Frank Mettendorff
Can you balance family, part-time work and leadership? Frank Mettendorff is living proof that you can do it all. As a part-time manager, he leads our Competence Center (CC) Digital Services, driving digitalisation and automation in construction both internally and externally. Together with his interdisciplinary team, he secures the industry's future readiness through out-of-the-box solutions.
Family Time & Daily Kick-Offs
6:00 a.m. My day doesn't start with work, but with family. When my daughter wakes up, the first two hours are deliberately hers, and only then do I head to the office. My part-time model lets me be a manager while still having enough time for my private life. My working day therefore starts between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m., since I've already worked through the most important topics by phone on the train and can dive straight in once I'm at the office.
Once I arrive, the day usually starts with kick-offs: brief check-ins with my co-manager, Leadership Loops with other departments, or conversations with new employees. Especially in the mornings, I make a point of taking time to simply listen – how newcomers on our team are settling in, where support is needed, or what's currently on the agenda. After that, it's straight into project work.
Zitat 1
Collaboration, Digitalisation and Networking
From 9:00 a.m. onwards, my calendar is full again today. Lots of meetings, both internal and external. Internally, we spend a lot of time on digitalisation topics across the whole company; externally, it's often about specific projects or client requirements. I find the collaboration with other departments in the company especially exciting. I like joining workshops, supporting other teams, or getting a glimpse of what's currently being worked on. It's exactly this bigger picture that appeals to me most: Digitalisation doesn't stop at any area of construction. In my role, you get insight into an incredible number of disciplines and recognise connections you'd otherwise rarely see.
12:30 p.m. – time for a break. At lunch, I almost always eat with the team. That's often where the best conversations, spontaneous ideas, or connections between projects and departments happen. Over lunch about three years ago, for instance, our DPU® was born, which is now successfully established on the market as our Digital Project Environment.
Development, Transformation & a Little Focus Time
If I don't block out focus time, the day often runs seamlessly from one meeting to the next. That's why, from 1:30 p.m. onwards, I deliberately block out time for concentrated work. This is my time to set up strategic initiatives or dig into a particularly tricky technical question. This is probably the work I enjoy most.
Before I close my laptop at 4:00 p.m., there's a brief exchange between building design and our department on a current project. That's because – around ten years ago – I originally started out in building construction with a focus on digitalisation, before officially moving to Digital Services three years ago, and now lead a team of around ten people with a wide range of backgrounds. From a classic software developer to mechanical engineers and even a molecular biologist who now works in development – it's exactly this diversity of personalities that excites me about my team, day after day.
What still motivates me after all these years? There are countless unsolved puzzles in construction. Digitalisation is moving fast, and the whole industry is increasingly waking up to it – which is exactly why there are still plenty of exciting pieces for me to fit together.
