Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Merker, your engineering firm has been offering planning services for building technology solutions for over 30 years now – is there a project that stands out in your memory?

Carsten Merker: When my father founded this company in 1979, it initially served as a mere side source of income until it became his main activity in 1990. This allowed us to greatly benefit from the construction boom after the reunification and grow quickly. An especially important project in our company's history was certainly our participation in the Sail City in Bremerhaven because the extensive coverage of this aesthetically and technologically ambitious building allowed us to communicate to the broader market that we had moved up to the next level in our trade.

Wirtschaftsforum: How important was steady growth in your company's history?

Carsten Merker: I have at times deliberately slowed down growth trends because it was important to me that our company remained manageable for me – against this background, I have always estimated a healthy size to be about 16 employees. When I started thinking about the subsequent succession of the company a few years ago – I was just over 40 at the time – I realized that we needed to continue to grow in order to remain viable as an independent company in the market, independent of my person. To lay the foundations for this further growth, we moved into a larger office building in 2020.

Wirtschaftsforum: Then followed the pandemic – and as a result of supply shortages, inflation, and interest rate increases, there has also been a noticeable cooling in the construction industry. How do you assess the current market situation?

Carsten Merker: Housing construction has collapsed – both in terms of the overall economy and with regard to our own company activities. In 2019, we had a planning volume of about 1,500 residential units – currently, it stands at just 50. In commercial construction, we can count on full order books until the middle of next year, but here too, further inquiries are noticeably declining.

Wirtschaftsforum: What way do you see out of the crisis?

Carsten Merker: The causes of the crisis are multifactorial; therefore, there is no magical adjustment that could be made to bring everything back into balance. Low interest rates, persistently high land prices, and an optimistic market sentiment had driven the construction industry to the brink for years – but now the situation has tipped. If I had to reduce this complex situation to the biggest problem we face in our everyday life, which is also the hardest to solve, it would undoubtedly be the excessive bureaucracy in Germany.

Wirtschaftsforum: In what respect?

Carsten Merker: At various points – starting with the multitude of regulatory provisions, which are often extremely strict and detailed. If the regulations from the construction segment were applied in their rigor to the automotive sector, then everywhere would only be allowed to drive at walking speed. Our industry is subject to about 20,000 construction regulations and over 3,000 DIN standards – and while the latter used to set global standards, today they are often ridiculed by my international colleagues because they not only restrict our technical possibilities but also make construction far more expensive, despite the widespread housing shortage. It is not uncommon for closely related areas to have different regulations that contradict each other in content, where planners and architects then have to scout out the respective fields of application.

Wirtschaftsforum: Additionally, there are the cumbersome bureaucratic processes.

Carsten Merker: In the building permit procedures, it feels to me that the authorities are only concerned about being as litigation-proof as possible so that no one can object to a decision. Accordingly, changes to land-use plans often take many years and thus consistently prevent attractive planning horizons for investors and developers.

Wirtschaftsforum: Can this knot ever be untangled?

Carsten Merker: The era we live in holds tremendous opportunities, and I sense in my own employees a high motivation to secure and further enhance our general prosperity. However, we must also be allowed to unleash this potential.