“Up until the 1990s, our job basically consisted of constructing major structures along the routes of Dutch Rail’s (Nederlandse Spoorwegen) railway lines,” Chairman of the Board, Mr Jos Hegeman, admitted in retrospect. “In those days, we were good for turnover of around 40 million euros. Nowadays, we are well on the way to generating ten times that amount. The former name of our business, Betonbouw (which roughly translates as Concrete Construction) was already outdated by that time. That’s why we changed it to Strukton Civiel (Civil Engineering).”
Mr Hegeman sets his snares for new contracts across a broad front. The award of the contract to construct the tunnel that is to finally relieve Delft of its old railway bridge, and which four parties are currently battling to secure, is to be announced soon. Locks in Limburg, the underpass beneath Vaillantlaan in The Hague, Harderwijk’s gyratory road. Civiel’s three-man board is optimistic about what the future holds in store. “We have opted for a strategy of both lengthening and broadening the chain,” said Managing Director, Martijn Smitt. “During the course of time, we have added numerous specialist disciplines.”
The firm’s latest addition is a company known as Milieutechniek (Environmental Technology). Three separate divisions were set up under this broad header. For instance, one for the recycling of materials, such as the substantial quantities of ballast bedding that Strukton reuses annually. Other duties that Milieutechniek performs include the management of land banks and the remediation of polluted soil.
The Board of Strukton Civiel is in charge of fourteen largely autonomous subsidiaries. These include names such as Reef Infra, Colijn and immersion specialist Mergor, which has proven highly successful in South Korea. Their operations vary greatly, from micro-tunnelling and traffic guidance, to jacking technology and laying underwater concrete.
Mr Smitt: “It is our policy to let our subsidiaries retain their own names. Some of them were acquired, while we founded or merged others ourselves. There’s no point in trying to shoehorn specialists into a straitjacket. You will only end up strangling the company’s personality. We have streamlined reporting, however. Compiling a strategic plan, delivering the annual report; these are aspects we supervise closely.”

Road maintenance
Strukton Civiel secured major contracts in the field of road maintenance during the past year. Major maintenance is currently underway on the Barrier Dam road, the ring road around Rotterdam and the infrastructure in the southern Netherlands: the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management’s Kosmos Blokdoos project.
Another exceptional project is the renovation of the Hollandse Bridge, the link on the A6 motorway at Muiderberg. What was initially envisaged as a minor project, ultimately turned into a megastructure that forced everyone involved to pull out all the stops. Two shifts ended up working a total of twenty hours daily, from January to September – without any summer holidays. Without this additional effort, work on this busy road link would have taken another ten months to complete. In September, however, both lanes were reopened to commercial traffic. Strukton views the Hollandse Bridge as a good calling card, as there are plenty of other road bridges due for resurfacing within the next few years.
Mr Hegeman: “We have the added luxury of not having to worry about filling our order portfolio either this year or in 2009. As work on both the Betuwe Route and the High Speed Rail Link drew to a close, we had the good fortune of being able to proceed with the major Harnaschpolder remediation project, the A73 motorway tunnels and the North-South metro line in Amsterdam.”
In terms of the further development of Strukton Civiel itself, Mr Hegeman looks forward to reinforcing the firm’s operations in the fields of dredging, groundwork and (regional) road building. The company known as Worksphere acquired from Stork has a long-standing reputation in the area of mechanical and electrical systems for buildings. And it is gradually expanding into the fields of tunnelling and traffic technology.

Source: Cobouw 12-02-2008
Author: Theo Leoné