Spaces for life

2021/05/01   |   Bonndorf   |   Germany

Timber engineer Florian Hegar, who has recently headed the company together with his father Bernhard Hegar, gives an insight.

Mr. Hegar, how do you see the further development in timber construction?

I see the future development of timber construction as very promising. Especially when it comes to project construction, we are still at the very beginnings of what timber construction can do. Prefabrication enables us to detect and solve planning errors at an early stage. 3D modeling reveals problems as early as in the planning phase. This allows the construction site to be optimized, shorter construction times to be realized and this with a very high quality of executing. As a building material, wood solves many problems that cannot be solved with traditional building materials.

What challenges do you see for timber construction in the coming years?

From my point of view, we need to strengthen the use of hardwood in structural timber construction. At the moment, we are using woods such as fir and spruce. There is still a great deal of untapped potential here. Since we only use regional wood from the northern and southern Black Forest, it is all the more important for us to further expand our regional supply. For this, the development of hardwoods as building material is indispensable. There is still a big challenge here. Universities, the sawmill industry, forestry and timber manufacturers need to work together more closely and develop a long-term overall strategy. This is where we need solutions to ensure the availability of raw materials in the long term.

Spaces for life – What does this mean for you?

For me, the special thing about building with wood is the ambience of the space. We want to show as many people as possible how pleasant and healthy living in wood is. This is exactly what our motto "spaces for life" expresses. Our mission is also to offer our employees a space for life. We spend so much time at work, so it's even more important that employees feel comfortable and enjoy coming to the workplace. It almost goes without saying that, for us, sustainability means building ecologically, using regional timber, ensuring short supply chains and strengthening our regional cycles. But also to offer employees a long-term job until retirement, and a mission and corporate culture that is fun. This is our aspiration, because only in this way can good products be produced – with the commitment and motivation of each individual. 

There is still a big change to come in your production this year. Tell us more about it. 

We have decided to automate our manual production because we still have a lot of manual processes today. Here, we want to relieve the strain for our employees, therefore, the work ergonomics was clearly in the foreground in this decision. But we obviously also take advantage of the higher production output. In this way we save time and the employee benefits from improved work ergonomics. WEINMANN has supported us in our search for the right technology. Together with us, they looked at our existing production processes, analyzed the potential and designed the plant for us on this basis. WEINMANN has always looked at the entire process. This consultation and development of a solution that is completely tailored to our needs is truly unique and has won us over. In the future, we will manufacture our complete wall, roof and ceiling elements using a three-table system. In addition to the WALLTEQ M-380 multifunction bridge for panel processing, we also have a separate station for insulating the elements with the WALLTEQ M-310 insuFill. We are already looking forward to the machines!