Since 2014, igr is an active part of the professional group "Bauen und Planen" (Building and Planning) of the non-profit association Steinbeis Mediationsforum e. V. (Steinbeis Mediation Forum) in Leipzig founded in 2012. The association offers a platform for the exchange of information and experience for mediators, mediation associations and companies.

Hereby, new impulses on professional exchange and mediation are focused on. The professional group "Bauen und Planen" is dealing with processes of building and planning as well as a depiction of structural projects and debates the possibilities and limits of extrajudicial ways of dispute resolution processes concerning building and infrastructural projects.

In the year of 2014/2015, a member of igr’s executive board participated in the first professional training seminar to become a professional mediator for "large group planning processes in public space" and completed it successfully. Currently, another employee of igr participates in this training, which is unique worldwide.

All participants are involved in planning processes and due to long years of practical and professional experience are familiar with the complexity of building projects. They are sensible to the measurable factor of time and costs, that has to be spent on conflicts which can possibly bog down the whole project or even put it at risk. Since these conflicts are always connected with a significant damage, not only monetary, but also to the image of the planning office as well as the engineering office operating on the open market, there is a great interest in investigating how these conflicts can be handled competently.

By no later than experiences with large-scale projects such as “Stuttgart 21”or the "Elbphilharmonie" in Hamburg, everyone knows about the consequences and manifestations this kind of escalation can go along with.

Mediation forms a professional method to solve and handle these conflicts. The concept as well as the success is based on the fact that due to the support of mediators, the parties involved start to talk to each other and communicate again. If they are able to accomplish this aim, the parties are usually able to come up with most useful and sustainable solutions for their conflict on their own.

A contrasting way would be to take legal actions, with the intention of claiming everything law and justice can dictate, but not the things the parties are really interested in.

The training, which is time-consuming and technically comprehensive, takes place in the Steinbeis Beratungszentrum Wirtschaftsmediation (Steinbeis advisory center business mediation). After six modules and three days of presence each, the certification as mediator according to the standards of the Deutsches Forum für Mediation e. V. (German mediation forum) can be achieved. If a participant passes the exam, the title is conferred to him/her for three years. If the title is to be kept afterwards, the participant has to go through a simplified procedure. igr has realized that the basic qualification of a successfully achieved training as a mediator is a crucial characteristic in comparison to competitors.

To successfully run a company such as igr in the long term, aside from the planning projects and their success, the “human dimension” is of major importance for the economic and effective processing of projects. For this purpose, mediation offers a systematic way to deal with conflicts in within compa-nies. With regard to the ever-changing social and economic framework conditions, it has become more and more important to bestow consideration on this. Elements and competences of mediation in a company are, therefore, necessary for its long-term success.



Through the training as a certificated mediator, igr helps fashioning further professionalization in an ever-changing professional system and the professional field of engineers. This way, the maintenance of the ongoing project flow, which is important for igr, is secured. Additionally, new functions and performance ranges are opened up, which can be offered in the future as well.

Uwe Franzreb