Simone van Loon, director of Arkance 

The infrastructure sector is still too much seen as a man's world. Nothing could be further from the truth. More and more women are finding jobs and a place in the world of civil engineering.
And we like to introduce them to you in detail. In each edition of GWW Magazine, we let a woman from the sector talk about her job and what exactly makes it so great. In this edition, we give the floor to Simone van Loon, director of Arkance.

It was while she was studying structural engineering that Simone came across Itannex, now Arkance. "The software company gave us training in 3D working. And I became very enthusiastic about that. Soon I was coaching fellow students. The software experts noticed that, too. I initially wanted to become an architect, but after I graduated, I accepted an offer from the software house. As a consultant, I visited large contractors, but also architectural firms and companies active in civil engineering to support them in making the digital transition."

Arkance provides software from Autodesk, as well as proprietary software such as InfraCAD and Drill Control. "What I experience most in digital transformation is that change management is incredibly important," says Simone. "People have to want it, be able and do it, and keep working with it, even after they have completed a training course. Only then does a digital transformation really benefit and you start to see improvements and reduce failure costs. It really does involve process optimization." Reason for Simone to delve further into change management over the years. "In that, I started bringing colleagues along internally. By not only looking at the technology, but pulling it much broader towards the people and the process." Simone was given the opportunity to start working on the proposition and positioning. "By now I am responsible for marketing and sales and have been part of the management for four years now."

Although Simone really enjoys working with men, she did gather more and more women around her in recent years. "Of course, in the beginning as a consultant, I also had to deal with the well-known prejudices, but I always managed to make short work of them. A woman is able to introduce a certain twist, so that people look at certain matters from a different perspective. And that works. The funny thing is that even though I have always been used to working with men, in the end the entire product management team around me is made up of women. They can achieve a lot with men," Simone says with a laugh. "We work with our team in projects almost exclusively with men. In fact, the sales and marketing team is dominated by men."

Simone also sees more and more women at her former architecture school, because from her position she is closely associated with education. "Sixteen years ago I was really the only woman, today a third or maybe half are women. There is definitely a change going on. The digital transformation and 3D work is making the field more visual, and that is precisely what attracts more women." As a result, Simone feels like a fish out of water in the industry. "I would recommend it to any woman. It gives a lot of energy to work with men. Especially the dynamics are incredibly fun."