The Nature Ladder: working more nature-friendly step by step

InfraTech Innovation Award 2025 - Process Innovation category

The Nature Ladder, an initiative of Dura Vermeer and Heijmans, is winner of the InfraTech Innovation Award 2025 in the process innovation category. The concept is 'packaged' in an innovative web application that supports companies to work in a more nature-friendly way step by step, and to leave nature better than you found it at the start of a construction project. The first successes have already been achieved. 

Managing themes such as biodiversity and climate resistance in projects is much more difficult than managing emissions, begins Jeroen Demmer, ecologist at Dura Vermeer. Together with Léon Dielen, program leader Water at Heijmans, he stood at the basis of the Nature Ladder. "At first we thought about developing a kind of menu of measures, but that turned out to be too location- and contract-dependent. So the idea arose to bring about a change in behavior, inspired by the Safety Ladder. So we stay completely away from content. With the Nature Ladder we offer tools to embed climate adaptation, biodiversity and soil and water quality in projects and especially in project organizations."

Moving the sector forward

Right from the launch of the Nature Ladder, the idea was to develop a tool that is widely supported. Léon: "The topic is not so sensitive among construction companies that the cards have to be jealously held to the chest." Jeroen adds: "The subject also lends itself perfectly to it. If we need to go to something new, because the current targets are not sufficient, then the key is to look for a means that can move the whole sector forward. That's how we set to work, which ultimately led to the web application that is now in place and available to everyone through the Delta Plan Biodiversity Restoration Foundation. The application can be used at one's own discretion and is set up in such a way that it is possible to give it one's own twist or add one's own tools. Nevertheless, the basis is the same for everyone." 

Behavior Change 

The Nature Ladder helps make suggestions for behavior change in project organizations. "In five minutes, you know where you are on the ladder," says Léon. "The next step is to come up with measures by which you grow in maturity. At both Heijmans and Dura Vermeer, we are experiencing enormous success in applying the Nature Ladder. We see that it is being supported. A good example is the reconstruction of the De Nieuwe Meer interchange in the A10, a project by TriAX, consisting of Dura Vermeer, Heijmans and BESIX. Applying the Nature Ladder resulted, on the one hand, in measures to ensure that it is monitored and recorded organizationally. On the other hand, an opportunity scan was performed that looks at concrete measures for stimulating biodiversity and climate adaptation. And those measures cost money, a lot of money. The client's budget proved insufficient, but we made the choice as a combination to implement the measures anyway and finance them ourselves."

According to both gentlemen, the Nature Ladder should be seen primarily as a conversation starter in project teams. "If you start talking to each other about these important themes, you come to some great insights together. For us, winning the InfraTech Innovation Award is therefore also a piece of recognition and shows that there is support for working on these kinds of themes. Small changes in work processes can have a major impact on nature and the environment."