Wytze Jorritsma
Employee portrait
Wytze Jorritsma
‘I enjoy sharing my enthusiasm for electrical engineering’
Wytze Jorritsma, group leader of the Electrical Engineering and Process Automation group, works with water and electricity. Not exactly two things that go together. But without electrical engineering, all water systems would come to a standstill. So his team comes up with creative designs to ensure these installations work perfectly.
Love for water
‘My team members and I work on projects involving water and low-voltage electricity. That usually means process automation and electrical engineering for water treatment installations and drinking water supplies. In 1993, after studying electrical engineering, information technology and industrial engineering, I started working at a treatment authority. Today they’re called water authorities. That’s where my love for water began. In 1999, I joined Witteveen+Bos in the company’s Energy, Water and Environment sector. Until 2013, I worked on process automation, and since then I’ve led a team that makes electrical engineering designs, primarily for wastewater and drinking water treatment plants. These designs cover the entire electrical installation, from energy supply and process automation to the lighting and security of buildings and other locations.’
Hard work
‘The energy transition is an important issue for society that involves major challenges. It’s not always the case, for example, that sufficient grid capacity is available to provide gas-free residential areas in certain locations with electricity. Or to make it possible for factories to increase sustainability by electrifying their processes. These are the challenges facing my colleagues who work with high voltage, but they affect my team’s projects too. We’re working, for example, on a central sludge processing installation for a water treatment plant. We’re having to work hard to design an installation which is appropriate for the grid capacity available there. The charging poles needed for electric trucks place demands on that capacity, but you can’t shut down the water treatment installations for them. So we come up with creative solutions as necessary, such as batteries, or a gas engine that uses biogas from the sludge and produces electricity for the charging poles via a generator. The key is finding a balance between what is needed and what is available.’
Creative
‘Balance is also important in my role as group leader. I look for opportunities presented by the market, but I also keep an eye on how the team is functioning, because projects with deadlines can lead to high workloads. I work on projects myself too. As a team leader, I’m a manager. But first and foremost, I’m a craftsman. I also enjoy sharing my enthusiasm for electrical engineering. Unfortunately, too few students choose this field of study, making it difficult to find well-trained and experienced electrical engineers. This great profession has an unjust reputation for being boring. Of course, it can be difficult and challenging at times. But the work of electrical engineers is above all very creative!’
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