Willy Gehler was a German civil engineer and professor at the TH Dresden who lived between 1876 and 1953. At the beginning of his career he worked as a civil engineer for the company Dyckerhoff & Widmann. Ordered by his company, he travelled to the United States to observe some interesting construction sites in 1912. Over there, he became acquainted with the “American industrialised process of construction” using a lot of prefabricated elements and well-organised site facilities. After returning to Germany, he applied his experience to several building sites. Later on, he was member of the committee for the standardisation of prefabricated concrete elements; meanwhile he published a book about precast concrete within the research programme of the DAfEb (former German Committee for Reinforced Concrete). In that context, Gehler can be seen as an important protagonist for the development of precast concrete in Germany.