Association of and for contractors in foundation engineering

Exactly 75 years ago this year, the Nederlandse Vereniging Aannemers Funderingswerken (NVAF) represented the interests of companies working in foundation engineering. Although the industry association is basically a very small professional organization in terms of staffing, its unique composition and members' input achieve results that companies cannot achieve individually. An interview with director Jaap Estié about the importance of the association and the enormous involvement of member companies.

Estié has been involved with the NVAF for nearly 20 years and active in various working groups and the board until his appointment as director in 2017. So he is no stranger to foundation land. "As a trade association, we stand up for the interests of our member companies. We do that with an extremely small professional core organization: yours truly and the secretariat. Everything else is arranged with volunteers in working and project groups, a general board, committees, et cetera."

Safety

Among other things, foundation companies can use the general terms and conditions prepared for the industry by the NVAF. "Not only for subcontracting work, but also for situations where a foundation company works directly for a client," Estié points out. "The revision is already in the works; in the next few weeks we will be giving a blow-by-blow on version 2022. We are also busy in all kinds of working groups on topics such as working conditions, safety and the environment. For example, all safety aspects are being scrutinized. If an accident has occurred at a member company, it is investigated in detail. Conclusions are shared industry-wide and, where necessary, instructions and guidelines are adjusted. If the accident is due to a technical defect, it also comes up for discussion in the Foundation Machinery Technical Committee. It is also a working room of Foundation Supervision Certification Vertical Transport, a body to which the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment has delegated the authority to guarantee the entire regulation around safe hoisting."

Construction site certificate

The working groups within the NVAF also work closely together. Estié: "A joint effort by the working group on working conditions, safety and the environment with the Technical Committee on Foundation Machinery led, for example, to a revision of the guideline on safe hoisting. For example, a guideline on working safely in a public environment was issued. Lifting steel sheet piles, pipes or foundation piles has consequences for the layout of the lifting zone; there must be sufficient space to safely deploy a foundation machine. That joint project also developed a construction site certificate, a document by which the general contractor certifies that the construction site meets all requirements, including a stable foundation. The latter is important not only for a foundation company, but also for everything that comes after us. A truck can also sink if the construction site does not meet the requirements. A general contractor has the responsibility that all companies that are hired can perform their work properly and safely."

Training and promotion

Another important working group Estié would like to touch on is the one dealing with training. "We have established a foundation vocational school in cooperation with, among others, Training Center Crescendo from Hoorn. The training is divided into three sections: all the work around a foundation machine, on the operator and finally a piece of basic knowledge for employees in the office and possibly from the client. The first group of students will start in early April. In addition, we as NVAF are of course continuously busy with the promotion of the beautiful foundation profession, we manage together with social partners FNV and CNV the Arbocatalogus Funderingen in which all RI&Es are recorded, and we have close contact with Volandis, the knowledge center for construction. We are also affiliated with the Cable and Pipeline Consultation, an alliance of soil excavators, network operators and subsoil managers, for which we have written a practical manual on how to deal with this carefully as a foundation sector, and in addition to national (semi-)governments, we are also very active in a European context in drafting laws and regulations."

NVAF is thus a very active organization for good reason. "Thanks to the grandiose efforts of the many volunteers from member companies, we collectively manage to achieve great results for the industry."