Smart and contemporary posting has a name

Last June, with the highest quality score, outsourcing/subcontracting firm Abilitec won the European tender submitted by the engineering office of the Municipality of Rotterdam. For the next two years, the Dordrecht-based company, along with four other agencies, will supply all civil professionals in Rotterdam. A period that can also be extended for another four years.

Winning in a vibrant city like Rotterdam feels like a huge compliment to Joost van Dijk, managing director of Abilitec. "Gemeente Rotterdam really completes our wish list in this region. It is a nice reward for the professionalization drive we have initiated. In order to remain distinctive and allow professionals and clients to grow, we continuously optimize our services. We have spent a lot of time and effort on further modernizing and digitizing our organization. In addition, we have made our recruitment approach even more intelligent. When all that is honored with the highest score of more than sixteen renowned agencies in the Netherlands, that's great."

Modern secondment with the 6 B's 

Thanks to the aforementioned duration and chosen partner approach of the Municipality of Rotterdam, Abilitec is able to provide real added value. "We go much further than the placement of technical professionals alone," Van Dijk continues. "I sometimes call that the 6-b approach; we understand each other well in the partnership and therefore we reach and appeal to the appropriate civilian target group. Thanks to our own Labor Market Monitor Techniek, we know what civil engineers find important and who is open to a new challenge. The Tecademy, our own development and training environment, also contributes to the quality we deliver. This is how we bind and fascinate our professionals for a longer period of time. We proactively seek cooperation with other agencies. In this way, we serve the client optimally."

Countercyclical investing 

Van Dijk praises the engineering firm's efforts to build intensive partnerships with private parties within the official structure, compliancy and legislation. "That takes some guts, even in a working city like Rotterdam. I know Rotterdam as a city that does everything possible to make civil projects succeed and, where possible, bring them forward to get through the corona period well. They are really leading the way with counter-cyclical investments and also have a hefty task of greening the city.    

For example, they are working on additional green lungs in seven locations throughout the city. The Rotterdam manifesto, drawn up together with market parties and housing corporations, contains agreements to ensure that at least 50,000 additional homes are built by 2040. Few are aware of the civil engineering work required to achieve this. One example is sewerage, where smart engineers are not just looking at maintenance and bringing it up to standard. Smart solutions are also being thought about, for example, using sewer heat to heat the streets." 

Countercyclical staff budget

While countercyclical investing is quite something in itself, countercyclical investing in your formation is really "next level. "Call it guts 2.0," said Van Dijk. "We will soon be working together in Rotterdam on a forecasting model for flexible deployment. I would grant that to so many more clients; to be able to break free from the delusion of the day and take a good look at the strategic personnel planning on the basis of the assignments and projects that are and are to come. Is that always easy? No. Do we sometimes get it wrong? Yes. But even then we don't lose anything." The managing director explains: "Often it starts with a legs-on-table discussion in the various departments. We provide that free of charge, purely because we enjoy providing insights into how strategic goals and implementation practices are translated into formation. We consider the fitness of the permanent and incumbent formation and which assignments our client is facing in the coming period. To the project review and fleet review of the formation we add our HR and recruitment expertise. If you now put those two analyses side by side, you know the inflow needs of technical professionals. Whether that is permanent employees, an expansion of the flexible shell or whether we are looking for that with a buffer or pool in an acute peak-and-sick capacity solution. Abilitec is a party that acts like a harmonica and so also moves with us when scaling up and down quickly. I don't see many secondment companies doing that. Are there any setbacks or are projects cancelled? Then we also help clients downsize in a socially responsible way and deploy those redundant professionals elsewhere in our network."

Guarantees

Because Abilitec works with a forecast, the agency recruits continuously for Rotterdam and thus not only at peak demand times. "This ensures that we live up to delivery guarantees of 95 to 100 percent," Van Dijk believes. "The better the forecast, the higher the delivery percentage, but never lower than 95 percent. Our recruitment campaigns launched online and via social media for Rotterdam delivered more than 300,000 unique impressions to the target audience after just one week. With Rotterdam's permission, we also offer without obligation; if we find really good professionals, we introduce them. Even without a request. Characteristic of a truly counter-cyclical labor market approach."