Consolidated Results 2018: Drees & Sommer Continues to Invest in Sustainability and Digital Transformation

Stuttgart (ots) - The international real estate consulting company
Drees & Sommer generated sales of EUR 424.9 million in 2018, a
year-on-year increase of almost 12 percent. Its profit was up 6
percent, at EUR 47.7 million. Further growth in the company, which is
managed by its partners, is inextricably linked with sustainable and
digital buildings.

Steffen Szeidl, Member of the Executive Board of Drees & Sommer
SE, commented: 'Drees & Sommer has also benefited from the very
strong real estate markets. However, its growth is based above all on
the fact that we are increasingly offering management models for our
clients that include management, planning and construction expertise
as a package.' He is convinced that Drees & Sommer's investment in
innovative, digital and sustainable methods and business models mean
that it will be able to secure a high market share even in weaker
markets.

Sustainable Answers to Raw Materials Shortages, Climate Change,
and Traffic and Transport Problems

For Drees & Sommer, its recent acquisitions of stakes in other
companies are a particularly important element of its investments for
the future. For instance, it has acquired a majority interest in the
environmental research and consulting institute EPEA GmbH. This
company played a major role in the development of the Cradle to
Cradle (C2C) principle, which maintains the quality of raw materials
for products, processes and buildings, making buildings into a kind
of repository for raw materials. This means that when a building is
demolished, most of the materials incorporated into it can be reused
on a more or less like-for-like basis for new construction projects.

Cradle to Cradle is increasingly being used in construction
practice, and more and more manufacturers of building products are
opting for C2C certified products. The first C2C office building
using timber-based hybrid construction - The Cradle - is now under
construction in Düsseldorf, Germany. And the municipality of
Straubenhardt in the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg is a
role model for the public sector. It is the first local authority
area in Germany to pursue the C2C principle in its new buildings.

EPEA has also carried out projects for other sectors of the
economy, and is steadily extending its client list. For a large
discounter, for instance, the institute has recently certified the
first textile projects developed for the biological cycle.

City of the Future: Houses Like Trees, Cities Like Forests

Drees & Sommer Executive Board Member Dierk Mutschler commented:
'Houses like trees and cities like forests... by this we mean not
only green façades or urban farming, but also cycles of materials in
which the waste is used again to manufacture new nutrients, products
and buildings. We have to prepare cities for climate change. We have
to become greener, to build less on new land, and make a positive
contribution to climate policy.'

Drees & Sommer experts at 41 locations around the world are
currently developing entire city quarters and providing advice on all
aspects of infrastructure and mobility concepts for private and
public-sector clients. They call this approach the blue city.

Pioneer in Digital Transformation Through New Business Models

Drees & Sommer has also acquired a minority shareholding in
InterfaceMA GmbH, a proptech company based in Berlin that was founded
in 2013. The company specializes in the development of software and
services for the real estate sector. The common goal of the two
companies is to advance data centric solutions in the construction
and real estate industry and to develop standardized, efficient
interfaces for heterogeneous data formats. These are also intended to
benefit owners and investors in addition to asset, facility and real
estate fund managers.

Hackathons for Data Security

In the Drees & Sommer Innovation Center, staff are free to work on
innovation-related topics with startups, clients, business partners
or in research collaborations. The group operates innovation hubs at
several locations for this purpose, with various focuses such as
intelligent commercial buildings and smart cities, building
information modeling (BIM), or new office concepts.

One of the new hubs is the DS HUB building in Stuttgart, a former
bookbinding business now modernized and incorporating co-working
space. Here, the main focus is on digital business models,
collaborations with startups, and data security. This is where the
first hackathons were carried out to test and improve the IT security
of digital buildings.

Close Involvement in Global Growth Regions

The international expansion of Drees & Sommer remains an important
pillar of the company's success. In addition to the German-speaking
area (Germany, Austria and a part of Switzerland), the company is
targeting national markets within Europe, including the Netherlands
and the United Kingdom. It is also already heavily involved in global
growth regions such as Russia, China and the Arabian Peninsula.
Clients in key sectors such as automotive, life science, health care
and hospitality benefit from the international delivery capacity and
networking.

Outlook: Lean, Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Industrial
Construction Will Determine the Future

Executive Board Member Dierk Mutschler gave his view on how Drees
& Sommer is preparing for building the future: 'Rather than sticking
rigidly to decades-old construction and process flows, we question
existing processes and rethink them. Costs can be reduced,
construction times optimized and quality improved by the application
of lean construction and the digital planning method BIM, by the
modularization of construction elements, and by industrial
construction. These are measures that also support good architecture.
Repeat clients are the best proof of the quality of our work.'

You can find more information on the consolidated results 2018
here:
www.dreso.com/fileadmin/Unternehmen/JB_2018_en_final_Einzelseiten.pdf

Contact:
Barbara Wiesneth
Deputy Head of Media Relations
phone +49 (0)711 1317 2411 - mobile +49 (0)172 7995752
barbara.wiesneth@dreso.com

Original-Content von: Drees & Sommer SE, übermittelt durch news aktuell