Departure and a new beginning: 1,600 GL employees move from Vorsetzen to HafenCity

Tuesday, Mar 09, 2010

During the past three weeks, the Hamburg staff of Germanischer Lloyd (GL) - numbering more than 1,600 - have moved to the new Head Office at Brooktorkai 18 in Hamburg's HafenCity district. With this relocation, the company is bringing 14 separate sites in Hamburg together all under the same roof.

At its new Head Office, the globally active technical assurance and consulting company and ship classification society will concentrate and focus its business segments Maritime Services, Oil & Gas and Renewables. From the Head Office in Hamburg, GL directs a worldwide network of currently 6,800 engineers and experts in over 80 countries.

The new GL Head Office spans two construction sites offering an office space of 45,000 m² - equivalent to seven soccer fields. The new building was designed by the architectural offices gmp and Jan Störmer.

Following a planning and construction phase lasting several years, a new chapter is being written in the annals of GL. In particular, the relocation symbolizes the bringing together of the three business segments. The new Head Office offers a bright and airy office landscape with a fine view of the Elbe river and the Speicherstadt warehouse district. The modern, sophisticated working environment permits a further optimization of the workflow and offers varied opportunities for enhanced interdisciplinary teamwork. As a result, the growing requirements of the worldwide GL clientele can be addressed in a more individual and flexible manner. This is all the more important in view of the fact that GL has greatly expanded its service portfolio through a large number of acquisitions over the past few years.

"We are delighted to have moved into our new international Head Office in the HafenCity right on schedule," says Dr Joachim Segatz, Member of the GL Executive Board. "In recent years, GL has evolved from a leading classification society into a globally recognized technical assurance and consultancy body for the maritime and energy industries. The modern architecture of the new location, its size and the communicative, open office landscapes meet the demands of this development in an ideal way."

In the course of 2009 alone, the GL Group was augmented by the maritime advisory and software companies Friendship Consulting GmbH and Friendship Systems GmbH as well as the British inspection and consulting firms Noble Denton (oil & gas) and Garrad Hassan (renewables). In February 2010, GL Noble Denton was presented as the new oil and gas brand of Germanischer Lloyd.

The last relocation of GL's headquarters lies over thirty years in the past: back in 1977, GL's Head Office was moved to the Überseebrücke quay area in Hamburg. The time is now ripe for HafenCity as the new base. A cosmopolitan attitude, flexibility and dynamism can be sensed everywhere - the ideal site for the nerve centre of a global group like Germanischer Lloyd.

New address:
Germanischer Lloyd AG
Brooktorkai 18
20457 Hamburg
Germany

The telephone and fax numbers as well as e-mail addresses will remain the same.

Source: GL