Connection in the info market

Projects are becoming increasingly complex and project teams larger and larger. At the same time, there is a lot of fragmentation in projects. It is increasingly important to pursue the same goal as one team in a project that is often under time pressure. These are the words of Robert van Meijgaarden, managing director of INNOCY, who over the past year has been focusing on this connecting role in order to be able to take on this role even better.

Robert has been at the helm of INNOCY since September 1, 2023. "It is a club with an incredible amount of knowledge and specialism. Nevertheless, we decided to operate from three knowledge domains, namely asset management, project management and safety. A conscious choice to be able to make even more impact for our clients." And a choice that seems to be paying off, given the many projects to which INNOCY has made and continues to make a significant contribution over the past year. 

Asset management

Asset management is a catch-all term, van Meijgaarden believes. "We understand asset management to mean optimizing a design in a smart way so that an object is as maintainable and as safe as possible and we guarantee maximum availability without adding a lot of costs. And our role does not stop with the design, we also contribute to the realization and the management and maintenance issue, from strategic to operational level. For consortium VeenIX, for example, on the A9, we assess the work carried out and set up the breakdown organization. And for the ALSÉÉN consortium we have set up the fault organization on the A27 Everdingen-Hooipolder project, put the area in order and are responsible for the cost and RAMS analyses. It is a ten-year project that will be tackled in phases, followed by 15 years of management and maintenance. In doing so, we look not only at the design, but also at the current state of the area, where there is a backlog of maintenance."

Overdue maintenance

The latter is typical of the market, according to van Meijgaarden, because assets are behind in maintenance. "All projects coming to the market are delayed due to inadequate budget, including the corona period. That makes projects come to market in even worse condition, because when an asset is on the list to renew, maintenance often stops. So the pressure to keep projects going is extremely high. It is important to be smart about it. Precisely because we think along in the project from an asset management perspective, we as INNOCY are able to make choices like no one else, rather than deep into the technology. Therein lies our added value. A design that seems incredibly lucrative can turn out to be incredibly expensive in the long run. And that does not always mean that the budget has to be increased. It is therefore important that we are hooked right from the start, in order to optimize the design."

Water Domain

The second area INNOCY focuses on is project management. "That includes everything on the process side, risk management, cost expertise and technical management," van Meijgaarden explains. "We provide project management for tunnel renovations in the municipality of Amsterdam, among other things, as well as on a number of infrastructure renovation projects in the Netherlands. In addition, there is still a world to win for us in the 'water domain' dominated by water boards and drinking water companies. We will be investing heavily in this area in the coming years. Just like in our third and final focus area: safety. This ranges from occupational safety, integral safety, machine safety, tunnel safety, water safety and environmental safety to rail safety at ProRail. We are committed to ensuring that safety is properly secured at the front end. Because it is precisely in the design phase that you can also make the most impact in terms of safety."

What you guys do, we can't do. "That's what we often hear back from clients," says van Meijgaarden. "We go through a design with a dust comb and see where optimizations can be made. That's what we're good at. Moreover, we make the connection. We see that our people fulfill a strong connecting factor in project teams from progression and specialism. We create an atmosphere in which an entire club of people in the project team strive for the same goal, rather than the best for everyone's own position. After all, together you are strong(er). Wondering how we do that? Let's meet at our booth during InfraTech 2025."