Flo­ri­an Pronold, for­mer Par­lia­men­tary State Sec­re­tary, has been the new Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt e. V. (IBU), Berlin, since July 1, 2023. 

The board of the Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt e.V. (IBU) has appoint­ed Flo­ri­an Pronold as its new man­ag­ing direc­tor. The 50-year-old lawyer is regard­ed as a proven expert on sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the con­struc­tion indus­try. build­ing indus­try. As a long-stand­ing mem­ber of the Ger­man Bun­destag (2002 to 2021), Pronold was respon­si­ble in par­tic­u­lar from 2013 to 2021 as Par­lia­men­tary State Sec­re­tary in the Fed­er­al Min­istry for Build­ing and the Envi­ron­ment (2013 to 2018) and in the Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment (2018 to 2021) for the areas of urban devel­op­ment, fed­er­al con­struc­tion, sus­tain­able con­struc­tion, and cir­cu­lar econ­o­my and resource effi­cien­cy. At Germany’s largest real estate asso­ci­a­tion, the Zen­traler Immo­bilien­auss­chuss (ZIA) e.V. (Cen­tral Real Estate Com­mit­tee), he has also head­ed the ESG Advi­so­ry Board since Decem­ber last year, which deals with sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the real estate sector.

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“We are very pleased to have Flo­ri­an Pronold, a pro­found expert on the envi­ron­men­tal and sus­tain­abil­i­ty debate in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, join the IBU. He com­bines the fac­tu­al issues of envi­ron­men­tal and sus­tain­abil­i­ty tasks with polit­i­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty com­mu­ni­ca­tion in an excel­lent way,” says Dipl.-Ing. Hans Peters, Chair­man of the IBU. In view of the EU tax­on­o­my, the EU’s Green Deal and the Ger­man government’s resource effi­cien­cy pro­gram, the IBU believes that ver­i­fied envi­ron­men­tal data will become increas­ing­ly rel­e­vant to the mar­ket. Flo­ri­an Pronold is to fur­ther advance the IBU’s strate­gic realign­ment from a glob­al­ly rec­og­nized and lead­ing pro­gram provider of envi­ron­men­tal prod­uct dec­la­ra­tions (EPDs) to a broad­ly posi­tioned service provider around the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of build­ing products.

Flo­ri­an Pronold: “Sus­tain­able con­struc­tion is the key to achiev­ing cli­mate tar­gets. But sus­tain­abil­i­ty involves more than a car­bon foot­print. For decades, the Insti­tute for Con­struc­tion and Envi­ron­ment has been pro­vid­ing the most impor­tant build­ing block for life cycle assess­ments with its EPDs. They are a bul­wark against green­wash­ing. As man­ag­ing direc­tor of the IBU, I want to ensure that sus­tain­abil­i­ty remains trans­par­ent and ver­i­fi­able in the con­struc­tion and real estate indus­try. The recy­cla­bil­i­ty of build­ing prod­ucts will become a future field of action for the IBU.”

Hans Peters and Dr. Roman Rupp, who have been man­ag­ing the IBU’s busi­ness in a dual capac­i­ty for the past six months, will in future once again serve as chair­man of the board (Peters) as well as its deputy.