Building Technology Services M&A · 2026
A fragmented market
with active buyers.
Technical building services for commercial, industrial and public buildings in the DACH region: what is driving the work, who is buying, what has changed hands, and what moves the multiple.
Edition 01 · 2026 · © Nevon GmbHForeword
Companies in this market grow by acquisition.
New build is no longer where the work is. German non-residential construction was EUR 130.2 billion in 2025, and 62.8 percent of it was work on buildings that already stand.1 That share has been rising for years and the forecast for 2026 is another small decline in the total.
The installed base those contractors work on is technically behind. Roughly one non-residential building in three has LED lighting, one in five has mechanical ventilation, and around three quarters are still heated with gas or oil.2 The envelope is being modernised at 0.7 percent a year, so the work required is far larger than the work being done.
What is missing is the people. The largest single skills gap in Germany, across all occupations, is in building electrics: 16,270 unfilled positions that no qualified candidate is available for, against 21,510 vacancies.3 Heating and plumbing adds another 10,941. And the owners are leaving. Around 186,000 German businesses are due to be handed over between 2026 and 2030, with manufacturing and construction over-represented in that figure.4
Those four facts point the same way. A company that wants to grow here cannot recruit its way there, and a company whose owner wants to step back cannot assume a successor. That is what puts this sector in front of buyers, and it is why the transaction flow described in this report has continued through a flat market.
The addressable layer
7,749
German building installation businesses with 20 or more employees in 2024. In 2023 that group was 5.4 percent of the sector by count and 46 percent of its turnover. Page 04.
The acquirers
>120
transactions stated by the buyers in this report for 2024 and 2025 alone, across five types of buyer, with much of German consolidation never appearing in a published count. Pages 09 to 11.
The deadline
2030
the year building automation becomes mandatory in German non-residential buildings above 70 kW, down from 290 kW today, with minimum performance standards from the same year. Page 06.
What this report covers
DACH
Technical building services for non-residential buildings in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: electrical, HVAC and plumbing, building automation and controls, fire and security.
1DIW Berlin (2026): Bauvolumenrechnung, DIW Wochenbericht 5/2026, 28.01.2026. Non-residential building construction, 2025, with the maintenance and refurbishment share stated for 2024. Detail on page 03.
2ENOB:dataNWG, sample survey of the German non-residential building stock, IWU sub-report 17.07.2022. The source states these as approximate fractions, not exact percentages. Detail on page 05.
3IW Köln, KOFA (2026): Jahresrückblick 2025, March 2026. Detail on page 08.
4IfM Bonn (2025): Unternehmensnachfolgen in Deutschland 2026 bis 2030, Daten und Fakten Nr. 37. Detail on page 08.
nevonpartners.com01 · The market
Nearly two thirds of the work is on the installed base.
Non-residential construction, Germany 2025
130.2
EUR billion, down 0.7 percent in real terms, with a further 1.0 percent forecast for 2026 and growth of 2.2 percent in 2027.
DIW Bauvolumenrechnung1
Of that, work on existing buildings
62.8%
EUR 81.7 billion of maintenance, refurbishment and conversion, against new build for the remainder.
DIW Bauvolumenrechnung1
Non-residential completions, Germany 2024
21,200
Buildings completed, less than half the 1993 figure. Floor area fell from 36.4 to 24.3 million square metres.
dena Gebäudereport 20262
Technical services share of build cost
50%
Of construction cost in many non-residential new build projects, against a maximum of 15 percent in housing. This is why the report is non-residential.
BTGA and B+L3
What this does to the shape of the work
A new build project is a single large award, planned years ahead, won on price and delivered once. Work on an existing building is smaller, more frequent, harder to plan and much more dependent on the contractor knowing the site. As the balance moves from the first to the second, so does the economics of the contractor. The trade bodies report the same shift: German heating and plumbing turned over EUR 59.1 billion in 2025 with revenue and order books both declining, and the association states that the revenue increasingly comes from maintenance and repair rather than new installation.4
And what it means for a transaction
Across Europe the picture is the same. Construction as a whole is forecast to grow 2.4 percent in 2026, but non-residential is the weakest of the three segments, gaining 4.7 percent over three years against roughly 7.5 percent each for housing and civil engineering.5 A buyer underwriting this sector is therefore not underwriting a growing market. It is underwriting a shift inside a flat one, from project revenue to recurring work on an installed base, and it is paying for the businesses that have already made that shift.
Nevon note
Owners often read a flat construction market as a bad moment to sell. In this sector that reading is usually wrong, because the composition of the work is changing faster than its total. A business whose revenue has already moved towards maintenance, framework contracts and retrofit is worth more in a flat market than it was in a growing one, because far fewer businesses now have that profile.
1DIW Berlin (2026): Bauvolumenrechnung, DIW Wochenbericht 5/2026, 28.01.2026. Non-residential building construction. The 62.8 percent share and the EUR 81.7 billion refer to reference year 2024, the volume figure to 2025.
2dena (2026): dena-Gebäudereport 2026, January 2026. Completions and completed floor area, reference year 2024, against 1993.
3BTGA and B+L (2026): Frühjahrsgutachten 2026, February 2026. Share of technical building services in construction cost, stated for non-residential new build projects generally and not as a survey mean.
4ZVSHK (2026): SHK-Handwerk 2025, press release 04.05.2026. Turnover 2025, approximately 48,000 businesses and 390,000 employees.
5ifo Institut (2026): Europäische Bauwirtschaft, EUROCONSTRUCT summer forecast, ifo Schnelldienst 2/2026. Three-year cumulative growth 2026 to 2028, Europe.
nevonpartners.com01 · The market
The addressable German market is around 8,000
businesses.
Building installation in DACH · each country on its own source and its own unit
| Basis | Businesses | People | Turnover, EUR m | People per business | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | NACE 43.2, enterprises, 20231 | 134,807 | 942,815 | 135,244 | 7.0 |
| Austria | NACE 43.2, enterprises, 20231 | 12,094 | 107,142 | 19,654 | 8.9 |
| Switzerland | Building technology, workplaces, 20242 | 15,318 | 125,415 | not published | 8.2 |
The three rows are not one statistic. Germany and Austria are on the same European classification and unit; Switzerland is a trade association count of workplaces, because the statistics office there does not publish this part of the classification. The rows are deliberately not added together.
Germany, the part of that market that a buyer can actually approach3
The German federal statistics office surveys every construction business with 20 or more employees separately and in full, which is where the 7,749 below comes from. That threshold is also where a business in this sector acquires a second management tier and a maintenance book, which is why acquirers work to the same line. In 2023 these businesses were 5.4 percent of all German building installation enterprises, 39 percent of the people and 46 percent of the turnover. This is the population every acquirer in this report buys from.
| NACE 43.2, Germany, businesses with 20 or more employees | 2020 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | Change 2020 to 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Businesses | 6,428 | 7,035 | 7,272 | 7,749 | +20.6% |
| Employees | 331,940 | 362,264 | 369,739 | 386,739 | +16.5% |
| Turnover, EUR m | 46,838 | 54,793 | 62,326 | 65,586 | +40.0% |
1Eurostat, structural business statistics, series sbs_ovw_act, NACE Rev. 2, reference year 2023. Eurostat does not disseminate group 43.2 as an aggregate, so each figure is the sum of classes 43.21, 43.22 and 43.29 retrieved separately. People per business is a Nevon calculation. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/sbs_ovw_act (accessed 24.09.2026).
2EIT.swiss (2026): Elektrobranche. Building technology in Switzerland, 2024, of which the electrical trades are 45 percent. The unit is the workplace, not the enterprise, and no turnover is published. https://www.eit.swiss/de/verband/elektrobranche (accessed 24.09.2026).
3Statistisches Bundesamt, Investitionserhebung im Baugewerbe, GENESIS table 44211-0001, NACE 43.2, database status 21.09.2026. A full census of all construction businesses with 20 or more employees, classified by NACE and not by craft register, so industrially organised contractors are included. Turnover is annual construction output and other turnover. The shares stated above compare this table with the Eurostat figures for the same reference year 2023, when the count was 7,272; the two sources count persons slightly differently, employees against persons employed. https://www-genesis.destatis.de/datenbank/online/statistic/44211/table/44211-0001 (accessed 24.09.2026).
nevonpartners.com02 · The installed base
The modernisation backlog is large and measurable.
Share of the German non-residential stock that has it1
The stock is 1.98 million buildings and 3.5 billion square metres of gross floor area. Each of these five gaps is work that the trades in this report have to carry out, and most of it has not been done yet.
Building envelope
0.7%
of the non-residential stock modernised per year.
ENOB:dataNWG1
Heat generation
2.3%
per year, the fastest-moving part of the stock.
ENOB:dataNWG1
Why this is the strongest number in this report
It is a primary sample survey with stated standard errors, it covers non-residential buildings only, and it measures exactly the systems the trades in this report install and maintain. It is a description of what is physically in the buildings, not a forecast of demand.
Read against the 0.7 percent modernisation rate it also says how long the work will take. At that pace the stock is not renewed within any planning horizon a buyer would use, which is why the demand described on the next page is a matter of capacity rather than of cycle.
Note also what the chart does not say. It does not say that every one of these buildings will be upgraded, and it is not a sales forecast. It says that the technical gap between the stock as it stands and the stock as regulation now requires it to be is very large, and that the gap is in exactly the trades this report covers.
Nevon note
Owners in this sector often present the order book as the evidence that demand is strong. Buyers discount that, because an order book is twelve to twenty-four months long and every competitor has one. What an acquirer underwrites is the installed base behind the order book and the company's access to it, which is why service contracts and site knowledge carry more weight in a valuation than backlog does.
1ENOB:dataNWG, research data on the German non-residential building stock, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs under reference 03ET1315; IWU sub-report on structural data, modernisation of envelope, technical systems and solar, 17.07.2022. Stock 1.981 million buildings plus or minus 0.152 million, gross floor area 3,507 million square metres plus or minus 399 million. The equipment shares are stated in the source as approximate fractions and are shown here as such; bar lengths are proportional to those fractions. https://datanwg.de (accessed 24.09.2026).
nevonpartners.com03 · Regulation and budgets
Building automation becomes mandatory from 2030.
What is now fixed by date1
| 2028 | Lighting control becomes mandatory in non-residential buildings with lighting installations above 290 kW. |
| 2030 | Building automation and control becomes mandatory in non-residential buildings with technical systems above 70 kW, down from 290 kW today. This widens the obligation from a few thousand large sites to ordinary offices, schools and clinics. |
| 2030 | Minimum energy performance standards apply to the worst 16 percent of the non-residential stock, measured against 2020. |
| 2033 | The same standards extend to the worst 26 percent. |
For offices alone, around 300,000 buildings are in scope, with indicative thresholds of 210 kWh per square metre and year for the 2030 step and 170 for 2033.2 At a refurbishment rate of 0.7 percent a year, the required work will not be delivered by the deadlines with the capacity the sector has today.
And what is funded
German municipal investment backlog
231.2
EUR billion, a record and 7.2 percent higher than a year earlier. Schools account for EUR 68.9 billion, administrative buildings 22.2, sports facilities and pools 21.6 and nurseries 12.0.
KfW-Kommunalpanel 20263
Public non-residential stock to 2045
120
EUR billion of investment required in the target scenario against 13 billion on current trajectory, across roughly 350 million square metres.
dena, Prognos and Fraunhofer ISE4
Where this lands in the sector
The 70 kW automation threshold is the single most consequential line for this report. It turns building automation from a discretionary upgrade into a condition of lawful operation, in a market where most contractors buy controls capability in rather than hold it.
Work of this size is specified two to four years ahead, so the decisions fall inside the period this report covers. Public budgets are the other half: surveyed technical building services contractors report that 55.5 percent of their order intake in 2025 came from public construction.5
1Gebäudemodernisierungsgesetz, passed by the Bundestag on 10.07.2026 and promulgated in BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 226 on 28.07.2026, transposing Directive (EU) 2024/1275 on the energy performance of buildings (OJ L 2024/1275, 08.05.2024). Thresholds and dates as set out by the BBSR information portal on the Act. https://www.gmodg.bund.de (accessed 24.09.2026). Readers should verify the specific provisions against the promulgated text before relying on them.
2Ariadne (2026): Minimum energy performance standards for non-residential buildings, June 2026, prepared by Öko-Institut and IW Köln. Office building count and indicative thresholds are the report's own modelling and are described there as indicative.
3KfW Research (2026): KfW-Kommunalpanel 2026, June 2026. Perceived investment backlog reported by German municipalities. The four building categories are reported separately in the panel and are not summed there; they are not summed here either.
4dena (2024): Fit für 2045, part 2, July 2024, prepared by Prognos and Fraunhofer ISE. Public non-residential buildings.
5BTGA and B+L (2026): Frühjahrsgutachten 2026, February 2026. Share of order value from public construction among the technical building services contractors surveyed, 2025.
nevonpartners.com04 · Structure
11 percent of the businesses make 64 percent of turnover.
Size classes by persons employed · Germany, the six building technology trades, 20241
Under 5
48,952 businesses
5 to 9
21,937 businesses
10 to 19
15,396 businesses
20 to 49
8,002 businesses
50 and more
2,652 businesses
96,939 businesses in total and EUR 155.7 billion of turnover, measured in persons employed. The count has been flat for five years, at 97,041 in 2020, and turnover peaked in 2023 at EUR 159.9 billion before falling 2.6 percent in 2024.2 10,654 of them employ 20 people or more, 11.0 percent of the count and 64.5 percent of the turnover. At 97,000 businesses the sector looks impossible to consolidate; at 10,654 it is a target list a buyer can work through, and that is how the acquirers on pages 09 and 10 treat it.
1Statistisches Bundesamt, Handwerkszählung, GENESIS tables 53111-0004 and 53111-0006, reference year 2024, database status 21.09.2026. The six trades of the German crafts code that make up building technology: electrical engineering, plumbing and heating, refrigeration, information technology, metal roofing and plumbing, and electrical machine building. Size classes are measured in persons employed. This count covers businesses entered in the crafts register, a different population from the NACE-based figures on page 04; the two are shown separately and no ratio is taken across them. Shares are Nevon calculations. Bar lengths are proportional on one shared scale across both series. https://www-genesis.destatis.de/datenbank/online/statistic/53111 (accessed 24.09.2026).
2Same source, 2020 to 2024. Persons employed are not shown because the Federal Statistical Office changed the basis of that measure from 2024, so the series is not comparable across the break. Turnover and business counts are unaffected. The break is stated by the ZVEH in its sector data of March 2026, which is calculated on the same census. https://www.zveh.de/die-e-handwerke/wirtschaftliche-kennzahlen/branchenkennzahlen.html (accessed 24.09.2026).
nevonpartners.com05 · People and succession
The sector has one of the largest skills gaps in Germany.
Skills gaps in the sector's own occupations, Germany 20251
| Vacancies | Gap | Gap rate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Building electrics | 21,510 | 16,270 | 75.6% |
| Electrical plant engineering | 16,628 | 13,011 | 78.2% |
| Heating and plumbing | not stated | 10,941 | not stated |
| Supervisory, plumbing and HVAC | 2,031 | 1,525 | 75.1% |
Building electrics is the largest single skills gap of any occupation in Germany, out of a national total of 369,516. The gap rate says that for three out of every four advertised positions, no qualified candidate exists anywhere in the market. Unfilled apprenticeships in the crafts reached almost 22,000 at the end of the 2025 intake, against just over 5,000 in 2011.2 A workforce that is trained, certified and stable is therefore the scarce asset in this sector and the first thing a serious acquirer examines, and owners routinely undervalue it because they have never had to price it.
German businesses due to be handed over, 2026 to 20303
| Businesses | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| All sectors, due for transfer | 186,000 | 100% |
| Manufacturing and construction | 57,500 | 30.9% |
| of which expected to go to an external buyer4 | ~16,700 | 29% |
Manufacturing and construction is 30.9 percent of the transfers against 19.4 percent of the business stock, the most over-represented sector in the study apart from agriculture. Separately, KfW finds that 569,000 owners plan to close by 2029 against 545,000 planning a succession, with 57 percent of owners aged 55 or over.5
1IW Köln, KOFA (2026): Jahresrückblick 2025, March 2026. The gap is the number of advertised positions for which no suitably qualified unemployed person is available nationally; the gap rate is that number as a share of vacancies. Heating and plumbing is from a separate publication and is not stated on the same basis.
2IW Köln, KOFA (2026): KOFA Kompakt 7/2026, crafts, June 2026. Heating and plumbing gap and unfilled apprenticeships at 30.09.2025.
3IfM Bonn (2025): Unternehmensnachfolgen in Deutschland 2026 bis 2030, Daten und Fakten Nr. 37. Of 3.586 million German businesses the study identifies 3.224 million family businesses, of which 733,000 meet its profitability test and 186,000 are expected to be transferred in the five-year period. Sector figures are the study's own estimate.
4The 29 percent is the study's meta-analysis of succession outcomes over forty years of research: a good half within the family, around 17 percent to employees and the remaining 29 percent to external parties. Applying it to the 57,500 figure is a Nevon calculation and is shown as an order of magnitude, not a forecast.
5KfW Research (2026): Fokus Volkswirtschaft Nr. 526, 09.01.2026, KfW Mittelstandspanel wave 23, 13,079 businesses. These figures cover the German Mittelstand as a whole up to EUR 500m of revenue and are not specific to building technology; no sector-specific succession rate is published for this sector.
nevonpartners.com06 · The buyers
Five types of buyer are active at the same time.
International multi-technical groups
Listed European parents acquiring regional units across several trades into a decentralised network.
International installation specialists
Listed or sponsor-owned groups acquiring in their own trades and regions, mostly Nordic and Swiss.
German platforms and consolidators
Built by a financial sponsor or held by a corporate owner, acquiring small regional businesses steadily.
German strategics and family groups
Established contractors and service groups widening their trade coverage or regional footprint.
Technology and product groups
Manufacturers of controls, HVAC and security equipment acquiring into the service layer below them.
| Acquirer | Home | Scope of its acquisitions | Stated activity1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| International multi-technical groups | |||
| VINCI Energies | France | Regional units across trades | 33 acquisitions in 2025 after 34 in 2024. R+S Group (EUR 191m) and Zimmer & Hälbig (EUR 96m), Germany, July 2025. |
| SPIE | France | Technical services and industrial automation | 9 acquisitions in 2025 after 8 in 2024, EUR 804m of annualised revenue over two years. ROFA (EUR 430m) and SGS (EUR 180m), March 2026. |
| EQUANS (Bouygues) | France | Multi-technical services | Around EUR 200m of target sales acquired in 2025, including Zimmermann, around 130 staff, in Germany. |
| Eiffage Énergie Systèmes | France | Technical building services, Germany | 51 percent of Salvia Gebäudetechnik, around 1,900 staff, January 2024. HTW Engineers, February 2026. |
| International installation specialists | |||
| Assemblin Caverion Group | Sweden | Installation and service, Nordics and DACH | 17 acquisitions in 2025 after 5 in 2024, and seven more in the first quarter of 2026. |
| Bravida | Sweden | Electrical, HVAC and plumbing service | 4 acquisitions in 2025 after 10 in 2024. |
| Instalco | Sweden | Installation, decentralised model | 1 acquisition in 2025, plus a 24 percent interest in the German group Fabri, which itself completed eight add-ons.2 |
| Burkhalter Group | Switzerland | Swiss electrical installation | 2 acquisitions in 2025. |
These are active examples, not the whole field
The eight companies above are among the most active, not a complete list, and other European groups buy in DACH without publishing a count. One of them reported more than thirty acquisitions in each of the last two years, and another added seven more in a single quarter of 2026. The largest reported programme added EUR 804m of annualised revenue across seventeen transactions, an average under EUR 50m. This is a bolt-on market run at high frequency.
1Acquisition counts and acquired revenue as stated by each company in its full-year 2024 and 2025 reporting, totalling 123 for the two years. Acquirers that state no figure are not counted, so the total is a floor and not a market estimate. The reporting basis differs: VINCI Energies reports the contribution of acquisitions to revenue growth, SPIE the annualised revenue of bolt-ons, and Assemblin Caverion, Bravida and Instalco the annual revenue of acquired companies. Sources are the annual and interim reports and press releases of the eight companies named.
2Instalco acquired a 24 percent minority interest in Fabri AG in March 2025, settled in shares. Fabri completed eight add-ons in 2025, combined revenue EUR 42.3m and 242 employees. Neither is counted in the Instalco figure.
nevonpartners.com06 · The buyers
German buyers are as active as the international ones.
| Acquirer | Scale as stated | Announced transactions1 | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| German platforms, family groups and sponsor-backed consolidators | |||
| Builtech Group (VDK Groep)2 | >EUR 500m output, 51 units | 50 add-ons between 2018 and 2025, built by AUCTUS. Sold to VDK Groep, forming a group of around EUR 2bn. | 11.2025 |
| Elevion Group (ČEZ) | EUR 1.3bn, 130 sites | More than 80 consolidated companies. Most recently Techem Solutions, energy contracting, signed. | 06.2026 |
| Apleona (Bain Capital) | EUR 4bn, >40,000 staff | Andersen & Heegaard, Denmark, around 600 staff Sygna, data centre commissioning, 90 staff · 07.2026 · Smart Energy Group, around 260 technicians · 09.2025 · Diehl, more than 550 staff · 05.2024 | 07.2026 |
| Dussmann Group | EUR 3.4bn | Lynskey Engineering, Ireland, around EUR 60m and 120 staff regelmatic, around EUR 20m and 140 staff · 02.2024 · Clausen Systemkühlung, 40 staff · 02.2024 | 07.2025 |
| WISAG | not published | Stampfli AG, Switzerland, more than 2,500 staff. | 05.2025 |
| GRÄPER | ~1,200 staff, 10 sites | Innecken Elektrotechnik, around 150 staff, and a majority of Enervision, smart-grid software. | 01.2025 |
| Bosch Building Technologies | ~8,000 staff, 8 countries | Sold its security product business to Triton, keeping integration and service. DMS, controls, July 2024. | 2025 |
| Technology and product groups acquiring downstream | |||
| Trane Technologies | product and service group | 49 percent of Kieback&Peter, building controls, around 1,700 staff, with an option on the rest after three years. | 11.2025 |
| Delta Electronics | product and service group | Delta Controls Germany, with more than 50 integration partners across DACH and Iberia. | 03.2026 |
| Funkwerk | security technology manufacturer | GES, an installer of fire alarm, intruder alarm, video and access systems in Munich. | 01.2026 |
Nevon note
These are the buyers that leave a public trace. A large part of German consolidation is carried out by regional contractors and family groups that announce an individual transaction at most and never report a programme. The buyer universe is materially larger than the one visible from outside, and the acquirer who makes contact is rarely the only one who would have.
1Each transaction is taken from a press release or financial report issued by one of the parties. Dates are the announcement date unless a completion was separately announced. Revenue and headcount are as stated by the announcing party and have not been estimated where a company does not publish them. Transactions announced before January 2024 are not shown. Sources: company announcements of Builtech and VDK Groep, Elevion and ČEZ, Apleona, Dussmann, WISAG, GRÄPER, Bosch, Trane Technologies, Delta Electronics and Funkwerk.
2Builtech was built by AUCTUS Capital Partners and has been owned by VDK Groep of the Netherlands since November 2025. Elevion and Apleona are shown under German platforms because the acquiring organisation, its management and most of the acquired businesses are German.
nevonpartners.com07 · Selected transactions
Most of what changes hands is mid-market.
Mid-market transactions, EUR 7m to EUR 191m of target revenue1
| Target | Acquirer | Date | Disclosed |
|---|---|---|---|
| R+S Group | VINCI Energies | 07.2025 | EUR 191m, 1,200 staff |
| SGS Industrial Services | SPIE | 03.2026 | EUR 180m, ~800 staff |
| Zimmer & Hälbig | VINCI Energies | 07.2025 | EUR 96m, 310 staff |
| SD Fiber (CH) | SPIE | 07.2025 | EUR ~70m |
| Lynskey Engineering (IE) | Dussmann | 07.2025 | EUR ~60m, ~120 staff |
| PIK AG | SPIE | 11.2025 | EUR ~42m |
| regelmatic | Dussmann | 02.2024 | EUR ~20m, ~140 staff |
| ECOexperts Automation (AT) | SPIE | 10.2025 | EUR 7m, 21 staff |
| Same size class, headcount disclosed but no revenue | |||
| Salvia Gebäudetechnik (51%) | Eiffage Én. Systèmes | 01.2024 | ~1,900 staff, 30+ sites |
| Andersen & Heegaard (DK) | Apleona | 07.2026 | ~600 staff |
| Diehl | Apleona | 05.2024 | >550 staff |
| Smart Energy Group | Apleona | 09.2025 | ~260 technicians |
| Innecken Elektrotechnik | GRÄPER | 01.2025 | ~150 staff |
| Zimmermann | EQUANS | 09.2025 | ~130 staff, 7 sites |
| Sygna (UK) | Apleona | 07.2026 | 90 staff |
| Clausen Systemkühlung | Dussmann | 02.2024 | 40 staff |
And above them, the platform transactions
Four transactions in the same period changed the ownership of whole platforms. They are shown separately because they are not comparable with the table on the left.
| Target | Acquirer | Date | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apleona | Bain Capital | 02.2025 | EUR 4bn |
| Assemblin and Caverion | Triton | 2024 | ~EUR 3.8bn |
| Builtech Group | VDK Groep | 11.2025 | >EUR 500m2 |
| ROFA Ind. Automation | SPIE | 03.2026 | EUR 430m |
Two of the four were financial-sponsor transactions. Private equity now owns two of the largest technical service platforms active in the German market, and both of them buy continuously, which is how a sponsor earns its return in a sector with no organic growth.
Nevon note
The two tables belong together. The platform owners have a fixed holding period and have to grow inside it, and the mid-market table is where they do that growing. For an owner of a business between EUR 10m and EUR 250m of revenue, the large transactions above are the reason the approaches arrive.
1Every transaction is taken from a press release or financial report issued by one of the parties. Dates are the announcement date unless a completion was separately announced, and the Assemblin and Caverion announcement did not state a month. Revenue and headcount are as stated by the announcing party and refer to differing reference years. None of the German, Austrian or Swiss transactions carried a disclosed price, so every figure shown is target revenue or headcount and not price. Sources are the announcements of VINCI Energies, SPIE, EQUANS, Eiffage Énergie Systèmes, Apleona, Bain Capital, Dussmann, GRÄPER, Triton and VDK Groep.
2Builtech's figure is construction output as stated by the company, not revenue, and is not comparable with the revenue figures above it.
nevonpartners.com08 · Where the value is migrating
The margin sits in the control layer.
Operating margin, financial year 20251
What the spread does and does not show
More than twenty percentage points separate the top of the chart from the bottom, and no European installation group has closed any of it by getting larger. The upper group services its own systems and does not carry works-contract risk, so the chart measures two business models against each other, not automation against installation.
Three listed installation groups publish a service share of revenue, all on an EBITA basis.2 Assemblin Caverion, at 59 percent service, earns 7.9 percent. Bravida at 49 percent and Instalco at 37 percent both earn 5.9 percent.
Each trade has its own downstream acquirers
The same pattern shows up in who buys whom. Manufacturers whose margin sits in the product are acquiring the installation and service businesses below them, inside their own trade rather than across the sector.
| Trade | Acquirer | Target | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC controls | Trane Technologies | Kieback&Peter, 49% | 11.2025 |
| Building automation | Delta Electronics | Delta Controls Germany | 03.2026 |
| Building automation | Bosch | DMS | 07.2024 |
| Security technology | Funkwerk | GES, Munich | 01.2026 |
| Electrical and grid | GRÄPER | Enervision, majority | 01.2025 |
For a business in one of these trades the buyer field is therefore not only the multi-technical consolidators. It also includes the manufacturer whose equipment it installs, and that buyer values a service organisation on its own arithmetic rather than on the installation multiple.3
1Segment operating margin for financial year 2025: Honeywell segment profit; Schneider adjusted EBITA; Siemens segment profit adjusted for approximately EUR 0.3bn of disposal gain, the reported figure being 19.6 percent; Johnson Controls segment EBITA; Assemblin Caverion adjusted EBITA; SPIE, Bravida and Instalco EBITA. The installation and service group is shown on one earnings measure; the technology segments are on the measure each parent reports, so the chart shows the level of margin in each business model rather than a like-for-like ranking. No EBITDA figures are shown and none of these figures should be read against the EV/EBITDA range on page 13.
2Service share of revenue as reported for financial year 2025. No other company in this report publishes the figure. Lünendonk (2026), Facility Service in Deutschland 2026, 23.07.2026, reports the same direction for the German service market: volume up 2.7 percent in 2025 to EUR 68.7 billion, the 76 providers analysed up 6.2 percent on average, and technical service providers up 9.6 percent.
3Transactions from the announcements of Trane Technologies, Delta Electronics, Bosch, Funkwerk and GRÄPER.
nevonpartners.com09 · Valuation
Size sets the band. Mix decides where you sit in it.
Indicative EV/EBITDA · DACH mid-market, EUR 10m to 250m of revenue1
6x to 8x
Most transactions we see
Lower end
Single trade, project-led, owner-dependent, no maintenance book
Upper end
Service-weighted, controls-capable, multi-trade, platform-ready
Where this band comes from
The range reflects Nevon Partners' own project work and mandate experience in non-residential technical building services in DACH. It is shown as a range rather than a single figure because the spread between two businesses of the same size and the same earnings is routinely several turns.
What decides the position · roughly in order of impact
Lifts the multiple
- ▲Service, maintenance and framework revenue as a share of the total, with renewal history
- ▲Own automation and controls capability, commissioned and monitored in house
- ▲Customers in critical or regulated environments, where specification and documentation requirements are higher and service contracts run longer
- ▲Multi-trade delivery under one management, procured once not three times
- ▲Documented technician retention, apprentice pipeline and certification depth
Pulls it down
- ▼Owner dependency, no second management tier, no transferable technical authority
- ▼Project-only revenue with no maintenance book behind it
- ▼Customer concentration, or relationships held personally rather than by the company
- ▼Single trade with controls and commissioning bought in
Nevon note
Size gets a business into the band. Everything in the two lists decides where in it, and almost all of it is built before a process rather than negotiated during one. The distance between a prepared business and an unprepared one of identical size and identical earnings is, in our experience, the widest single variable in this sector.
1The range reflects Nevon Partners' own mandate observations for non-residential technical building services in DACH, on normalised EBITDA and a cash-free, debt-free basis, for businesses of roughly EUR 10m to EUR 250m of revenue. It is not a published dataset, not a valuation opinion and not a forecast. Businesses materially below or above that range are valued on different logic and we put no figure on either here. Individual outcomes fall outside the range in both directions.
nevonpartners.com10 · Outlook
Outlook for 2026 and 2027.
Deal flow · no sign of a slowdown
The acquirers on pages 09 and 10 state more than 120 transactions across 2024 and 2025, and one of them added seven more in the first quarter of 2026.
We expect the number of active buyers to grow rather than shrink, because the two newest types in the field, German sponsor-backed platforms and manufacturers acquiring downstream, both have documented results behind them now.
Demand · fixed by date, not by cycle
The 70 kW automation threshold from 2030 and the minimum performance standards from 2030 and 2033 are now German law.1 Projects of that size are specified two to four years ahead, so the decisions fall inside the period this report covers.
We expect controls and commissioning capability to move from a differentiator to a requirement.
Constraint · people, not orders
The skills gap in building electrics is structural and there is no mechanism that closes it inside two years. Unfilled apprenticeships have risen fourfold since 2011.
We therefore expect acquisitions to continue to be made for capacity rather than for market share, and a trained and stable workforce to remain the most valuable thing a seller brings to a process.
What to watch in 2026 and 2027
Succession at the smaller end
A rising share of transactions should be succession sales of businesses between 20 and 100 employees, often with no second management tier. The price gap between prepared and unprepared businesses of that size should widen rather than narrow.
Manufacturers moving downstream
Four of the five transactions shown on page 12 were made by manufacturers acquiring the installation and service businesses below them. We expect that category to grow faster than the bolt-on flow around it.
Specification decisions for 2030
The work required by the 2030 threshold is being specified now. The first contracts should therefore become visible well before the deadline, and with them the first evidence of which contractors can carry the work themselves.
1Gebäudemodernisierungsgesetz, BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 226, 28.07.2026, transposing Directive (EU) 2024/1275. Thresholds as set out on page 06. Everything on this page other than the cited facts is a Nevon Partners assessment and is not a forecast of any individual company or transaction.
nevonpartners.com11 · Takeaways
What to take from this report.
The market
Fragmented, with a thin top.
In Germany 10,654 of the 96,939 building technology businesses employ 20 people or more, 11.0 percent of the count and 64.5 percent of the turnover. On the NACE measure 7,749 businesses are above the same threshold, and their number has grown by a fifth in five years while the sector as a whole stood still.
That population can be mapped in full, it is where almost every transaction in this report took place, and most owners in it will be approached at some point.
Owners
Mix decides the price, not size.
Four things are asked for first in every process here and are most often not ready: the split between project and recurring revenue with renewal history, contract documentation for the maintenance book, evidence of controls and commissioning capability held in house, and technician retention and certification data.
None can be created during a process, and all can be built in the twelve to twenty-four months before one. 186,000 German businesses reach the point of transfer between 2026 and 2030, so the supply of sellers rises over exactly the period in which the deadlines and the labour shortage favour them.
Acquirers
Coverage of the band decides the pipeline.
Acquired revenue per transaction in the largest reported programmes averages under EUR 50m, so a programme of scale is a programme of many small integrations. The constraint is integration capacity and the availability of local management, not deal flow.
The same labour shortage that makes targets attractive also makes them fragile. A business whose technical authority sits with the departing owner can lose much of its value in the first year after closing.
Nevon note
This is an unusually interesting market to transact in, and it is interesting from both sides of the table. It is deeply fragmented, the work in it is set by regulation rather than by the cycle, the capacity to do that work is scarce, and a wide and growing field of buyers is competing for the few thousand businesses that are large enough to acquire. That combination is rare, and it is a reason for both sides to prepare properly rather than react to the first approach.
nevonpartners.comWhy Nevon Partners
Experienced. Digital. Human.
The market this report describes, deeply fragmented, with systematic acquirers on one side and owners who transact once on the other, calls for advisers who bring both sector knowledge and process discipline. Three principles guide how we work alongside owners, families and investors in building technology.
Partner-led.
In a sector where buyers move quickly and judgement matters, a Partner stays on your deal from first conversation to close. The people you meet are the people who run the process.
Digitally powered.
The same data and AI tools reshaping building technology services sharpen our work, mapping buyers, benchmarking valuations and running tighter processes, so you reach the right outcome with fewer surprises.
Human at the core.
Selling or scaling a building technology services business is a personal decision, not only a financial one. Deals turn on trust, and earning it on both sides of the table is the part of the work we care about most.
Get in touch
If you are considering a transaction in building technology, whether a sale, a succession solution, a buy-and-build or a single bolt-on, or you simply want to compare notes on the market, we would welcome a conversation.
There is more than one
buyer for almost every
business in this market.
Firm
Nevon Partners
Offices
Munich · Hamburg · Vienna · Dubai
Contact
[email protected]
nevonpartners.com
Disclaimer. This report is published for information only. It is not investment, legal or tax advice, not a valuation opinion and not an offer or solicitation. Figures are taken from the sources cited and have not been independently audited. Forward-looking statements are assessments by Nevon Partners and may prove incorrect. Nevon GmbH accepts no liability for decisions taken on the basis of this document. © Nevon GmbH 2026.
Edition 01 · 2026 · © Nevon GmbH