---
type: Person
title: Heike Brandt
description: Commercial Director at Blauwal Logistik GmbH, who confirmed the Projekt
  LEUCHTFEUER budget.
tags:
- leuchtfeuer
- blauwal-logistik
- budget
resource: raw/2024-03-05-minutes-kickoff.md
timestamp: '2026-07-16T17:12:37Z'
citadel_version: 0.3.0
---

Heike Brandt is Commercial Director at [Blauwal Logistik GmbH](../organizations/blauwal-logistik-gmbh.md).[^s1] At the [Projekt LEUCHTFEUER](../projects/projekt-leuchtfeuer.md) kickoff meeting she made the commercial case for replacing [KOMET](../systems/komet.md): the money Blauwal pays every year merely to keep KOMET's licences and support contracts alive buys no improvement of any kind, and she committed to putting the exact figures in writing for the steering committee so the business case is documented rather than anecdotal.[^s2] She confirmed the Geschäftsführung has approved a programme budget of EUR 1.8 million, and was explicit that this is the whole envelope: "If we need more, we go back to the Geschäftsführung — and nobody in this room wants that meeting."[^s3]

In a mail of 11 March 2024, quoted by Duszek the following day, she delivered on that commitment with the exact figure: KOMET's annual licence and support contracts stand at EUR 310,000, for a system whose vendor has not existed for seven years — "We pay this every year for the privilege of standing still."[^s4]

At the steering committee meeting on 19 March 2024 she again explained the financial framework, reaffirming the EUR 1.8 million budget and its components, and repeated that any overrun would require a fresh Geschäftsführung decision, to be flagged early.[^s5]

The [Projekt LEUCHTFEUER](../projects/projekt-leuchtfeuer.md) charter formalizes her ownership of the programme budget and vendor commercials.[^s6] It also sets the escalation rule explicitly: any forecast overrun must be escalated to the Lenkungsausschuss before it is incurred, with an increase requiring a new Geschäftsführung decision.[^s7] That escalation happened: on 16 January 2025 the Geschäftsführung approved an increased programme budget of EUR 2.4 million, on the committee's escalation.[^s11]

Brandt characterised KOMET's fee, commercially speaking, as "rent paid on our own dependency" now that the contracts are serviced only by a rights-holder that performs no active maintenance.[^s4]

At the Lenkungsausschuss's 10 February 2025 session she confirmed the commercial case for the database reversal: under [KorallenDB](../systems/korallendb.md)'s revised licence terms, the five-year cost of the persistence layer roughly doubles, with an audit overhead nobody had priced.[^s12] Reporting the confirmed EUR 2.4 million budget increase, she told the committee this second envelope is to be treated as the last one: "There is no third ask in my drawer."[^s13]

Her closing figures, reported in [Petra Vogelsang](../persons/petra-vogelsang.md)'s 20 March 2026 go-live announcement, put total programme spend at EUR 2.62 million against the revised EUR 2.4 million budget[^s11][^s14] — an overrun she flagged to the Geschäftsführung in autumn 2025, with documented causes: the customs certification delay and the extended dual-running of the two systems.[^s14] The same announcement thanked her for "envelopes defended and honestly reported."[^s15]

She sent her apologies for the kickoff meeting of [SEAGULL](../projects/seagull.md), Blauwal's new customer self-service portal programme, on 8 April 2026, and did not attend.[^s16]

On 15 April 2026 she formally retracted her own memorandum of 10 June 2024, "KOMET operating costs (provisional figures)," and every provisional figure it contained, with immediate effect.[^s17] The final KOMET operations audit for 2024–2025, accepted by the Geschäftsführung on 31 March 2026, found the memorandum's downtime-cost estimate had double-counted contractual penalties the affected customer accounts had since renegotiated and had extrapolated a peak-season hourly pattern across the whole year, producing figures materially different from the audited ones.[^s18] The same audit confirmed KOMET's annual licence and support figure as reported to the steering committee, since — unlike the retracted downtime estimate — it was contractual rather than estimated and so unaffected by the retraction.[^s19] She took her share of responsibility for the provisional figures having circulated with their caveat trimmed for space in some slide decks, reflecting that "a number in circulation outlives every caveat attached to it, and the only reliable caveat is withdrawal," and framed the retraction as keeping a promise she made in June 2024 that the provisional numbers would be retired from circulation once the audit closed.[^s20] She asked that no one rely on, quote, or restate the retracted figures — an existing document reproducing them is to treat that passage as withdrawn and remove it at its next revision — and asked to be informed directly, rather than by circular, if a retracted figure had already been passed outward to a customer, insurer, or auditor.[^s21]

## See also
- [Projekt LEUCHTFEUER](../projects/projekt-leuchtfeuer.md)
- [Blauwal Logistik GmbH](../organizations/blauwal-logistik-gmbh.md)
- [KOMET](../systems/komet.md)
- [QUAYSTONE](../systems/quaystone.md)
- [KorallenDB](../systems/korallendb.md)

## Sources
[^s1]: [raw/2024-03-05-minutes-kickoff.md](../../raw/2024-03-05-minutes-kickoff.md), § Projekt LEUCHTFEUER — kickoff meeting, minutes — role (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s2]: [raw/2024-03-05-minutes-kickoff.md](../../raw/2024-03-05-minutes-kickoff.md), § TOP 1 — Why this programme exists — commercial case (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s3]: [raw/2024-03-05-minutes-kickoff.md](../../raw/2024-03-05-minutes-kickoff.md), § TOP 3 — Budget — EUR 1.8m envelope and quote (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s4]: [raw/2024-03-12-email-duszek-komet-assessment.md](../../raw/2024-03-12-email-duszek-komet-assessment.md), lines 32-36 — quoted mail of 11 March 2024, EUR 310,000 figure (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s5]: [raw/2024-03-19-protokoll-lenkungsausschuss.md](../../raw/2024-03-19-protokoll-lenkungsausschuss.md), § TOP 2 — Budget — budget reaffirmed, overrun rule (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s6]: [raw/2024-05-14-charter-leuchtfeuer.md](../../raw/2024-05-14-charter-leuchtfeuer.md), § 9. Governance — Commercial Director owns budget and vendor commercials (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s7]: [raw/2024-05-14-charter-leuchtfeuer.md](../../raw/2024-05-14-charter-leuchtfeuer.md), § 7. Budget — escalation rule (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s11]: [raw/2024-05-14-charter-leuchtfeuer.md](../../raw/2024-05-14-charter-leuchtfeuer.md), § 7. Budget — EUR 2.4m, 16 January 2025 GF decision (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s12]: [raw/2025-02-10-minutes-steering.md](../../raw/2025-02-10-minutes-steering.md), § TOP 2 — Database decision, revisited — Brandt's cost-doubling confirmation (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s13]: [raw/2025-02-10-minutes-steering.md](../../raw/2025-02-10-minutes-steering.md), § TOP 4 — Budget — decision D-11, "no third ask" quote (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s14]: [raw/2026-03-20-email-vogelsang-golive.md](../../raw/2026-03-20-email-vogelsang-golive.md), lines 23-26 — closing budget figures: EUR 2.62m vs EUR 2.4m, overrun causes (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s15]: [raw/2026-03-20-email-vogelsang-golive.md](../../raw/2026-03-20-email-vogelsang-golive.md), lines 48-49 — Vogelsang's thanks for "envelopes defended and honestly reported" (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s16]: [raw/2026-04-08-minutes-portal-kickoff.md](../../raw/2026-04-08-minutes-portal-kickoff.md), § SEAGULL programme — kickoff meeting, minutes (customer self-service portal) — apologies (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s17]: [raw/2026-04-15-memo-brandt-retraction.md](../../raw/2026-04-15-memo-brandt-retraction.md), lines 10-12 — retraction of the 10 June 2024 memorandum, immediate effect (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s18]: [raw/2026-04-15-memo-brandt-retraction.md](../../raw/2026-04-15-memo-brandt-retraction.md), lines 16-23 — audit findings on the estimate's methodology (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s19]: [raw/2026-04-15-memo-brandt-retraction.md](../../raw/2026-04-15-memo-brandt-retraction.md), lines 49-51 — licence/support figure confirmed, contractual not estimated (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s20]: [raw/2026-04-15-memo-brandt-retraction.md](../../raw/2026-04-15-memo-brandt-retraction.md), lines 25-30 — caveat-trimmed decks, "outlives every caveat" quote, June 2024 promise (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s21]: [raw/2026-04-15-memo-brandt-retraction.md](../../raw/2026-04-15-memo-brandt-retraction.md), lines 34-39 — do-not-quote instruction, inform-directly request (ingested 2026-07-16)
