What drives us at Consens?
Ventilated rainscreen facades, energy efficiency, sustainability. Material shortages, long delivery times, rising costs. These are issues that are currently strongly affecting us at CONSENS Bautechnik. Read the current interview with our managing director Thorsten Senner now: An assessment and outlook!
“VHFs are Important – for the Future, for the Climate, for our Customers, for Us”
In conversation with: Thorsten Senner, Managing Director of CONSENS Bautechnik GmbH
Even though the current situation in the construction industry is characterized by material shortages, long delivery times, and sharply rising material and labor costs, Thorsten Senner, Managing Director of CONSENS Bautechnik GmbH, looks optimistically to the future.
“In fact, several developments in the construction industry are currently of particular relevance for Consens. On the one hand, there is a high long-term demand for new residential construction, which the federal government estimates at 400,000 housing units. Additionally, there is a high demand in the area of energy-efficient renovation of existing buildings, both in public construction and in private residential and commercial construction,” explains Thorsten Senner, thus naming the company’s various areas of activity.
Energy-efficient facades are trending
CONSENS Bautechnik GmbH is a specialist in the planning, construction, delivery, and installation of ventilated rainscreen facades, based in Kiel and Dorf Mecklenburg. Their sphere of influence extends throughout the entire northern German region, with half of their turnover coming from new construction and half from renovation. Ventilated rainscreen facades offer numerous advantages, both in terms of building physics and design; structural separation of insulation and weather protection, durability and recyclability of building materials, as well as particular versatility due to the wide variety of materials available for facade cladding are the most important ones.
The demand for energy-saving facades that contribute to reducing a building’s energy requirements has increased significantly in recent months. Thorsten Senner sees opportunities for the future in the area of facade energy efficiency: “New building regulations, e.g., the Building Energy Act (GEG), which requires that at least new buildings pay high attention to energy efficiency and the energetic use of solar radiation, open up new opportunities for Consens. The use of solar energy is particularly relevant in the facade area because the facade regularly makes up a very large proportion of the building envelope. Here, Consens can make a significant contribution to the future legally mandatory use of renewable energies for supplying buildings with heat and/or electricity through facade-integrated photovoltaic elements.”
Active participation in business associations
New regulations, new products, new services. How does Consens deal with this? Thorsten Senner sees an important advantage in active participation in shaping them: “The active involvement in shaping standards and regulations for facade construction, which is carried out at the level of the various employers’ and trade associations of which Consens is a member, is actively supported by Consens. This is an important building block for always staying up to date with the current state of technology, actively shaping it, and thus gaining a significant knowledge advantage that contributes to maintaining competitiveness.”
Experienced and highly qualified employees at Consens plan and structure the technical solutions and construction processes for facade construction projects. Among other things, the prefabrication of components in the factory has gained significantly in importance, to reduce personnel deployment on the construction site and to complete the construction project more quickly.
Keyword “Sustainability”
There is one more important point to clarify. More and more companies are putting sustainability at the center of their strategy. What is Consens’ view on this? Thorsten Senner: “Consens is naturally committed to sustainability, which is particularly reflected in the business field in which we operate, namely in the planning and construction of ventilated rainscreen facades. VHF constructions are among the most sustainable construction methods currently possible in the entire construction industry. This is due, on the one hand, to the materials used, which are usually 100% recyclable, and on the other hand, to the technical feature of being able to dismantle the entire facade construction by type when it needs to be renewed after the usual service life of 30 to 50 years. Almost no waste is generated during dismantling that would have to be disposed of in landfills or thermally recycled. Instead, almost all facade materials can be recycled or even reused without recycling. Another building block in terms of constructing sustainable facade structures is the optimization of material use as an economically important – keyword cost reduction – and resource-conserving aspect of our work.”
CONSENS Bautechnik GmbH has positioned itself well, and its managing director Thorsten Senner looks expectantly to the future. For him, ventilated rainscreen facades remain the ideal construction method for building envelopes of various types. Thorsten Senner: “The VHF has many advantages and will continue to be a very popular type of construction in the future. From the perspective of energy efficiency and sustainability, it is a clear winner.”
