Our basis

It is important that we continue to have a solid basis, something we can build on so we can continue to excel. This is why we will continue to invest in a robust, smoothly running organisation. Where people like to work and safety, value creation, quality and risk management are top priorities. Every single day we improve our organisation, processes and products. By ensuring that our basis remains in good shape, we remain in top condition and create the basis for tomorrow.

Safety

Safety - both physical and psychosocial - is the basis for everything at Heijmans. Every day, we work hard to create a healthy, safe and attractive work environment. Safety is the top priority in everything we do. We work safely or we do not work at all. At Heijmans, we distinguish between four different types of safety: occupational safety, environmental safety, constructional safety and psychosocial safety.

Occupational safety

Occupational safety begins with a work environment with an open culture. A culture in which a keen eye for safety goes without saying and where people dare to call each other to account for unsafe behaviour and refuse to look the other way. Together we are going for ‘No Accidents’ (GO!). This way, every colleague returns home safe and sound every day, and we ensure greater job satisfaction and better results. As Heijmans, we are continuously improving to further embed safety in our organisation, from tender right through to to maintenance work. We also need our supply chain partners for this.

GO! programme

The GO! programme (Geen Ongevallen, or No Accidents) with its accompanying GO! compass (see image) is the foundation for safe working practices and acts as an incentive for a proactive safety culture. All business units are actively and continuously working on the implementation of their safety and master plans, with the support of the Safety department. We see ownership of this vital theme grow every day, as a result of which the role of the Safety Department is shifting from leading to coaching. To make sure all our colleagues in this department are even better equipped to advise and provide support in the field of safe behaviour, they all followed an intensive development programme in 2024.

VR safety training courses

In 2024, we trained more than 1,250 employees in the organisation in various aspects of safety using Virtual Reality (VR) glasses. That was an increase of 25% compared with 2023. On average, employees give these safety training courses a score of eight out of ten, which was also higher than previous year. These training courses have also led to more use of VR in assignments, particularly for managing project-specific safety risks. This initiative has earned us a nomination for the Innovation Pioneer 2025 award from Techniek Nederland, the umbrella organisation for the technical services industry. We are working with colleagues from the Safety department and experts from the field to develop even more training courses in the field of high-risk activities (HRAs). During our partner days last year, we introduced the co-makers in our internal chain to these VR training courses. Thanks to our collaboration with KPE Groep (training centre), our training courses are now being used by an increasing number of players in the industry.

Psychosocial safety: an essential part of a safe working culture

At Heijmans, we see psychosocial safety as an essential part of occupational safety. An environment in which employees feel safe enough to speak up, express doubts or report incidents is essential in the creation of a safety-minded working culture. To promote this, we have integrated the theme of psychosocial safety into various initiatives and work processes.

During our regular safety sessions, we use interactive methods such as the 1-2-4-All method, which ensures that everyone's input is heard. We also apply this approach in toolboxes and daily briefings on building sites. Specific attention to the theme can be found in initiatives such as GO!, which makes employees aware of the importance of a safe working environment.

One important initiative in 2024 was the Brain Based Safety (BBS) inspiration sessions, organised in collaboration with the KPE Group (training centre). These sessions focused on raising awareness of behavioural mechanisms, group dynamics and the role of managers in creating a safe working environment. During these sessions, the emphasis was not only on safe behaviour, but also on the importance of a safe culture and psychosocial safety. This programme was rolled out to various teams, such as the GO! programme team, the Safety department, and during the trade specialist days for the Asphalt and Non-residential building project businesses.

These steps are part of our continuing efforts to build a work environment in which safety is not just about following instructions, but is primarily about behaviour, culture and leadership.

Safety culture ladder

We use the Safety Culture Ladder to measure attitude and behaviour in the field of workplace safety. This measuring instrument is used throughout the construction industry. In 2024, all Heijmans business units (excluding Van Wanrooij and Van Gisbergen) were once again certified at level 4 of this safety ladder. This means that we demonstrate proactive safety behaviour across the board and continue to improve.

Raising awareness of safety

We use the internal communications programme ‘Hard lessons from the field’ to reflect on how we can learn from accidents. The goal is to make everyone at Heijmans aware of the risks involved in their work and the measures we can take to minimise these risks. In a video, colleagues Mano and Arie talk about their harrowing personal experiences following an industrial accident that affected them both. We are taking the next step towards a safe working environment with conscious and pro-active safety behaviour.

The GO! app makes it easy to report a risky situation or risky conditions. Depending on the location from which the report is made, colleagues in the same workflow will receive information about it. We continuously draw our colleagues' attention to the use of the GO! app through our communications channels.

Collaboration with partners: safety is essential and non-negotiable

In the construction industry, we feel that we have to make choices, often driven by time pressure. For example, it could be a choice between financial results or safety. At Heijmans, we say that working safely and healthily is more important than either time or money. Together with our clients, subcontractors and consultants, we constantly discuss how we can work together to maintain a healthy working environment and make any necessary improvements. This is also part of the Governance Code for Safety in the Construction industry (GCVB). This code stipulates that clients and contractors must work together to improve safety throughout the chain. Heijmans has been a member since 2014.

Our credo ‘we work safely or we don't work at all’ is non-negotiable. This became apparent during the planned work on the A13 motorway on a weekend in 2024. Despite the fact that hundreds of employees were ready to start work, we could not guarantee safety at that time, so we had to postpone the maintenance and did not carry out any work that weekend. Obviously, this was not good and the repercussions for our client, the Ministry of Public Works and Water Management, as well as on our subcontractors, suppliers and our own organisation, were considerable. But this was also a clear signal and a clear message that the way we think about safety in the Netherlands is changing.

As a sector, it is important that we continue to take our collective responsibility. We should not be reluctant to call each other to account for unsafe behaviour and to work together to identify where and how we can make improvements. To promote this attitude, we are sponsoring the new Chair in Integrated Safety at the Technical University of Delft and we are committed to changes in the curriculum and continuous education. In addition, we are promoting a cultural change in which clients, builders and engineers continue to actively challenge each other and hold each other accountable for construction-related safety. This is how we are increasing safety awareness in the chain and in society. 

Environmental safety

As a construction company, you are a guest in a local environment. From the start, you need to be open about what you are going to do and make sure you keep your promises. We tell the honest story to the local community and residents, including any inconvenience likely to be created by a project. At the same time, we can often reassure people by explaining the measures we are taking to limit the inconvenience. That is Heijmans' calling card for the local community: safety for people, the natural environment and fauna.

It is our responsibility to ensure a safe environment wherever we work. Following a careful inventory of the stakeholders in the area and the issues that may be at play, we adjust the design and implementation methodology accordingly. This enables us to reduce the risks ‘up front’. During implementation, we use the pre-established implementation methodology and make adjustments to this if it unexpectedly proves ineffective.

Construction safety

In the area of constructional safety, we will continue to follow the path we have taken as client and contractor and assume our role of engaging consultants and entering into contracts for full and complete consultancy assignments. This focus is reinforced in part by the refined strategies that focus on sustainability, connection and producibility; and in part via more intensive interventions in industries in the fields of material and production applications. Attention for detailed engineering and its validation is vital, as the world of construction design is extremely fragmented. Heijmans has assumed responsibility for providing even more clarity in specific task descriptions. We monitor the process through reviews and audits and evaluate this regularly with our partners, but also internally. The Heijmans Management System (HMS) includes a procedural requirement that Heijmans projects must be subjected to construction design reviews. These objective reports are shared with the relevant project teams and also discussed with our external advisors. The risks described are also included in the risk dossiers.

Social Safety: shaping public spaces

Our designers shape public spaces and the built environment. When we do this, we also influence the safety and perceived safety of users. This is related to both physical and social safety. Examples include the use of good sightlines at locations, enabling users to better assess situations, and the use of vandal-proof public furniture that is less susceptible to damage. Zoning also helps to make it clear to everyone what a space or area can or should be used for.

Value creation

It is important that we are and remain financially sound so that we can continue to invest in the future. That is why we are constantly looking at where we are profitable and where we can grow, both in the short term and the long term. This is how we work on sustainable value creation for now and in the future. You will find more information on this in the Financial Results chapter.

Quality

Heijmans devotes a huge amount of attention to quality. We believe this is about more than simply delivering high-quality products and services; it is also about organising our work in the right way. Lowering failure costs means we can minimise aftercare and increase customer satisfaction.

Process improvements

Quality control is an important part of our processes. Effectively safeguarding the quality of our products and projects internally provides us with insight into what is going well and what we could be doing even better. Armed with this knowledge, we can translate customer demands into an offer. In 2023, we started recording areas for improvement in a Sharepoint improvement list and we continued this in 2024. We use this list to record all reports of things that are going well and things that are not going so well. Each report is linked to an employee who is responsible for follow-up and monitoring. The employees involved are automatically notified when a registered problem has been solved. We use machine learning to examine the common threads running through reports and solutions, to learn from this and to implement improvements in our processes and products. We also use this method to monitor our success stories, and we use these experiences in new tenders to increase quality even further. Established processes guarantee a uniform method of working, but can also be seen as ballast because they sometimes feel cumbersome or inefficient. This is why ‘process maturity’ is high on our agenda. By continuously streamlining and simplifying mandatory processes, we can reduce the number of unnecessary procedures. Employees increasingly feel that they are supported by simplified processes, which enables them to do their work more effectively and more easily.

We also devote a great deal of attention to the onboarding of new colleagues. And it is not only the immediate managers who play a role in this. Others also contribute, such as the Safety and Quality departments. Teams that have been working on a large project with other partners for a prolonged period and then return to the Heijmans organisation are also given a kick-start, if they wish, to familiarise them with any improved standards, tools and processes. Our employees really appreciate this; it helps them improve the quality of their work and the products they deliver. In 2024, employees continued to receive e-learning training in areas such as contract management, risk management and cybersecurity.

Reliable and safe technology and systems

Cyber attacks are a serious threat to organisations worldwide, including Heijmans. We take the risks of phishing, ransomware and other types of attack very seriously. Heijmans has daily access to information from colleagues, construction projects, customers and clients. We work on a wide range of critical systems and installations for our clients. They not only build with us, but also build on the foundations we provide. Based on the Secure@Heijmans cybersecurity roadmap, we work continuously on the integration of cybersecurity into our business operations, products, services and projects. Awareness and knowledge about our own actions and our responsibilities on this front are extremely important. In the past year, we therefore continued to take steps to further improve our resilience in the field of cybersecurity.

In 2024, employees received training in the field of information security and other topics. After all, everyone at Heijmans must know how to act, how to identify risks, how to prevent cyber incidents and thus keep Heijmans safe. Our colleagues attended various training courses in this field, such as social engineering, the use of secure passwords and responding to risks. We also used an internal campaign to raise awareness of these issues. And we brought the subject of cybersecurity to the attention of our staff during several interactive quarterly meetings.

Using AI to build the future

AI is not just a technological advance, but an essential component of our strategy to realise a healthy and sustainable living environment. At Heijmans, we see AI as an essential digital building block that will enable us to take productivity and creativity to new heights. Thanks to the use of innovative applications such as our business generative AI solutions, fast screening of tender documents and our powerful generators and configurators, we are taking our projects to a higher level. In 2024, we continued to work on our home configurator, which combines customisation and efficiency, which will eventually be driven by our parametric designs, which ensure that advanced calculation models effortlessly streamline those complex processes.

Of course, we also keep an eye on the risks of AI. Inaccurate or incomplete data can lead to incorrect predictions, while excessive dependence on AI can lead to a decline in human skills and knowledge in our sector. Not to forget that AI raises issues of ethics and responsibility: who is responsible for errors caused by AI?

Risk management

Taking risks is an inherent part of doing business. Risks are part and parcel of our work, but Heijmans only accepts risks that we as an organisation can control, influence, reduce and bear. We take risks under specific conditions, and always carefully and deliberately. For example, we only take on projects that we are good at and that offer a healthy balance between risk acceptance and earning potential. This keeps our projects predictable and contributes to Heijmans' financial health. In addition, we do not hesitate to say no to a future assignment if the risk acceptance and earning potential are out of balance. You can find more information about this in the Risk Management chapter.