Rethinking building culture

He completed his studies in 2000 and immediately gained a professional foothold in a planning office. "I was quickly given the opportunity to work on very interesting projects and was thrown in at the deep end. That can be very refreshing for a professional career," he says humorously today. This gave him the opportunity to be part of great projects at a very young age. From the Uniqa Tower to the Design Tower on Vienna's Schwedenplatz, where he was responsible for the energy concept.

After intensive years working mainly in Austria, he was drawn back to southern Burgenland. For this reason, he passed the civil engineering examination in 2007, for which FH graduates have been authorised since 2006. An important step for him to gain a foothold in Burgenland. At this time, Woschitz Engineering was planning to include the Energy Design area of expertise - an opportunity for Peter Weinzettl.

His projects are multi-layered and interdisciplinary, he explains. "It's important for us to think outside the box. We propose very innovative concepts and realise them." In 2010, he founded the Energy Design department at Woschitz Engineering and has been Managing Partner since 2012.

He and his colleagues recognised early on that digitalisation would become a very important topic in the industry. "Digitalisation opens up unimagined opportunities for employees - no matter where they are based - to do their job superbly. Things are going really well for us. We even took on people during the crisis."

He also paints a promising future scenario for the graduates of his former degree programme:

He himself teaches as a lecturer in his former degree programme and provides expertise in the field of building technology planning projects.

According to Weinzettl, the industry is currently facing a radical change. BIM (Building Information Modelling) planning is becoming extremely important. "This can only succeed if there is a serious rethink of building culture - especially in German-speaking countries. The entire building culture must change, away from the lowest bidder principle and towards appropriate budgeting for high-quality projects. There also needs to be a rethink on the investor side, because digitalisation brings long-term added value." Here, too, he sees a lot of potential in the younger generation, namely in a different approach to certain topics.

He can certainly recommend the industry: