Coen van Oostrom: ''The contractor said halfway through: I quit.''

Velox (V): YOU DEVELOP SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS, FULL OF TECHNOLOGICAL GADGETS. HOW DOES THE COMPLEXITY OF THOSE BUILDINGS AFFECT THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY?
Coen van Oostrom (CoE): "A fair question, especially since we are only at the beginning of a huge transition in the way we build. In not too long we will be moving toward completely carbon-neutral buildings, both in operations and in realization. That will be incredibly complicated, but also incredibly fun. Only the construction industry is nowhere near ready for that right now."

V: IS IT THAT BAD?
COO: "In the Dutch construction industry it's not so bad, although London, for example, is much further along. But in Germany, where we also develop a lot, it's really a drama. There it is already complicated to make a building with very basic IT technology. If you really want to start measuring it all in a building, the whole chain has to go digital: the architect, the developer and the builder. There needs to be a revolution in the industry. It may lead to certain business models no longer working, or certain companies will have to merge to keep their knowledge up to date. And this is also going to require a different attitude from the government. It will have to start tendering in a different way and no longer, as it always does now, focus on the lowest price."

V: IS THERE AN INHIBITING EFFECT OF THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY? 
COO: "In a sense, yes. We are already twenty steps ahead with EDGE and would like to do much more. But contractors sometimes come back to us and say, 'All your projects are so complicated.' That's partly because the projects we do are so large. A project like Valley runs into the hundreds of millions. Builders find that risky and are therefore cautious. If you then also say: 'It has to be even more technological, innovative and faster', a large contractor will say: 'Get a grip, I won't do it. So you have to be careful. It has to become just two percent uncomfortable for the companies you work with, but not twenty percent uncomfortable, because then they'll walk away and there won't be a sustainable building at all."

V: HAVE YOU EVER EXPERIENCED A CONTRACTOR WALKING AWAY?
COO: "That has happened on occasion, yes. In our buildings, sometimes parts have to be made in a very specific way, a way that differs from how it's normally done. And so we want to make sure it's going to work a certain way. This led to one contractor saying halfway through construction, "I'm done, I'm quitting. Then we did have a ding."
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