Carpenter on the move – Professional portrait of Robby Rademacher

Robby Rademacher travelled through various different staging posts on his professional pathway to timber construction. Nowadays, he values communication as part of a team and brings his copious professional experience to his role as project manager.

For Robby Rademacher, the fascination of wood lies in its versatility and the opportunities created by a natural material. Perhaps he was also influenced as a child, when he worked with wood alongside his grandfather, a joiner, in the double garage converted into a workshop. And maybe carpentry held greater interest for him later, when he was already a joiner by trade, because carpenters tend mostly to work in teams. His switch from joinery to the carpenter’s workshop took place gradually. The traditional journeying process brought Rademacher to Switzerland and, for the first time, to timber construction. Through his journeying companions he found his first timber construction jobs and got to grips with the work of carpenters. Several years and two qualifications later, another journeying companion put him in touch with Blumer Lehmann.

Studies and changes of direction

Following his joinery apprenticeship, journeying and professional practice, Robby Rademacher studied construction engineering at TH Köln, specialising in water management, and found work after his studies in an engineering firm in Germany. After a year and a half spent primarily working on protracted dyke sanitation projects, he ‘pulled the ripcord’, as he himself describes it. ‘I registered at Augsburg University to study Timber Construction Engineering – Integrated Planning and Construction, to learn more about multilevel timber construction.’ In the course of his studies, a former journeying companion returned, excited, from a visit to Erlenhof, and Robby told him about his future plans – that he wanted to move to Switzerland. ‘I had already heard from others about Blumer Lehmann, and it had just recently opened a location in Grafschaft – which felt like an option for me in case I got homesick when I was in Switzerland …’ So in December 2021, Robby Rademacher started work at Blumer Lehmann – first in production, at his own request to learn all about the processes there, then later as a project manager. He is currently supporting the HORTUS project in the planning team and is finding out that,

«In pilot projects, the usual project tasks are joined by others arising from new developments. But I love the end-to-end sustainability of HORTUS. I sometimes need to keep this in mind on very busy days.»

Direct career path or a variety of staging posts

Robby Rademacher also thinks that he fits into the Blumer Lehmann team well because of his prior career path. From talking to other new recruits, he discovered that, ‘Of course there are lots of people who went straight from a carpentry apprenticeship into the job. But there are also other people I work with who first gained lots of experience in another field, or those who threw themselves into the work and were able to achieve a lot that way.’ For his part, he is a big fan of his work environment:

«At Erlenhof, even the walk from the car park to the office is exciting. There’s so much wood sitting around and the wonderful smell! I find that really inspiring.»

Building on experience

The structured approach to work he acquired through his studies and his time in the engineering firm is very useful to him in his present work. In his work with CAD software, he also draws on his experience with similar CAD software and has already got to grips with three-dimensional modelling. He sees a great value in early collaboration and coordination internally with production and procurement as well as external service providers. For the HORTUS project, for example, the site manager who was going to head up assembly was involved in planning from the very start. As new project managers, there’s a lot we can learn from his ten years of experience.’

«There’s an intensive exchange that makes it easy to approach colleagues, even the really experienced ones. For the HORTUS project, for example, the site manager who was going to head up assembly was involved in planning from the very start. As new project managers, there’s a lot we can learn from his ten years of experience.»