Cool word 
Yes, it describes a lot of what a “Tiefbau” company does. They also do big road construction / earthworks / things, depending on the size of the company and the manpower they have.
I’ve not heard of one having a contract to do the snow plowing (that’s probably a bigger issue in Norway)
Yes, it is the envelope term, see also Construction engineering - Wikipedia
I guess that the wish to differentiate comes from the distinction that German businesses make, namely calling themselves “Hochbau” or “Tiefbau”. But my solution for now is to use industrial=construction_company for both, and put the rest in the name, or if the name doesn’t contain a hint like that, use description
company= is not even the same problem as many others. The difference is office= already exists for what company= is doing. office=company is for office= “which does not fit into another more specific category” yet.
office=consulting is often refined by consulting, but unfortunately the same solution doesn’t exist for office=engineer, because engineer is the name of an engineer (by analogy with architect). Guess we should’ve called it office=engineering. But no matter, we can always fall back to special(i)ty. 
This thread about tagging has been moved to general:tagging.
On that, I don’t understand what’s with office=consulting . The most numerous consulting= is =engineering . Why are they not office=engineer ? I glanced through some Anglosphere examples, and they are described as engineering firms. “Consulting” is sorta form of business, relationship, or role, similar to “contracting” for doing the actual work. Other titles such as system/solution/service provider, integrator, supplier, vendor, reseller, distributor etc come to mind. 's orthogonal to the job content. The examples of KPMG and Accenture evoke accounting and IT first. Maybe people are differentiating the former and Big Four’s accounting, audit, “consulting”, etc offices/subsidiaries separately.
The signature “consulting” is by MicKinsey, and BCG. That’s “management consulting”. And what is the exact difference with “advising”??? =consulting fails to show what the office= is doing.
It’s a good question. I’ve often waffled between office=engineer and office=consulting consulting=engineering when mapping an engineering consultant’s office. I suppose one advantage of the latter is that many consulting firms consult on more than just engineering, so it’s one way to avoid setting a primary feature key to a semicolon-delimited list.
It’s a good question. I’ve often waffled between
office=engineerandoffice=consultingconsulting=engineeringwhen mapping an engineering consultant’s office. I suppose one advantage of the latter is that many consulting firms consult on more than just engineering, so it’s one way to avoid setting a primary feature key to a semicolon-delimited list.
Maybe consulting means someone else takes the responsibility and you only suggest what they could do?
For the people planning in this field (Tiefbau), civil engineering is fine as a generic term, but the OP asked for construction companies. What is the (general) term for a business executing the works planned by a civil engineer? I guess there are terms like tunnel construction company, bridge construction company, road construction company, … but what’s the generic term?
Oh, and there are also engineering & construction companies.
The generic term is civil construction company. I should know because I have been working for some of those for half of my life.
thank you. Regarding the engineering and construction company, is this a type of its own or office=civil_engineer plus company=civil_construction on the same object? Or what is the key?
That’s one way to look at it. An important consideration to be aware of is that some jurisdictions heavily regulate who can call themselves an engineer, especially a civil engineer, while other jurisdictions have comparatively laxer rules. In the stricter jurisdictions, people use approximate terms for engineering-adjacent work. Maybe consulting is one of them? OSM may not be rigidly bound by these laws, but I think it’s reminiscent of the considerations around who we’d be willing to classify as a doctor.
Most of the ones I’ve mapped would call themselves construction contractors or general contractors, which is broader and would include building construction. However, “civil engineering company” would be understandable for what was asked earlier.
It’s confusing. I saw some description of “civil construction” including buildings. It might include municipal services, eg schools. That won’t be covered in this tiefbau.
It is confusing because the terms used for construction business are overlapping in many cases and different companies use different terms for the same job they offer. If you look at some of the major global players in construction business you will find wordings like
China Communications Construction Company
Hyundai Engineering & Construction
China State Construction Engineering
Hochtief AG (which is a combination of Hochbau and Tiefbau in the name)
and all of them cover the whole range of building activities. Usual generic terms for such companies are
which covers all aspects of construction, building construction as well as engineering construction, which are the 2 main fields of construction business
building construction engaged in constructing buildings, where the design of the object is of major importance, usually created by an architect (in german this is called Hochbau)
engineering construction engaged in construction of non-building structures where the function of the object is predominant and as such usually designed by an engineer (in german called Ingenieurbau)
Engineering construction again is subdivided into lots of disciplines like underground construction (Tiefbau), tunnel construction (Tunnelbau), steel construction (Stahlbau), bridge construction (Brückenbau) and the like.
In Germany the correct term “Ingenieurbau” is not very common, most people generally call this “Tiefbau” whereas the latter covers only a part of the former. There are even different terms for the foremen working in this 2 different disciplines: Foreman “Hochbau” = Polier and foreman “Tiefbau” = Schachtmeister (which means “master of the ducts”).
BUT:
Also building construction requires engineering work because an engineer has to make sure that the building designed by the architect will fullfill all the technical requirement to be strong and safe to use.
Also engineering construction is often supported by an architect if an extraordinary design is requested.
AND the scope of work is overlapping an many cases:
The part of a building below ground level (basement, parking decks etc.) normally is an underground construction but in many cases understood as part of the building construction.
Structures like roofs are normally building constructions but in some cases understood as engineering construction (like the roof of the olympic sports ground in Munich).
Steel constructions are normally part of engineering construction (bridges, towers, tanks etc.) but can also be part of building construction (steel frames for skyscrapers).
AND SO ON.
Summary (tl;dr);
As I said: It is confusing and impossible to clearly demarcate the different construction disciplines from each other which makes separate tagging very difficult. My own approach is to just tag such companies als “construction_company” + name + website where everyone interested may find all the details of the kind of work offered.
All of the global players do have their own engineering offices engaged in planning, technical calculation and design of construction objects. Some of them show that in their chosen name, others don’t (see my last post). Anyhow normally these engineering services are outsourced into subsidiaries operating as their own companies and offering their service to the public, so the tagging would be same as below…
Smaller constructions companies do not offer engineering services, they just do the physical work based on the plans of a separate engineering office. In such cases I would tag 2 different objects
I would not use civil_engineering as this is more generic and also includes lot of engineering disciplines not related to construction at all. Another option would be of course to go for the more generic tag office=civil_engineering and add a subtag for construction_engineering.
sure, the big global players usually can offer any kind of work and planning — and consulting, controlling, management, whatever, but it doesn’t mean any company is offering all of this, so we should sort it out and develop tags for the different situations.
Further reading suggests that the German “Generalübernehmer” is called general transferee in English, in this constellation the company is the sole contractor of the owner and subcontracts and controls/coordinates all necessary work to other companies (planning, construction), including organizing the financial part, as opposed to a general contractor who usually has some own workforce and does not do the planning/design.
As a disclaimer, I don’t work in this field either, but I have never seen “general transferee” in English. It looks like some German translation only. I read it is said as “prime contractor” too Parties to a construction or engineering contract in Germany - DLA Piper REALWORLD (top law firm)
But that’s often mixed with “general contractor” in English. Looking purely at doing planning & design, is that a design & build (DB) contract firm?
Regardless, I prefer to stick with simply office= =engineer or the 465 office=engineering | Tags | OpenStreetMap Taginfo (or the existing =construction_company) for all engineering and construction until there are better formulations.
I have not heard the term “general transferee” in construction business so far and “Generalübernehmer” is not a very common term as well. Anyhow this term does not reflect a subdiscipline of construction business but is merely a special form of a contract between the client and the contractor. Every construction company or engineering company can act as “Generalübernehmer” for a certain contract so we surely do not need a tag for that.
this is about companies whose business is providing these services as an all inclusive package (financing and planning and construction), usually with subcontractors, not about construction companies who could in theory also offer this. These are different companies, but I agree we probably have them already covered in the finance field (but could have subtags to map the specilization)
Yes, and such companies usually are
I don’t know a company which solely executes such contracts, all the ones I am aware of do this as part of their business. And as I said before, this is a special form of contract stipulated by the client and not a subdiscipline of construction business.
Any company taking over such a contract acts as EPC contractor (in german Generalübernehmer = 1. or Generalunternehmer = 2. whereas in english this difference is not made afaik).
The company I have been working for many years called itself “construction company” and “construction” was even part of the name. We did act as
but we also handled many EPC contracts and moreover acted form time to time as real estate developer (where the company executes a project completely on its own, not as a contractor for a client).
To my understanding we are only talking about 3 different kinds of business here:
whereas the kind of contract handled should not be subject to tagging.
there is also the financial part, I don’t know if it is possibile or customary that one company does all 3 together (financing, planning, controlling and execution), but there are companies specialized in contracts and finance in the building industry who do just this (“Geschäftsbesorger” in German). I guess even if you wanted to do everything, you would still structure it to use different companies, to better deal with responsibilities
