Agility as the key to success: change management at Borgel Elementbau

Borgel Elementbau from Hörstel specializes in the construction of lightweight metal building shells. In Europe, it is one of the leading suppliers in its main markets, which include data centers, power plants and the paper industry. Thanks to its extensive expertise in lightweight metal construction, Borgel Elementbau GmbH offers innovative and high-quality solutions for the roofing and cladding of industrial buildings that are tailored to the individual requirements of its customers.

The challenge

The team at Borgel Elementbau GmbH is constantly growing. There are currently 9 project managers working for the Westphalian company, who handle a total of more than 30 projects a year.

The management pursued the strategic goal of allowing the project managers to work more entrepreneurially in the projects and giving them the opportunity to take on more responsibility. In future, they were to be given more freedom to make decisions and thus relieve the burden on the managing directors. In addition, roles should be clarified and, if necessary, roles should be changed with the involvement of the design, structural engineering, occupational safety, procurement and team assistance teams in order to bring more efficiency to projects and processes. Transparency and commitment should be strengthened and errors in the process and production chain should be identified at an early stage. Borgel Elementbau GmbH wants to take a big step towards the future with more synergies between the construction projects.

The procedure

noventum culture and organization experts Laura Wenningmann and Uwe Rotermund held a kick-start workshop with the managing directors, project managers, team leaders and other multipliers to kick off the organizational development at Borgel Elementbau. In this workshop, the participants developed the measures required to achieve the above-mentioned goals in a participatory, entertaining and motivating way. Structures were created in order to then implement these systematically and consistently.

During the workshop, the measures developed were transferred to a "backlog", which was systematically and independently processed in the following months using agile routines. The noventum consultants accompanied this process. The tried-and-tested noventum Hercules method was used (see: Transformation heroes | noventum consulting).

In particular, the measures were used to create the prerequisites for the creation of a joint project manager handbook.

The results

The agile measures were transferred to the daily work routine after the respective task was completed in the review and bundled in the project manager handbook. This now serves as the basis for the independent and entrepreneurial work of all project participants. For example, the following was initiated:

• Presentation of a typical project process
• Templates for standardized project completion presentations
• Restructuring of existing meetings

At the end of the project, Uwe Rotermund conducted an evaluative interview with the managing directors Niels Borgel, Sven Borgel and Stefan Wagener. The managers were very satisfied and emphasized that Borgel Elementbau had focused on important topics through agile working. The workshop had achieved a great deal, particularly with regard to project management. The company’s management team now identifies much more with the goals and tasks and works with greater personal responsibility.

During the workshop, the three managing directors found it very beneficial that noventum accompanied the Borgel team as a tandem with Laura Wenningmann as a young business psychologist and Uwe Rotermund with over 30 years of entrepreneurial experience.

Managing Director Niels Borgel: "By introducing agile working, we have achieved a flow. Delegation now works much better. I am delighted. We have reached the level of agile working, from which we also benefit in our projects."

This project is another good example of how effective methods, great commitment, down-to-earth customer proximity and a manageable budget can have a big impact even for small organizations.

Further information on noventum leadership development consulting.