Car parks in the medieval city of Leiden

Leiden’s historic city centre dates from the 17th century. The city offers a lot for its visitors: aside from the historic city centre, Leiden also has universities, colleges, the Bio Science Park and a range of well-known museums. However, the accessibility of the city centre is poor, which is why it does not attract as many visitors as the municipality of Leiden would like. Therefore, the ‘Accessibility Leiden’ programme was set up. Witteveen+Bos and the municipality formalised this by coordinating a tender for the construction of two underground car parks.

The construction of two car parks is one way to improve the accessibility of the city centre. The tender for these two car parks was unique. A reference design often forms the basis of a design and construct tender. However, no reference design was provided in this particular tender, and instead the chosen approach was to provide a set of requirements/demands with which the design of the car parks had to comply. This approach challenged contractors to base their design on the visitor’s experience of the city centre.

During the actual implementation phase Witteveen+Bos is advising the municipality of Leiden on relevant technical aspects of the project. We are advising the contract manager and reviewing the proposed design and other relevant reports on contractual conditions.