In the 28th podcast episode of the Free Voters and FOR Karlsruhe municipal council group, city councilor Petra Lorenz talks to entrepreneur Michael Hoffmann about pitfalls in major projects, the shortage of skilled workers and a musical with 2000 volunteers. Michael Hoffmann is co-founder and managing director of the FC Group – an engineering services provider that takes care of the many facets of the construction industry such as planning, consulting and managing construction projects.
With his expertise from the construction industry, Michael Hoffmann can also name the problems of major construction projects in Karlsruhe:
“It’s always difficult to look at something from the outside and say how you could do it better. However, projects are often presented very optimistically in order to get the decision-makers behind them. Often only the
Michael Hoffmann
advantages are mentioned and the risks are very rarely priced in. If then a
disruption, the deadlines run away and then a downward spiral begins.”
Karlsruhe is a special case in that several construction projects have run into difficulties here. This is probably also due to the fact that projects were planned too optimistically and risk-averse at the time of their creation.
Often, with such large construction projects, it is no longer possible to find out the exact causes of problems, and the fragile and overly optimistic model breaks.
One issue that is affecting the whole of Germany is the growing shortage of skilled workers and labor. Michael Hoffmann sees this as a “huge challenge”. In the field of engineering, more people are retiring than are being added through training and study – so the decline is becoming even more intense. To counteract this, Hoffmann and his company are taking very different approaches: the working time model is becoming more flexible, good remuneration is being added, there is better equipment at the workplace and projects are to be attractive. In addition, efforts are being made to attract skilled workers from other European countries to the company.
In addition to his work as an entrepreneur, Michael Hoffmann volunteers as the founder and director of the musical “Weihnachten Neu Erleben” (Christmas New Experience) from Karlsruhe: “2000 people from the region participate on a voluntary basis and together create a great Christmas musical. This project consists of three points: We want to tell the Christmas story in its beauty and relevance, we are doing it completely on a honorary basis because we want to support and promote children and youth projects in the region, and we want ordinary people to stand on a stage and have an amazing experience in front of 50,000 people,” says Michael Hoffmann about his heartfelt project.
