Our journey began with Ernst Basler's vision of sustainability and interdisciplinary teamwork, and today, these enduring principles remain a driving force behind our global engagement and expertise.
Our habitat is limited, our capacity for innovation is not.
Ernst Basler, founder and pioneer of sustainability
A timeline of our progress
1963 Ernst Basler founds his first enterprise.
1971 Ernst Basler promotes sustainability and interdisciplinarity in the engineering profession.
1981 Founding of Ernst Basler + Partner.
1993 Establishment of EBP Deutschland/Germany.
1994 Handover from the first to the second generation of family owners: from Ernst to Bruno Basler.
2012 Inception of EBP Chile.
2014 Majority ownership of Geoklock in Brazil (100% by 2016).
2016 Affiliation with EDR Group in the US.
2019 Launch of EBP China.
2020 Geoklock and EDR Group rebranded as EBP Brazil and EBP US.
2024 Affiliation with STEP in India and rebranding as EBP India.
Learn more about the story of the founder Ernst Basler, a honored pioneer of sustainability.
Ernst Basler, a Swiss national, founded the enterprise in 1981 based on his conviction that sustainable development – and with it the preservation of the earth as our vital habitat – could be achieved via an interdisciplinary approach involving the close cooperation of engineers, natural scientists, social scientists and other scholars.
Having concluded at a very early stage that a model of development based on exponential growth and finite natural resources was ultimately doomed to fail, Basler encouraged a broad-based reconsideration of our systems of energy supply and our wasteful approach to resources in general. Frequently asked what in particular needed to be done, Basler was determined to implement his ideas in the form of a private engineering firm that he founded together with Ernst Hofmann in 1963. Daring to go a step further and engage in an experiment, Basler founded the Interdisciplinary Group for Long-Term Planning in 1971, despite the fact that the prospects of landing contracts were not especially promising, given the fact that there were hardly any clients out there at the time who were prepared to take a deeper look at issues relating to environmental protection and sustainability.
In a challenge to the boundaries of construction engineering at the time, the enterprise went on to hire economists, lawyers, construction engineers, agricultural engineers, physicists, chemists, biologists, landscape architects, forest engineers and geographers to establish its interdisciplinary credentials. However, the initial attempts to harmonize the expectations of the classic engineers and the other specialists proved unsuccessful. This then led to the breakup of Basler & Hofmann and the founding of Ernst Basler + Partner AG in the year 1981.
After the enterprise’s founding, those whose skills were not traditionally represented in the building sector were integrated into the various business divisions, the degree of interdisciplinary cooperation was intensified and the aim of sustainable development was incorporated into the enterprise’s project activities. This gave rise to an expanded understanding of the profession, a broader range of consulting services and a higher degree of innovation when approaching projects. In recognition of his pioneering efforts and the successful implementation of the principle of sustainability in projects, Ernst Basler received an honorary doctorate from ETH Zurich in 1992.