BAM Infra Nederland’s Sustainability leaders, Erik Hoeksema (Department Head of Sustainability) and Jasper Visser (Program Manager Sustainability) discuss the pressing sustainability challenges facing the construction industry. From pioneering the Netherlands’ first modular, circular concrete bridge to deploying zero-emission asphalt machines, they share how innovative solutions are driving positive change.
1. Tell us a bit about what you do and your career to date. How did you end up working in sustainability?
We both followed different career path before embarking on the journey to make construction more sustainable. Erik’s background is in consulting and innovation, and early in his career he combined both to start working on sustainability. Jasper has a background in sustainable development, and he worked on organisational transformation processes before joining BAM Infra. Having complementary backgrounds benefits us in achieving our goals. Sustainability is a diverse and challenging topic which we can approach from different angles: technology, innovation, business, and transformation.
2. What do you see as the most pressing sustainability challenges facing businesses today, and how can these be addressed through innovation and collaboration?
In construction, there are challenges at different levels that make it hard for an ambitious company like BAM Infra to be as sustainable as we want to be. At a foundational level, we work with materials such as concrete and asphalt that traditionally have an enormous footprint. Through collaboration and innovation, we’ve managed to reduce this footprint considerably, but we’re not there yet.
Sustainability means working together with others. BAM is proud to have partnered with many others, including the TU Delft, in building the first modular, circular concrete bridge in the Netherlands.
Moreover, at a more structural level, there is considerable inconsistency in how we are challenged and rewarded to build sustainably. As a construction company, typically, we work for public or private clients. And while some of our clients share our ambitious outlook on sustainability, others are slower to adopt new materials or ways of working, such as electric machinery. Consequently, we’re slowed down in our ambitions. Our call-to-action to all our clients: please continue to challenge us (and yourself!) to build more sustainably!
3. How can businesses effectively balance the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, social, and economic) to achieve long-term success?
BAM’s sustainability and business strategy integrates these three pillars. Ultimately, our long-term success depends on our ability to generate value for four groups of stakeholders: our shareholders, clients, employees and the societies we work in. One of the tools we use to find a fair balance in the value we create is to use variations of inclusive pricing. By taking environmental and social cost into consideration in a project and comparing them to the actual cost, we manage to offer our clients better overall solutions.
4. How important is ESG in today’s business landscape? Can you discuss the role of ESG in risk management and investment decisions?
Increasingly, we see ESG as equally important to more traditional elements of a business’s success, such as its financial performance. Every year, a greater percentage of our clients place emphasis on the ESG or sustainability performance of our company in awarding contracts. Internally, themes such as the reduction of CO2 emissions have become a standard consideration in decision-making processes, including those around risk management.
5. How do you see the evolving regulatory landscape impacting businesses’ sustainability efforts? What are the key challenges and opportunities?
For a construction company such as BAM Infra that does a lot of work for public organisations, the evolving regulatory landscape is of paramount importance. Our sustainability ambitions are in line with (or go beyond) international agreements. As it takes time before such agreements are translated into national or regional legislation, we’re often in a situation where our ambitions are stricter than the minimum requirements of a client. Only a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape enables us to achieve our goals without always having to push for more with clients that aren’t at the forefront of sustainability. Fortunately, there are always clients that are willing to push the envelope that we can work with on our shared ambitions.
6. How can companies effectively communicate their sustainability efforts to stakeholders? What role does storytelling play in building trust and reputation?
It would be wonderful if our storytelling abilities matched our building skills. Within our industry, our achievements have made us a trusted builder with a stellar reputation. Outside of our industry, we think we can learn a lot from other companies. And probably we should. If you consider that concrete alone has three times more carbon emissions than all planes in the world, there is a lot to tell about how we reduce these. This could be a story of hope for a sustainable future and one of taking responsibility together. We need to tell that story better.
Instead of renovating roads using new materials, BAM has been exploring how to apply technologies novel in the Netherlands to create circular road paving at low temperatures. This drastically reduces the need for virgin materials and carbon emissions.
7. How can companies measure the social impact of their CSR initiatives? What metrics should be used to assess effectiveness?
This is a tricky question. We’re working on a framework that measures the impact of our work on the wellbeing of people and communities. For instance, if we design a street with more room for trees and interaction between people, how does this influence their mental and physical health? Often, there is not a straightforward relationship between one and the other. This encourages us to look at our impact holistically: our ideal projects have positive social impact, but also strengthen biodiversity, contribute to climate resilience, reduce inequalities in communities, structurally limit carbon emissions, etc.
8. In your opinion, what are the key trends shaping the sustainability landscape in Europe, and how will these impact businesses in the coming years?
There are a few trends that structurally change how we do business in the construction industry. One, of course, is CSRD, which makes performance of different companies comparable. Another is the increasing focus on Scope 3 emissions and the responsibility of large companies, such as us, to improve the sustainability performance of the supply chain. Both developments have only just begun, but will result in a paradigm shift in our industry in the years to come.
9. How do you see the future of sustainability evolving in the next 5-10 years?
We’ve seen that in the last few years, the focus on our sustainability efforts has changed from improving our own operations to improving our value chain and sector as a whole. For instance, instead of simply buying the most sustainable concrete and processing this electrically (which we can do on our own), we’re now collaborating with concrete manufacturers to develop more sustainable concretes. This pivot will continue in the coming years, making collaboration between organisations ever more important to achieve the ambitious goals we’ve set for sustainability.
10. How can attendees apply your insights to their own sustainability journey?
We’ve touched upon concrete a couple of times in our answers. Concrete is one of the most versatile building materials in the world, and construction companies cannot do without concrete. BAM Infra uses hundreds of thousands of cubic metres a year of the material. Also, it has a tremendous carbon and material footprint. In our presentation, we’ll use concrete as an example to highlight the transition we’ve gone through and the lessons we’ve learned in the process. We’ll also invite attendees to collaborate with us, because as we’ve said, the sustainability challenges of the next few years demand collaboration to improve the entire value chain!
Don’t miss Jasper and Erik of BAM Infra Nederland speaking at the upcoming Sustainability Expo Europe. Taking place on October 1-2, this 2-day event will bring together over 500 senior sustainability professionals, sharing insights into the essential actions businesses must take to achieve sustainability. Register your place now.
