew up in a village near Chemnitz. I lived on Kaßberg for several years, but the walls and noise were too high for me. My wife and I wanted to go back to the countryside. And after years of searching, we found our home in the village again. Our sons, on the other hand, would like this idyll on Kaßberg, because they clearly prefer city life.

What is your favourite place?
My favourite place is definitely on the wooden footbridge by the pond with crystal-clear water, watching the trout. It's just marvellous.

Is there also a favourite place in the city, in Chemnitz, which is also your home town, so to speak?
My favourite place is at Jörg Pille's, outside the smokers' lounge in the "Zigarrenkontor Chemnitz" in the Chemnitzer Hof. I like to pop in there, perhaps too rarely, have a coffee with him and we talk shop about God and the world. Letting go is the order of the day. I feel like I'm in another world when I see him in his white shirt, desk tops and his golden book, in which he enters every sale with a fountain pen - it's stylish. There's also something about slowing down, that's my theme!

Do you have to encourage the people of Chemnitz?
Absolutely. In my opinion, Chemnitz is excellent at "making itself small". We are ONLY... from the East, from Saxony, we can only... When I observe from the outside how Chemnitz is perceived, namely as a business location, as a mechanical engineering city or how we are valued as a Chemnitz company, then I say, of course these are experts and specialists here on site. That's a tradition! We should and must communicate this to the world. If you can do something, you can say it. Rattling is part of the trade. I would like to see more of that.