About

Die Autobahn was founded in September 2018. It was established to place planning, operating, and maintaining of the German motorway network (including approximately 13.000km motorways, more than 28.000 bridges, and approximately 550 tunnels), from state government into federal governments´ hands. The decision of this reform was made to reduce costs by harmonising central tasks, strengthening regional responsibility and competence, and use resources more efficiently. To master this, a headquartered office, based in Berlin, was installed, and ten branches throughout the country. The start of operation was January 1st, 2021, which left this very young company with only two years to get this enormous transformation done. The fact that this huge transformation process and the company´s building process were done simultaneously and against the context of the pandemic is remarkable.

Martin Regnath joined Die Autobahn in February 2020 as general counsel, coming from DEGES, where he already had done an outstanding job as general counsel and authorised signatory, by successfully building up a legal team and creating a culture of collaboration, trust, and high-quality work. At Die Autobahn´s headquarter in Berlin he began the formation of a legal department that may differ from other legal departments, taking governmental structures and the proximity to the construction industry into account, by also hiring engineers and pensioners; the latter formerly employed by the state. That broadened the expertise of this legal department immensely. By then installing the so-called Fachboards (internal meetings with members of the legal departments of Die Autobahn´s ten branches), Martin Regnath used additional synergies, knowing that a collaborative working effort is a key to outstanding success. His small legal team made huge progress in this very short time, helping the company to thrive, by, for example, developing and establishing operational standards, working out cooperation agreements between federal and states, and by rolling out a procurement manager. Simply put in his words, “it is crucial to let people do their work freely and to listen to their ideas. But most importantly, it is a culture of trust and open-mindedness that needs to be created for people to evolve and thrive. Some things can go wrong, some decisions might not be right; but that can happen, given the tight schedule. And it is always better to do something, than nothing at all. We win as a team; we lose as team.” In January 2021, Martin Regnath became authorised signatory. He looks forward to seeing Die Autobahn and his team grow and succeed. To have done his share makes him very proud.