On the day of the foundation stone ceremony, the contract for construction work was awarded to Messrs. Goldbeck from Bielefeld, Germany.

Goldbeck GmbH is a contractor for the building of commercial and municipal structures and provider of services. They are specialists in construction based on prefabricated elements.

In Spring 2009, two contracts have been let for the production workshops, which represent the two biggest investments in this area.

The first investment is for a Powder Coating Installation worth 4.2 million euros. The photo shows the loading and unloading stations.

The second one includes two Flexible Manufacturing Systems worth 3.5 million euros. One system will be supplied fully equipped. For the other one, a new auatomated high-bay store will be combined with the machinery moved to the new factory from our present works.

On May 19 and 20, an access road leading to the VÖGELE building site in Rheingönheim has been completed. For the roadworks, contractor Faber used a SUPER 1900-2 combined with a AB 600-2 TP Extending Screed.

The access road has a length of some 200m and passes over the bridge also specially built for the VÖGELE project. Due to the varying widths of the road (between 8 and 24m) and several traffic circles upstream of the bridge, paving often was a matter of millimetres. The contractor's experienced team were supported in their work by NIVELTRONIC Plus®, the System for Automatic Grade and Slope Control, and achieved perfect results.

Join the paving team ...

Construction work kicked off. Contractor Goldbeck began to erect the steel skeleton for the new Factory Workshop 2 in calendar week 30. Prefabricated elements arrived at the building site and were fitted in place. In parallel, construction of the roof was underway. A total of 250 workers of Goldbeck were on the scene in Rheingönheim.

In the area of the office building, work has begun, too. Soil excavation was carried out.

It's almost unbelievable - work already began on the roof structure. Within just a few days, the steel joist girders were fitted in place.

Contractor Strabag started installing utility lines on the building site: for power, gas, water, lighting of the factory grounds, etc.

Early in August, nets were installed under the steel girders and the roof covered with prefabricated elements. A work carried out in windy heights ...

Six months after the Foundation Stone Ceremony, the first concrete walls rose up to the sky. Within just a stone's throw, excavators were on the scene digging the pit for the office building.

"Mannheimer Morgen", a daily paper of the region, published an interview with Roland Schug, Marketing Director at VÖGELE: "In the past months, we decided to change our plans as far as the method of construction is concerned. Yet, everything runs according to schedule". For the project worth 100 million Euros, much more steel will be used than originally planned. On the other hand, the use of concrete elements is reduced.

The change was due to several reasons, among them also aspects of cost.

On the building site at Ludwigshafen-Rheingönheim, different types of jobs were carried out simultaneously. Here we cite just a few examples:

- Crushed stone spread on the car park.

- Excavation of the pit for the office buiding made fast progress.

- Roof of Factory Workshop 2 almost completed.

- Building of foundation for Factory Workshop 3 began.

- In Factory Workshop 2, preparations were made for erection of the structural steelwork.

Professionals of the industry talk about the "largest factory building site" currently underway in southern Germany. Just click on Photo Gallery and view some pictures.

Construction work for Factory Workshops 1 and 3 began. A mobile crawler-mounted crane moved onto the building site for a couple of months. With the help of this mobile crane, the vertical supports were erected and prefabricated elements fitted in place. Such an element weighed between 10 and 20 tonnes, which was easy game for the 130-ton crane.

In addition, a stationary tower crane was on the scene used primarily for work on the office buidling.

Today foundation work for the office building began. In the course of the following week, many a cubic metre of concrete was poured into the construction pit.

Rheingönheim was the scene of hard work, indeed, for a couple of weeks. But now the foundation for the office building is finished. 1,100 cubic metres of concrete were needed and 145 tons of reinforcing steel mesh. Then the walls for the basement were erected.

Join the workers and see the building grow ...

In mid-September, electrical installation work began in and around the buildings on the construction site. Cable ducts were laid in large numbers.

And a sprinkler system for automatic fire extinguishing was installed in the area of the workshop for screed assembly.

For the office building, Sections 1 and 2 (Engineering Department, Production Planning, Works Council, First Aid Station), reinforced concrete walls were installed and staircases built.

A big crane is on the scene and construction of the VÖGELE Training Centre for Customers kicked off.

After the works on the foundation had been completed, concrete was poured for the ceiling.

A sprinkler system is a fully automatic fire-fighting system which releases a jet of extinguishing water onto the burning area shortly after an exposure to fire (mounted under the roof).

The extinguishing water tank for the new headquarters holds 1,690m³ ready in the event of a fire.

The advantage is that an incipient fire can be prevented from spreading or developing into a fire in full flame before the fire brigade arrives, thus greatly reducing the fire damage caused and the resultant effects (particularly the development of smoke gas and soot deposits).

In October, sealing of the roof has begun. This work will most probably be completed by the end of the year.

On 06 March 2009, four time capsules with insignia were placed into the foundation stone, among them a steel tablet showing the company’s history, a document witnessing the foundation stone ceremony, a paver model and the day’s issues of “Rheinpfalz” and “Mannheimer Morgen” newspapers. Today, the foundation stone was buried in front of the works’ office building.

Crushed stone was spread in the Factory Hall 2. The area covers 11,250 square metres and some 2,000 tonnes of the material were needed. The job was done by a SUPER 1900-2 equipped with a laser receiver.

On such an application, a rotary laser is in permanent contact with the laser receiver on the paver. Deviations from the specified grade are detected and signals for correction sent to NIVELTRONIC®. The non-contacting System for Automatic Grade and Slope Control developed by VÖGELE stands out through easy handling.