An Interview with CONSULECTRA Managing Director Torsten Brinker
The introduction of computer-aided EDP systems into the energy supply in Germany represented one of the most complex societal upheavals in business processes as early as the 1970s. For over 50 years now, the energy industry has been undergoing a transformation process with unprecedented dynamics within a regulatory environment.
A significant gap often existed and still exists between political objectives at the national and European levels and their practical implementation in energy companies, consisting of abstract legal constructs that must be transformed into concrete, actionable strategies for energy companies.
In 1974, CONSULECTRA Unternehmensberatung GmbH was spun off as a subsidiary by the board of directors of Hamburgische Electricitäts-Werke AG (HEW), headquartered in Hamburg. This was done with the strategic mandate to act as a specialized consulting and planning company, playing a systemically relevant intermediary role between political actors and the energy industry, which was crucial for the strategic-operational transformation of the energy sector.
Equipped with this mission, CONSULECTRA has quickly become an indispensable player in the energy industry over the past decades, with a constantly evolving range of business sectors adapted to customer needs. As a leading consulting and planning company, CONSULECTRA has been supporting energy supply companies as a reliable partner for 50 years.
In 2024, the RWTÜV Group celebrated the company's 50th anniversary.
CONSULECTRA celebrated its anniversary with around eighty invited guests. Current and former colleagues experienced impressive insights into the company's history at its founding location in Hamburg, to which the company is so closely tied. The International Maritime Museum in the Speicherstadt served as a venerable setting for the festive anniversary celebration. With keynote speeches and concrete insights into current and past projects from the current managing director, Torsten Brinker, as well as CONSULECTRA's first employee from 1974, Karl-Heinz Mäver. Further speakers such as Prof. Dr. Dr. Fritz Westermann, Dr. Herbert Slomski, Andreas Maiwald, Benjamin Jockschat, and Julian Beyer, under the motto „Staying the Course,” skillfully spanned 50 years of CONSULECTRA's successful history, through its eventful journey to the present day. Greetings from RWTÜV management, Thomas Biedermann and Fabian Fechner, further rounded off the program and clearly demonstrated the important role CONSULECTRA plays within the group and in the overall portfolio of the RWTÜV Group. As a firm pillar in the energy industry, CONSULECTRA received numerous best wishes for continued successful development.
With over half a century of experience, CONSULECTRA remains a particularly reliable partner for its clients when it comes to a variety of current challenges for the energy industry, ranging from grid expansion, the transition to renewable energies, the digitalization of smart energy grids, the rollout of smart metering systems, and many other – also regulatory-driven – topics.
In a conversation, CONSULECTRA Managing Director Torsten Brinker explains what it takes to maintain competent excellence in consulting for over five decades, especially now in light of disruptive developments.
From „Engineering Services“ to „Project Management of Cross-Functional Tasks“
Mr. Brinker, the energy industry is undergoing a transformation. CONSULECTRA has held a leading position in this challenging market for 50 years. How does a company like CONSULECTRA approach this change? Do the services you offer provide the right answers for the energy industry?
Torsten Brinker: Since 1974, CONSULECTRA has been offering custom, highly specialized engineering services to energy utility companies. Naturally, only a company that regularly questions itself and adapts its direction can survive in the market for such a long time – largely as a market leader. This is therefore part of our corporate culture, part of our DNA.
In recent years, however, the changes in the energy industry have taken on a special quality and speed. Against this background, we at CONSULECTRA have reviewed not only our service offerings but also our own previously applicable goals.
As a result of this investigation, we have formulated a new strategy for the future and also sharpened our brand identity.
What does this mean, what does a new strategy and sharpening of identity mean? What requirements do you see CONSULECTRA facing?
Torsten Brinker: When considering our clients' current goals in the energy industry, it's apparent that individual changes in the energy system, and specifically in distribution networks, have far-reaching consequences for the overall system. This highlights not only the demand for digitalization and the establishment of highly automated medium and low-voltage networks, but also implies that if the existing EEG expansion targets (Renewable Energy Sources Act) are taken as a basis for our society, and the sum of the power to be transmitted is realistically considered and extrapolated, then distribution networks and all voltage levels must be conceived in dimensions that have never before been technically constructed or operated by energy supply companies.
We must consider these changes holistically: A variety of challenges such as grid stabilization, the required grid expansion, regulatory requirements, data management, technical feasibility, and liquidity requirements for utility companies are converging. They should be intelligently and digitally interconnected. As an overarching core task for us, CONSULECTRA's role is to guide the stakeholders pulling in different directions at the table, to use a metaphor, so that it smooths out in the end and doesn't tear.
Therefore, the central requirement for CONSULECTRA's new strategy was: What role does CONSULECTRA, with its consulting mandate, play in this process, and how can all these interconnected and legitimate concerns be organized and addressed in such a way that an acceptable and feasible solution emerges for each respective client?
Our answer, to summarize it in a simple way, is: CONSULECTRA is expanding its service portfolio. Our implementation consulting is being extended with energy industry strategy consulting.
Can you elaborate on that?
Torsten Brinker: The analytical approach to tasks has led to changed requirements for collaboration methods. With our expertise, we can align our strategic direction with the questions and issues of our time for an energy industry of the future. In accordance with the changed requirements from our customers, we adapt our areas of competence.
Starting in spring 2025, our company, which is distinguished by many years of implementation experience from a variety of specific, very „engineering-heavy“ energy industry projects, will offer holistic „energy industry strategy consulting“ in addition to its well-known services.
Does this change the company's orientation? How is this or the portfolio expansion being received?
Torsten Brinker: Our orientation remains unchanged; it is simply being supplemented with a missing component that is becoming increasingly important today. We continue to see ourselves as a qualified supporter of our customers' value creation stages with our specific services. Our strategic goals are in line with those of energy and utility companies. The existing and future thematic areas are aligned with the linear goal of our society's energy transition.
However, our conversations with customers and prospects show that the current complexity of the topics is overwhelming our customers in some cases. We must address this need. Through the new combination of our service portfolio, consisting on the one hand of highly specialized engineering services in the respective subject areas, and on the other hand complemented by our new, practical energy industry strategy consulting, we offer an effective and almost unique combination. Our customers recognize that we can answer their complex questions with this combination and thus remain a reliable partner for them in the future.
What impact is the energy industry transformation having on CONSULECTRA's employees?
Torsten Brinker: The major transformation in the energy industry, which also necessitates a transformation in CONSULECTRA, naturally affects the careers and competency profiles of CONSULECTRA employees. Entirely new job profiles that we will need in the future may emerge.
To support our customers in this increasingly complex and challenging environment, we need a flexible mindset for holistic solution approaches. We are developing further topic areas for our service portfolio and defining new, required competence areas for our employees.
We consider not only the individual components of our services but also their interconnections and relationships within the overall context. Conveying this to our employees is part of our internal mentoring program, which has established itself as an integral part of our internal transformation process. The goal is to transform today's practice- and content-oriented planning and implementation consulting into holistic, energy-industry-focused solution approaches for our customers. From economic network planning to digital grid operation. The integration of new intelligent network technologies into grid management, taking IT security aspects into account, will increasingly be implemented as an overarching task in the future.
For CONSULECTRA and our employees, the strategic goals of CONSULECTRA serve as guidelines for the right answers, challenges, and objectives of the energy industry, and therefore provide direction for our current and future consulting and project management services.
You also brought up the topic of identity. What is that about?
Torsten Brinker: A key cornerstone for implementing CONSULECTRA's strategic goals is the internal and external marketing of our service portfolio as a response to complex questions.
We can ascertain that due to the company's 50th anniversary, our name alone inherently supports marketing in the best possible way. The CONSULECTRA brand is well-known, and the name is inextricably linked with a feeling of specific, high-quality engineering services in the energy market.
However, we also notice that while our company has high unaided brand awareness, we nevertheless recognize in customer discussions that our current service portfolio is not always, or rather less, known to our customers. We want to change and improve this. We also need to communicate our transformation!
As a prerequisite for this, we focused on our identity in 2025. We wanted to find out what the common thread has been since the founding of our company, what describes our soul. The core question was, „Why have we been doing what we do since our founding? What does our brand stand for, and what characteristics are associated with our brand?"
The demand to describe our brand essence in a few words was very high. However, the result subsequently surprised us with its clarity:
„Supporting the continuous transformation of the energy system with specific knowledge“
It hit the mark exactly. This short sentence summarizes the motivation at the time of the company's founding, but also what our idea of optimal performance has been all these years. And even today, this is our DNA. It carries our current service portfolio and can thus also be the core of our actions in the future.
For the future internal and external marketing of our services, our thus solidified identity, our brand core, will specifically support us from now on in the further development of our company, in the targeted search for new employees, and in our communication with customers and market competitors.