January/February 2021 - 71

MEMBER

PROFILE

Horst Aschenbroich,
Innovator and Entrepreneur

According to the Oxford Learner 's
Dictionary, an innovator " introduces
new methods, ideas, or products, " while
an entrepreneur " organizes and operates
a business or businesses, taking on
greater than normal financial risks in
order to do so. " These two terms
describe the founder and president of
Con-Tech Systems, Horst Aschenbroich,
to a T. Aschenbroich is all of these things
and a whole lot more. To all who know
him, he is an indefatigable force in the
development of strand tendon, hot
rolled thread bar (HRTB) and hollow bar
products used in earth retention design
and construction. His company has
recently branched out into the realm of
deep foundations with the manufacture, testing and application of
threaded hollow-bar reinforcing
elements, most recently fostering their
use in crosshole sonic logging (CSL)
testing of drilled shaft foundations.

Early Life in Germany
Aschenbroich grew up in Duesseldorf,
Germany, during one of the most
devastating periods of World War II.
When the war ended in 1945, he was
able to pursue his education. Upon
graduating from high school in 1950, he
became a carpenter's apprentice and
practiced as such for three years. He
later went on to work with a German
engineering and construction company,

AUTHOR

Dyckerhoff & Widmann AG, which we
now know as DYWIDAG. The company
specialized in the construction of
prestressed concrete structures. In
1955, he entered university in
Wuppertal, Germany, graduating in
1958 with a degree in civil and
structural engineering. Soon after
graduation, he secured a permanent
position with DYWIDAG, where he
designed prestressed structures. His
future path was becoming clear, as he
was enthralled by the challenges of the
work in which he was engaged.

♫ Oh Canada ...
In 1960, Aschenbroich immigrated
with his wife, Hildegard, to Canada. He
settled in Calgary, Alberta, working for
Brown & Root (now KBR) designing
special foundations for oil refineries.

unbonded) a few years later, and
introduced the segmental concrete
construction method. These were just
some of the ways that Aschenbroich
d e m o n s t r a t e d h i s p e n c h a n t fo r
innovation. Other examples include
developing material and support
systems for the Knight Street Bridge,
Vancouver, B.C., Canada; the Pine Valley
Bridge near San Diego, California; epoxy
resin rock anchors for Mica Dam in B.C.,
Canada; tieback anchors and soil nails
fo r s h o r i n g a n d r e t a i n i n g w a l l
applications; and tiedown anchors for
several hydro dams. He also set up a
precast concrete plant ( DYWIDAG /
Fabcon) there in 1978, taking on
projects such as the Cambie Street
Bridge in Vancouver, as well other
bridges for the province's Ministry of
Transportation and Infrastructure.

" In North America price tends to be the main driver in
what products are employed. This makes it difficult to
compete. However, we have been able to convince owners,
engineers and contractors to consider quality over price. "
Then came a stint with Carswell
Engineering, where he was in charge of
the reconstruction of a rebar rolling
mill owned by Western Rolling Mill.
In 1967, he set up DYWIDAG 's
operations in Canada and arranged
with the North Star Rolling Mill in St.
Paul, Minnesota (now Gerdau), to
produce the new DYWIDAG thread bar
for post-tensioning. He went on to
develop the company's strand posttensioning system (both bonded and

The common thread in all these
pursuits was a commitment toward
finding better ways to do things,
accompanied by an ability to implement
whatever idea Aschenbroich conjured
up. In 1983, these talents eventually led
him to start the proprietorship firm
ACE-Stronghold and to set up a rolling
mill (Chaparral) in Midlothian, Texas,
producing hot-rolled thread bars for use
in constructing Seattle's famous bridge
to Mercer Island (known as the Floating

S. Scot Litke, Hon. D.GE
DEEP FOUNDATIONS * JAN/FEB 2021 * 71
January/February 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of January/February 2021
