Hermann Schürch

Hermann Schürch (born March 30, 1881 in Biel, Switzerland ; † March 14, 1957 Strasbourg ) was a Swiss civil engineer and entrepreneur who shaped the expansion phase of reinforced concrete construction, which was formerly characterized by massive structures, by developing ever lighter and more transparent structures.

Life

From 1899 to 1903, H. Schürch studied at the Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum ( ETH ) Zurich and then went on to become a Dipl.-Ing. into the company Ed. Züblin in Strasbourg, with whom he implemented internationally acclaimed construction projects as technical director in the years up to the First World War . In 1912 he married Eduard Züblin's daughter Margarethe (1884–1956), with whom he had two children, and became a partner in Ed. Züblin. The construction company Züblin was involved in over 60 major projects in the years before the First World War and had branches in Basel , Milan , Duisburg , Stuttgart , Riga , Paris , Luxembourg , Brussels and Vienna .

1916 doctorate H. Schürch at the Technical University ( TU ) Dresden with a dissertation on "experiments during the construction of Langwieser Talüberganges and their results" for Dr.-Ing . In the same year, after the death of his father-in-law Eduard Züblin, he took over both technical and commercial management from Ed. Züblin. As a result of the outcome of the war, the branches of Ed. Züblin were converted into independent companies in 1918. H. Schürch took over the French branch in Strasbourg as general director, but also remained the Ed. Züblin AG Stuttgart was retained as the de facto helmsman for life. From 1921, German and French engineers started working together again. During his time the company survived the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s, and since the 1930s numerous motorway bridges as well as ports and works on the Siegfried Line during the Second World War . After 1945, H. Schürch built the Europahaus (Maison de l'Europe), the predecessor of today's European Palace (Palais de l'Europe), seat of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. In 1953, when Ed was awarded the contract to build the Wadi Tharthar dam on the Tigris in Iraq . Züblin AG into international business. 

Innovations

With arched formwork and cement-bonded reinforced concrete rib ceilings, the "arched rib system", H. Schürch initiated a breakthrough in large bridge construction at the beginning of the 20th century. One of his most pioneering projects is the “ Langwieser Viadukt ”, which was the widest-span railway bridge in the world when it was built in 1914 in the Swiss canton of Graubünden and is still missing in few textbooks on reinforced concrete bridges. 

In managing this project, H. Schürch used a graphical and quantitative method that he called the “construction program”. With it, the work and material flows in the project over the duration of the individual work packages could be recorded quantitatively at any point in time. Since H. Schürch published the method, he can be considered the inventor of top-down project management and the Gantt chart .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ H. Schürch: Silo structures in reinforced concrete . In: Messages about cement, concrete and reinforced concrete . tape 2 , no. 22, 23, 24 . Deutsche Bauzeitung, Berlin 1905, p. 85-86, 89-90, 93-96 .
2. ↑ Hermann Schürch: Attempts to build the Langwieser valley crossing and their results . Springer, Berlin 1916, p. 47 .
3. ↑ [1]
4. ^ H. Schürch: The construction of the valley crossing at Langwies on the Chur-Arosa electric railway . In: Reinforced Concrete: Monthly magazine for theory and practice of the entire concrete construction . tape 8 , no. 10 . Springer, Berlin 1915, p. 229-238 ( com.au [PDF]).