‘The Netherlands is made up of lots of different small areas in which all sorts of things need to happen and various stakeholders exist. Housing, work, mobility, nature, water – you name it. My main concern is ensuring integration and the involvement of stakeholders in design and planning processes for the reconstruction of infrastructure such as roads and dykes.

As well as collaborating with government bodies, this involves facilitating the involvement of residents, nature and environmental organisations, entrepreneurs, interest groups, landowners, and other stakeholders. I oversee the participation of all these parties and ensure their input regarding interests and desires is integrated into the project’s further development.

Usually, conflicting interests exist in these small areas. That makes it more or less impossible to please everybody. But it is possible to give everyone the chance to be heard and to foster understanding for choices made in the interest of the common good.’

‘The hallmark of our projects is that they’re affected by outside influences, such as political developments. The new Environment and Planning Act has also given stakeholder engagement more attention. Managing, therefore, requires more than just engineering knowledge. That makes my background very helpful. At TU Delft, I studied both civil engineering and a field called systems engineering, policy analysis and management.

Sharing knowledge is important to me because space is limited and interests are large. For my colleagues at Witteveen+Bos, I provide a course on engagement and stakeholder management and an in-depth training on process management. The complexity involved in making the right decisions is why I find the field so interesting. And because, by making the right choices, you contribute to a sustainable future.’