Robert Sprajcar, CEO of DIEAG Unternehmensgruppe   

1. Why are you engaged as a Berlin-Partner? 

Construction is not something you do behind closed doors. As a real estate project developer, we create the places where Berlin’s residents live and work. Building always means entering into dialogue with people – by adopting the perspective of future users and integrating their needs into the planning of a building, or by considering the wishes of local residents regarding the design of the surrounding environment.
Every day, we address the question of what makes a city like Berlin attractive for both people and businesses, always placing the individual at the center of our thinking. This can only succeed through collaboration. A major city like Berlin thrives on the interaction of many committed people. We want to contribute to this larger whole and, together with other Berlin Partners, strengthen Berlin as a business location and help shape our city into a sustainably livable and attractive place.  

2. What drives your company, and what are you currently working on? 

One of our biggest priorities is to vigorously advance the development of affordable housing, which we have already successfully implemented in the past. To achieve this, we need not only reliable legal frameworks, accelerated approval procedures, and attractive financing options, but also a new cultural openness toward systemically planned, serial production approaches. Based on these methods, we can – and want to – make a meaningful contribution to providing affordable housing in the capital together with our partners.
Beyond that, our project pipeline is well filled: from advising municipal decision-makers on the transformation and activation of large brownfield sites, to service development for district projects for public and private clients, all the way to traditional housing developments. In our current projects, we naturally benefit from our strong track record in conceptualizing and activating large-scale urban districts as well as in attracting sophisticated commercial tenants to the city.
A recurring question we face is how specialized real estate solutions can meet the unique structural requirements of science-oriented high-tech companies in life sciences, semiconductor and sensor technology, and Industry 4.0 — and how our solutions can help them find the ideal business location.

3. What do you value about Berlin as a business location? 

At the heart of our creative work is the question of how urban environments can be shaped in a sustainable and livable way through innovative approaches. Berlin offers an almost limitless field of activity in this regard. Berlin remains a city “in the making,” while at the same time, together with the surrounding Brandenburg region, forming Germany’s largest metropolitan area.
With countless transformation sites in the city and its outskirts, there continues to be enormous potential for large-scale district developments. Successfully developed transformation areas such as the Adlershof Technology Park and the EUREF Campus exemplify Berlin’s strong appeal to companies from around the world.
At the same time, Berlin’s economic and scientific landscape is uniquely broad and diverse. The resilience that results from this, combined with the city’s often-criticized unfinished character—its historically shaped scars and gaps—gives us the opportunity to implement construction innovations within forward-looking urban planning concepts.

4. What distinguishes your company in terms of innovation? 

We see innovation as a strategic success factor. This applies not only to new construction planning, where we have long relied on an in-house developed, AI-supported learning algorithm for Systemic Planning and Building (SPB), but also to project management.
What sets us apart is a strong competence in managing interfaces — both within the project organization and with external stakeholders, authorities, and political actors — driven by a unique service- and partnership-oriented approach.
At the core of this approach is the DIEAG Innovation LAB, which enables us to quickly and comprehensively draw on a wide range of in-house expertise as well as external specialists from our extensive network. This allows for rapid, needs-based, and client-specific scaling of project organizations.
Within individual projects, the LAB is structured into curated, project-specific network platforms that, across all project phases, combine trend monitoring, concept validation, and stakeholder dialogue. In doing so, they deliberately link project development with external impulses from civil society, the arts, culture, politics, and academia.
With this LAB approach, we go far beyond the traditional scope of existing property and project development, unlocking entirely new value-creation potential for our clients — benefits that, through positive side effects, also extend to the broader public. Ultimately, our investors benefit as well, since future-proof, long-term functional, and attractive commercial and residential districts promise stable long-term value development.