Ingolstadt, Germany, December 9, 2025. It looks nondescript from the outside. A production plant like many others on the site of AUDI AG in Ingolstadt. Yet when you enter Hall A1, you are right in the middle of the campus’s nervous system. This is where energy, data and water flow – everything that keeps a plant running. But it is precisely this existing infrastructure that is reaching its limits. Audi is starting a comprehensive transformation project in order to future-proof the entire campus. One of the special features of the project: the facilities are being upgraded during ongoing operations, within established structures, with a tight time schedule and a wide range of dependencies. The car manufacturer has brought Drees & Sommer SE on board to ensure the project runs smoothly. The company provides consulting in the fields of real estate, industry and infrastructure. The project is technically demanding – and organizationally complex.
Eight Projects, One Target
Overall, the project comprises eight closely interlinked subprojects with a duration of more than ten years. The focus is on installing new media lines in the north and south of the plant, on splitting up existing supply structures, and construction of a new energy center for the site as a whole. Audi oversees the project, in collaboration with the experts from Drees & Sommer, ensuring that deadlines, budgets and quality standards are met.
Many Parties Involved, Many Dependencies
Senior project manager Veronika Linz from Drees & Sommer, who is responsible for management of the overall project, comments: “This is not a construction project in the traditional sense. The facilities are being upgraded during ongoing operations, including all technical, organizational and human challenges that come with such a project.“ The eight subprojects are at different performance, service and completion stages. Some build on one another, others run in parallel. Some are at the implementation planning stage, while others are still in the variant study phase. While testing is still being conducted at one end, construction is already underway at the other. And all this while production continues to run. “Large-scale projects of this type are never static. You plan with a target in mind, but the way to get there is constantly changing. Dismantling of the energy center and media lines started in 2025, while in other places there were discussions on how space could be freed up and users be accommodated elsewhere,” explains the senior project manager.“
Interfaces as Key Factors
Coordination of the great number of participants is one of the major challenges inherent to large-scale construction projects. Specialist planners, authorities, users, construction firms – they all have their own priorities and time schedules, depending on the contracts concluded with them. “The first and foremost challenge is not the construction work in itself. Well-coordinated interfaces form the basis for smoothly-running processes and workflows,“ Veronika Linz points out.
Proper coordination is crucial to ensure robust time schedules and solid cost structures. Thus, professional interface management becomes a key competence. The longer a project runs, the more demanding it becomes in terms of staffing and organizational continuity.
Sustainable energy center strengthens supply at the site
A central element of the project is the new energy center in the middle of the plant. The technical building, which is around 120 meters long, is planned in two construction phases and combines central infrastructure functions: cooling water and refrigeration supply, heat pump technology, compressed air, thermal storage, main electrical stations, and IT infrastructure. The center will be connected to the entire plant site via new overhead and underground lines.
The energy center is not only a technical but also a strategic element of the transformation: it is designed to meet the requirements of the energy transition. Among other things, the plan is to use industrial waste heat via heat pumps and thermal storage solutions. The project thus makes an active contribution to Audi's Mission:Zero environmental program and lays the foundation for a sustainable, resilient energy supply at the Ingolstadt site.
For Drees & Sommer’s senior project manager, the project at Audi in Ingolstadt is not just a modernization effort. It is a blue print for the transformation of historically grown sites of the industrial sector. Veronica Linz sums up by noting that “what is beginning today in Hall A1 could become a model for other plants in the future – wherever infrastructure not only needs to be repaired, but re-thought and transformed.“