Drees & Sommer-Group consolidates market position in the construction management and consultation sector
17.06.2004
The service provider for construction and real estate management Drees & Sommer could also increase its sales volume and market shares in the year 2003 in an increasingly difficult market situation.
In 2003 the sales volume of the group was 104 million and the expenses 93.7 million Euro. If you consider the pure service transaction compared to the previous year, these figures have to be adjusted by the proceeds and expenditures from service external real property developments of 6.5 million Euro.
After this adjustment there remains an increase in sales volume of approximately 8 percent to 97.5 million Euro compared to the previous year (90.5 million Euro). These include about 6.5 million Euro from final accounts accumulating in 2003.
After the adjustment the expenses have increased by 6.9 million Euro to 87,2 million Euro compared to the previous year (80.3 million Euro). These include personnel costs (+1.6 million Euro), depreciations (+ 1.4 million Euro) and particularly risk reserves as well as valuation adjustments (+ 4.3 million Euro).
In spite of the risk reserves and valuation adjustments the result of the common business activity could be constantly maintained with 10.1 million Euro on the level of the previous year (10.0 million Euro), which corresponds to a two-digit percentage return on sales of 10.4 percent referred to the adjusted sales volume of 97.5 million Euro,
The value added achieved by foreign contracts was 10.4 million Euro, which means an increase of 30 percent compared to the previous year (8 million Euro).
Outlook 2004
Professor Dr. Hans Sommer, chief executive of the Drees & Sommer AG, has a positive expectation for the next months. "The incoming orders for 2004 are already better then at the same time of the previous year. This encourages the management to keep the taken direction in order to introduce the growth phases which were announced last year."
In its change process, which was started in the year 2000, the Drees & Sommer-Group defined courageous targets without specifying traditional products and customers. Essential components of the strategy were innovative ideas like the development of the construction partner model and the export of management services abroad. In this, the company always concentrates on the demands of the customers, so that customer-oriented performance offers with a perceptible benefit were developed.
To make the company and its performances transparent on the market the offered services were concentrated in three independent, however intensively networked core markets.
Drees & Sommer (blue brand): construction management and consultation in structural engineering
DS-Infra (red brand): construction management and consultation for traffic, environment and infrastructure
DS-Plan (green brand): progressive building technologies and technical general technical planning
The three core brands are completed by the BuildingAgency as supplier of turnkey planning and construction performances, which are rendered together with construction partners.
In the year 2003 above all the performance offer of the Drees & Sommer management area was consequently extended to a comprehensive real estate service from the real estate consultation over the development and construction management to the facility management. In this context, the required special competences are concentrated with respectively responsible managing directors in competence centres and are available to the whole network. Internally a new strategic distribution ensures that the customers are only supported by respectively one competent partner, who coordinates all necessary performances.
Since the seventies Drees & Sommer has been leading in the area of software development for project management and company-internal knowledge management. Currently the version 5.0 of the project communication tool PKM is used as internet-based software for the networked control of big projects at more than 70 projects. All office data of the Drees & Sommer network are administrated and the whole correspondence including mailings and campaigns are organized by means or the internet-based and own-developed software One4Office.
Hans Sommer considers the role model of the company at Drees & Sommer as foundation of the company success: "Our cooperation means for us company culture instead of fixed structures. We comprehend the idea of management as management of competences instead of organization of careers." This is also the foundation for the big innovation strength of Drees & Sommer, which always facilitates the company the decisive market lead.
