On 14 December, the board meeting of RWTÜV e.V. took place to mark the end of our anniversary year. This was of course held in hybrid form in accordance with the new statutes. The long-standing chairman Prof. Hansgeorg Balthaus was bidden farewell.

At the same time, Dr Peter Sauermann, the previous deputy, was unanimously elected Chairman of the Board of Directors, just as Dr Hans Christian Atzpodien was appointed by the members of the Board of Directors as a new member of the Presidium.

Our Managing Directors Thomas Biedermann and Fabian Fechner are back from the TÜV Nord AG Supervisory Board meeting in Hanover yesterday and congratulate TÜV NORD on the new brand strategy of the TÜV NORD GROUP.

The 4 core brands TÜVNORD, DMT, ALTER and TÜVIT will be united under one roof, visible on the blue seat cube, which now occupies a special place in our new meeting room in Essen.

Thomas Biedermann: "After the successful relaunch of the RWTÜV brand last year, we are delighted with the fresh and consistent brand presence of our largest holding."

... is one of the ideas behind the innovation award "Innovation inside" of the RWTÜV Campus for our employees.

Climate neutrality, climate protection, energy transition, the new NRW.Energy4Climate state company presents itself...

The event was opened by the Vice President of the NRW State Parliament, Ms Berivan Aymaz. She emphasised the mission of the state company, which is a subsidiary of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. In front of parliamentarians and representatives from business and associations, the chairman of the management board, Ulf Reichardt, reported on the challenges of the start-up in its first year and the current projects in NRW.

We had already reported that we support the eurobits women academy | ewa in Bochum. The initiative promotes women who are seeking school support, basic and advanced training, retraining and excellence training in the field of IT security, because they are massively underrepresented here.

Last but not least, this is also intended to combat the shortage of skilled workers in this area, which is so important for our economy.

This topic is really close to our hearts: for RWTÜV Managing Director Thomas Biedermann, promoting young talent, talent scouting and investing in managers is an essential task for those responsible for human resources in the Group and also for himself.

First, last Friday evening, he went to the farewell ceremony for the current graduates of the Schmalenbach Institute - as a member of the International Board of Advisors IBOA and alumnus, he was there again.

Last week, all department heads of the newly created cetecom advanced GmbH met for the first time at the Kameha Hotel in Bonn.

The RWTÜV subsidiaries CETECOM GmbH and CTC advanced GmbH will merge under this name on 1 January 2023. In addition to technical issues, the focus was on the joint orientation, optimised customer orientation and the planned communication strategies.

RWTÜV boss Thomas Biedermann is convinced of the success: "The team spirit fits, we have already covered a considerable distance on the way to the merger. cetecom advanced is ready for new tasks!"

Today, all companies in the RWTÜV Group are known for secure and future-oriented digitalisation solutions, whether Van Ameyde for digital insurance concepts, G + N for large-scale real estate projects, or IB N and MN Ingenieure for state-of-the-art building services engineering. In the field of IT security, the merger currently taking place between our telecommunication and information technology subsidiaries CETECOM and CTC advanced is worth noting, as is the recent acquisition of APRO GmbH.

Observe, measure, compare, calculate, evaluate. While it wasn’t called that back then, the essence of what the engineers and technicians at TÜV were doing was ... data processing! It goes without saying that they were co-developers and users of technologies for data processing – and later digitalisation – from the very beginning. And TÜV being TÜV, of course data security was automatically the top priority. This mindset still applies today.

Prevented for a long time by Corona restrictions, we were finally able to visit the CETECOM site in Milpitas, California.

One of our main concerns: communicating the RWTÜV strategy and positive effects of the merger of CETECOM and CTC advanced GmbH in the form of a town hall meeting. Of course, we also exchanged information about the latest technical developments in Silicon Valley, for example in e-mobility and wireless technologies.