Prof. em. Dr. Gerhard Girmscheid

Gerhard Girmscheid was appointed Professor at the Institute for Construction Engineering and Management at ETH Zurich with effect from October 1, 1996. His teaching and research focus on construction process and construction enterprise management. He was awarded emeritus status in 2014 / 2015.
 
Gerhard Girmscheid, born on May 18, 1949, studied construction engineering at Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, where he obtained his PhD in the Structural Engineering department in 1983 with a thesis on Nonlinear Theorie of Prismatic Folded Structures. He then worked for construction enterprise Bilfinger & Berger Bau AG, Wiesbaden, for twelve years with initial responsibility for planning industrial facilities, heavy construction and bridges. Following a four-year stint for the American subsidiary Fru-Con Construction as engineering and site manager on a major construction site in Egypt, he was responsible for managing bridge building activities for the foreign division back at the parent company. A further two-year assignment abroad took him to Thailand in 1993 to manage a billion D-Mark project. After his return to Germany, he became planning coordinator for the fourth tunnel under the River Elbe in Hamburg. At the beginning of 1996, he moved to Walter Bau AG in Augsburg as managing director in charge of construction process engineering and of Deutsche Bau-Consulting GmbH.

His practical experience and development activities range from building construction, heavy construction, underwater injection methods and horizontal injection processes, and shield tunnel boring machines to construction engineering methods for floating structures and engineering and caissons, construction and installation strategies for segment bridges with external pretensioning, right up to project management methods for fast track projects.

Gerhard Girmscheid teaches both construction process engineering and construction enterprise management. He was director of the Institute from 1998 – 2013, student delegate of DBAUG from 2005 – 2007 and ETH delegate in the IDEA League Working Group Civil Engineering from 2001 – 2007. He also held guest professorships at ASU in Phoenix Arizona (USA) in 2001, at UMIST in Manchester (UK) in 2004 and at MIT in Boston (USA) in 2005. Further, he was awarded a guest professorship at Sichuan University in Chengdu (China) from 2015 – 2021. He has been the recipient of multiple international awards.

His research activities focus on the work performance and support processes in construction enterprises. Research centers around the "SysBau®" approach that he established, with industrial lean construction production and management and life cycle-oriented construction processes. Within the framework of this approach, models and processes have been developed to assure efficient, lean and interactive project processes and sustainable corporate development, and to integrate the sustainability in building products, services portfolios and integrated delivery. The aim being to achieve overall optimization of innovative building systems by integrating planning, construction and utilization into product and services portfolios. In doing so, the benefits for customers are sustainably enhanced and companies become better able to compete. Key decision making and management models for sustainably shaping project and corporate processes are derived from these efforts. Further research results and lean management have been disseminated in teaching for practical application.

Numerous books and articles have been published during these teaching and research activities. More than twelve books by Girmscheid have been published by international presses, together with various chapters of books in editorial works, 91 peer reviewer articles and 85 peer reviewed conference submissions. Until 2015, twenty-two doctoral candidates had obtained their PhD under his guidance.
 
Professor Girmscheid occupies senior positions on national boards, such as the VSS and SIA/FIB. He was president of the PPP expert network (CH) and numerous other boards. He was a member of the board and programme committee of the Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction from 2006 – 2011 and CIB coordinator of task group TG 57 and working commission W119. Between 2002 and 2012, he was associate editor of the Springer trade journal “Bauingenieur”. From 2005, he was appointed scientific reviewer by the ASCE’s “Journal of Construction Engineering and Management”. He is a member of the SWISS experts for court opinions and arbitration and, since 2014, managing director of CTT Consulting, advising construction enterprises and property owners. From 2013 – 2018, he was, moreover, board member for a major international construction enterprise and on the board of directors of three major Swiss companies.