Heidelberg Materials Makes a Statement at Hackdays Rhein-Neckar
Imagine hundreds of people sitting in small groups in a large conference room, typing on laptops and drawing in notebooks, trying to come up with a working software prototype in less than 48 hours.
Jan Therhaag, Team Manager Data Science and lead contact for Heidelberg Materials' participation in the Hackdays Rhein-Neckar 2021, knows this environment. Working on the challenge, flexing your design and coding skills, and competing for prizes is just part of the reason why an event like this attracts participants. The other reason? Meeting new people, building friendships, and having a weekend to escape from real life and just code.
But this year presented an entirely different challenge: doing the whole event virtually.
What exactly is a hackathon?
A hackathon, or hack days or codefest, is a collaborative design sprint-like event where people with various backgrounds in software development work together in teams to design software solutions in a very short amount of time.
Hackathons can be set up by big software companies or put on by coding interest groups related to universities or local clubs. They can have a focus on the programming language, operating system, a cause, or demographic group.
Heidelberg Materials at Hackdays Rhein-Neckar
Heidelberg Materials participated in Hackdays Rhein-Neckar for the first time this year, after the event was cancelled last year due to Covid-19. Hackdays is put on by The Hackathon Company based in Mannheim. What’s in it for Heidelberg Materials to participate in an event like this? A lot.
First, Heidelberg Materials has a significantly large IT Department, called HDigital, that supports customers, employees, operations, and product and service lines at almost every level and area of the business. Participating in an event like this lets the larger community know that Heidelberg Materials is emerging as a tech leader in the construction materials industry.
Second, it puts Heidelberg Materials on the radar of young, talented students and professionals who are looking for their first job or their next career move.
Third, with so many challenging design and coding problems to solve, why not crowdsource a solution to generate new ideas? Heidelberg Materials employees have been just as interested to see what teams could come up with in a short period of time.
The Challenge: Dynamic Booking Engine for Ready Mixed Concrete
The idea to offer this use case has been in the works for a few years so Jan was excited to present it to the teams who applied to work on Heidelberg Materials' challenge. With everything being virtual, he was unsure how the teams might bond and work together, but it went smoothly with everybody using Slack and Zoom.
Eight companies in the region including BASF, John Deere and the German Football Association participated, and the 130 participants could choose which challenge they wanted to work on.
What exactly is a hackathon?
A hackathon, or hack days or codefest, is a collaborative design sprint-like event where people with various backgrounds in software development work together in teams to design software solutions in a very short amount of time.
Hackathons can be set up by big software companies or put on by coding interest groups related to universities or local clubs. They can have a focus on the programming language, operating system, a cause, or demographic group.
Spot RMC Wins Best Solution
On Sunday, February 28th , 2021 each of the eight teams presented their projects to the jury, comprised of a representative from each company participating. CIO Dennis Lentz represented Heidelberg Materials.
Success! Spot RMC won in the category of “Best Solution” making the whole team and company extremely proud. Dennis said, “The solution presented fits in well with our considerations at Heidelberg Materials. With our 'OnSite' app, we already have a digital solution for construction sites and concrete orders, which we will now also develop further based on the positive inspiration from the Hackdays."
We say congrats and a huge thank you to Spot RMC team members: Nicolai Erbs, Julian Kling, Kristjan Liiva, and Jan Sulaiman.
And will Heidelberg Materials participate again in Hackdays Rhein-Neckar? Or even think of hosting on its own hackathon in the future? Jan is pretty hopeful and knows that being visible in the coding community could mean a lot for Heidelberg Materials' long term digital vision.
