The Parking Garage Becomes a Mobility Hub
Interview with Jürgen Baer and Lutz Bruhn, Managing Directors of Electric ELB Gebäudetechnik GmbH and SMH Video- und Parksysteme GmbH
The parking garage of the future is not only digitally connected but also ideally functions as a mobility hub in urban spaces. Electric ELB Gebäudetechnik GmbH and its subsidiary SMH have decades of industry experience and have therefore already contributed to many particularly prominent projects. In the interview, their managing directors Jürgen Baer and Lutz Bruhn provided exciting insights.
Wirtschaftsforum: Electric ELB Gebäudetechnik GmbH and its subsidiary, SMH Video- und Parksysteme GmbH, are known in Germany and beyond for their proven expertise in the construction and maintenance of parking garages – how did this specialization come about?
Jürgen Baer: Basically, our company originally emerged from an old production cooperative of the crafts in 1996 – at a time when the major construction boom in the new federal states was almost drying up. In addition to housing construction, we have for many years primarily taken on the electrical installation work for large industrial buildings, freight halls, office buildings, and schools – we were already active throughout Germany. When we participated in the conversion of an old workshop into a residential building in Reichenbach, we coincidentally made contact with a client from Karlsruhe who wanted to build a parking garage – and we immediately clicked.
Wirtschaftsforum: The beginning of a long success story?
Jürgen Baer: Shortly thereafter we were commissioned by the second and third general contractor to build additional parking garages. Today, we are only involved in very few other segments – for instance, we regularly install sorting machines for newspapers for a Swiss machinery factory and also handle the electrical installation of refrigeration systems for a local refrigeration technician. However, our clear focus lies on the approximately 320 parking garages we have experience with over the decades. In addition to Germany, we have also been involved in the Netherlands and the UK for many years, where we, for example, installed the electrical systems of parking garages at Wembley Stadium or at Stansted Airport in London.
We generally support our clients along the entire value chain: We get involved from the initial planning and, during the tendering process, are happy to accompany the general contractors to the award discussions. We usually handle the entire electrical planning and, subsequently, together with our long-standing subcontractors, take care of the execution of the work and all maintenance and service tasks.
Wirtschaftsforum: While ELB focuses on the actual construction, SMH is responsible for areas such as video surveillance, emergency calls, WLAN, and parking guidance systems - fields with diverse innovation potential!
Lutz Bruhn: SMH essentially enters the stage when the parking garage has been established, where, besides our service and consulting offerings, we also participate to some extent in new installations. In addition to solutions for video surveillance, we also provide intercom stations and connections to the control center, and take care of inputting data into the respective management system. An important future topic in this context is of course artificial intelligence: This can often provide a conclusive solution for comparatively trivial problems, such as a question about directions, so that no human resources are tied up any longer and the existing staff can focus on the really complex issues. Digital license plate recognition systems embedded in the cloud are also increasingly in demand, while the good old barrier is being increasingly replaced by modern Free-Flow systems.
Wirtschaftsforum: In addition, there are the diverse challenges of e-mobility - how can ELB and SMH assist here?
Lutz Bruhn: In Wiesbaden, we recently built the largest mobility hub that currently exists in public spaces in Germany – with over 400 charging points, eight fast chargers, as well as the necessary busbars, a transformer station, parking display, video surveillance, and emergency call station, in short: a state-of-the-art parking garage filled with a lot of data technology, which from my perspective is clearly forward-looking. Because the private car will remain the mobility solution of choice in Germany, even as part of the traffic transition. However, this requires appropriate infrastructure, which is not so easily implemented under the cramped conditions of an urban environment. Parking garages can play an important role as mobility hubs in solving this problem.