Good Through Experience: Competently Planned Traffic Routes

Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Schulze, the year 2020 marked a milestone for PBVI: three companies became one. How did this come about?

Jens Schulze: BVÜ, ICB, and MIB have operated alongside each other in the same market for nearly 25 years: After the federal railway transformed into Bahn AG in the 1990s, and many of its departments that had previously secured the railway's functional infrastructure were dissolved, their tasks had to be taken over by external service providers. This involved construction and process planning, construction supervision, maintenance, and surveying, all areas in transportation construction where we have been active for both the railway and private customers ever since. Initially at ICB, where I have worked since 1995, we were just five employees, and the other companies were similar in size, so there was always a need to ask each other for help during capacity bottlenecks.

Thus, we have worked side by side and also together for almost three decades, until we decided to merge our capacities in PBVI.

Wirtschaftsforum: What were the particular challenges?

Jens Schulze: In the past, we were not really aware of how the sheer size of a company can also attract new employees. In larger companies, there are opportunities for advancement, possibilities for change, entirely different structures – all that we could not offer as small individual companies. Now as BBVI, we suddenly received many applications and had to create new positions. That's how we grew and it turned out to be very positive because even the big transport associations became interested in us, for whom we seemed too little powerful before, as individual companies. Our biggest challenge now is not just to get new projects, but that we need to continue to grow in order to be able to implement them.

Wirtschaftsforum: How many employees do you now employ?

Jens Schulze: We now have 120 employees and have also gone through another merger: We recently acquired a small surveying office, whose managing partner will be retiring. He has placed his company and employees well with us, and the new colleagues have already moved to us in Marzahn.

Wirtschaftsforum: Following this successful merger, are further acquisitions also planned?

Jens Schulze: Indeed, one of my main tasks currently is the acquisition of companies that could fit with us, such as engineering offices. However, our focus remains primarily on infrastructure. We want to become stronger in terms of performance, and we also want to continue rejuvenating, that is, further reducing the average age of our employees. We have already reduced it by almost ten years. This would have been difficult with individual recruiting alone.

Wirtschaftsforum: How has the portfolio changed after the merger? Is it, in terms of the range of services, a synthesis of the services of the predecessor companies, or has something new emerged?

Jens Schulze: It is a bit of both, one might say. On one hand, we have maintained the existing range of services, but on the other hand, through the acquisition of the surveying office, which also has a very broad customer base, we have become active in this area as well. We continue to predominantly work in track construction, which includes everything from rails, ties and ballast, but we have also entered the electrical engineering sector, offering everything from lighting, switch heaters, and electrical supply with bollards to road lighting. Additionally, we have had an environmental planning department for a year and a half.

Wirtschaftsforum: What vision do you have for the future of your company?

Jens Schulze: We have set ourselves the goal of moving more into the area of ecological planning, and therefore we have also added the subject of environmental planning. We want to advise our clients more consciously from this perspective and provide technical solutions that enable perhaps even the bike path, which one might have wanted to save on, to still fit into the budget.