About IKZ Fachplaner

IKZ Fachplaner

IKZ-FACHPLANER is the German specialist magazine for planners, consultants, and decision-makers in building technology, published by the Strobel Media Group in Arnsberg as part of the renowned IKZ family. While the flagship IKZ-HAUSTECHNIK serves the executing SHK craft, the FACHPLANER addresses the planning side: the engineers, specialist planners, and consultants who design the heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and sanitation systems of Germany's buildings. With its focus on planning methodology, technical depth, and the regulatory frameworks, the magazine is the planning offices' professional companion in the building-energy transition and the engineers' trusted source for the knowledge their projects demand.

Overview

IKZ-FACHPLANER appears as the magazine for the building technology's planning professionals: the TGA planners (technical building equipment), the energy consultants, and the engineering offices that design the systems behind the walls. The editorial program emphasizes the planning perspective: the system design with its variants and optimizations, the dimensioning with its calculations and simulations, the hydraulic balancing that determines the heating systems' efficiency, the energy concepts that integrate the envelope and the technology, and the integration of the building technologies into the smart-building systems. The content depth exceeds the craft journal's: the planners need the calculation methods, the standard references, and the detailed technical analyses that the engineering work requires.

The readership's professional profile shapes the advertising: the manufacturers of the system technology address the specifiers who decide which products enter the buildings, making the magazine the meeting point of the planning expertise and the product innovation. The magazine's role in the specification chain gives it its commercial value: the planners' product choices determine the manufacturers' project business for years, and the FACHPLANER reaches the specifiers at the moment of decision.

The TGA Planning Profession

The TGA planners (Technische Gebäudeausrüstung) that IKZ-FACHPLANER serves are the engineers behind the buildings' invisible systems: the heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, sanitation, and electrical installations that make the buildings habitable, efficient, and healthy. The profession's responsibility has grown with the buildings' complexity: the nearly-zero-energy buildings, the smart-building integrations, and the Building Energy Act's requirements demand the engineering expertise that goes far beyond the craft installation.

The planners work at the intersection of the architecture, the physics, and the economics: they translate the architects' designs into the technical systems, calculate the energy balances, dimension the equipment, and ensure the regulatory compliance. Their product specifications determine the manufacturers' project business: the heat-pump brand, the ventilation unit, the building-automation system specified in the tender documents wins the project. This specification power makes the planners the building technology's key decision-makers, and the FACHPLANER their professional medium.

The profession's digitalization, from the CAD planning to the BIM modeling to the energy simulations, transforms the planners' work: the magazine's coverage of the planning software, the BIM methodologies, and the digital workflows addresses this transformation. The skilled-worker shortage affects the planning offices as it affects the craft: the engineers are scarce, the projects numerous, and the efficiency of the planning processes determines the offices' capacity.

History

IKZ-FACHPLANER grew from the IKZ family's expansion: as the building technology grew more complex and the planning profession more specialized, the Strobel Verlag created the dedicated planning title. The magazine's history tracks the TGA planning's professionalization: from the heating installer's rule-of-thumb to the engineer's simulation, from the single-system planning to the integrated energy concepts, from the paper plans to the BIM models. Each step in the profession's development created the editorial need that the FACHPLANER fills: the deeper technical content, the methodological guidance, and the regulatory analysis that the planners require.

The building-energy transition has made the planners' role more critical and the magazine's content more demanding: the heat-pump dimensioning, the hydraulic balancing of the existing buildings, the ventilation concepts for the airtight envelopes, and the Building Energy Act's compliance require the planning expertise that the magazine delivers. The FACHPLANER's development mirrors the planning profession's growing responsibility: the planners decide whether the energy transition succeeds in the buildings.

Coverage and Content

The heating-planning coverage addresses the system design in its full complexity: the heat-pump dimensioning for new and existing buildings, accounting for the building envelope, the heating surfaces, and the climate data; the bivalent systems that combine the heat pump with the peak-load boiler; the heating networks from the local to the district scale; and the integration of the solar thermal, the biomass, and the waste-heat recovery. The ventilation coverage covers the controlled residential ventilation with heat recovery, the air-distribution design for the comfort and the hygiene, and the hygienic requirements from the VDI guidelines to the legionella prevention. The sanitation planning addresses the drinking-water hygiene with its system separations and flushing concepts, the legionella prevention in the large installations, and the drainage design with its rainwater management.

The energy-concept features show the integrated planning: the buildings as energy systems, from the envelope's insulation to the technology's efficiency to the operation's optimization. The planners develop the concepts that balance the investment and the operating costs, the comfort and the efficiency, the regulations and the ambitions. The regulatory coverage tracks the Building Energy Act with its evolving requirements, the DIN standards that define the technical state of the art, and the funding programs from the BAFA and the KfW that shape the planning decisions. The digital-planning content addresses the BIM (Building Information Modeling) methodologies, the planning software from the CAD to the simulation tools, and the digital workflows that transform the planners' collaboration with the architects and the executing trades.

Organization and Ownership

IKZ-FACHPLANER is published by the STROBEL VERLAG GmbH & Co. KG in Arnsberg, part of the Strobel Media Group led by publisher Michael Voss, with Markus Sironi as editor-in-chief. The magazine shares the IKZ family's infrastructure: the ikz.de portal, the editorial team, and the advertising organization.

The business model targets the planning segment's advertisers: the system manufacturers, from the heat-pump producers to the ventilation-unit makers to the building-automation vendors; the software vendors with their planning and BIM tools; and the service providers who support the planning offices. The magazine's position in the specification chain makes it the B2B medium for the project business: the planners who read the FACHPLANER decide the products for the buildings of the coming decades, and the manufacturers who advertise in the FACHPLANER influence those decisions at the specification stage, where the project business is won or lost.

Digital Presence

The ikz.de portal carries the FACHPLANER's digital presence: the planning news, the e-paper editions, and the specialist content for the engineering community. The digital tools complement the print depth: the planners access the calculation aids, the standard updates, and the product information online. The newsletters deliver the planning-relevant news into the engineering offices.

For the building technology's planners, the IKZ-FACHPLANER is the professional medium that takes their expertise seriously: the magazine for the engineers who design the heating, the ventilation, and the sanitation of Germany's buildings, and who determine whether the energy transition works in practice. In the planning offices where the energy concepts are born, where the heat-pump systems are dimensioned and the ventilation concepts developed, the FACHPLANER is the trusted companion: the technical depth, the regulatory currency, and the planning methodology in one magazine, serving the profession that engineers the buildings' invisible but indispensable systems.