The biggest questions facing any forward-thinking und successful company are: How can we get there from here? How can we increase market share, revenue, and profit? What is the best way to reduce costs, employee turnover, and bureaucracy? How can we create independence in our daily workflows, and keep our level of excellence? What is the next “big thing” in our industry, and how do we get there first?
Tackling these questions is exactly where R&D plays an important role while aiming to:
- provide support to existing services and businesses by keeping them competitive and supporting efficiency,
- drive new businesses and opportunities,
- broaden and deepen technological capability for long-term benefits.
With these objectives in mind, R&D therefore also makes a significant contribution to the sustainability of businesses.
In order to properly be able to address future challenges with its current resources, Lombardi has a special “R&D” division. The main objective of this R&D division is to streamline all Group and Organizational activities with regard to innovation, thereby enabling us to offer the latest technological innovations to our clients before our competitors do.
We distinguish between R&D and innovation; while R&D turns money into knowledge, innovation is the process of creating business out of this knowledge.
The true test of the R&D function lies in the measurement of time-to-market. Thus, a good idea has to become an advantage for the company as fast as possible.
In particular, through Lombardi’s R&D division, we are committed to sustainably support and invest in innovation by:
- profiting from synergies within the Lombardi Group, both at national and international levels,
- proper coordination,
- following up of ongoing research projects,
- appropriate dissemination of past, present, and planned research activities.
In Switzerland Lombardi has around 40 ongoing projects, of which a major part are related to hydraulic works, followed by various mainly administrative mandates. The latter also include the activities from the Giovanni Lombardi foundation, which, since its inception 10 years ago, has been devoted to supporting young researchers. Underground structure research represents around 7% of research mandates, which corresponds to the combined activities of the ventilation and safety fields together.
For an efficient, well-coordinated and above all independent research, and with respect to the strategy of Lombardi it is important to benefit from possible synergies internationally. To do so, Lombardi is pooling their R&D activities group-wide, thus on an international level, and is benefitting from the interdisciplinarity and all the available competences within the group.
Distribution of mandates in Switzerland according to their field / division
