Our foundations

A solid foundation is essential for continuing to grow and excel. That's why we continuously invest in a robust, smooth-running organisation where people enjoy working and where safety, value creation, quality and risk management are at the heart of everything we do. We work to improve our organisation, processes and products every single day. By maintaining a strong, tidy foundation, we can stay in prime shape and lay the foundations for the future.

Safety

Safety remains at the heart of everything we do. Our motto 'We work safely, or we don't work at all' demands daily ownership from everyone on our projects and in the value chain. In 2025, we went one step further, from rules to conduct. An open culture, exemplary conduct and the space to report unsafe situations are key here, both when it comes to physical safety and psychosocial safety. The full safety policy can be found at rapportage.heijmans.nl.

Our commitment to further improving safety within Heijmans and across the construction sector remains undiminished. Unfortunately, the fatal accident involving a subcontractor on a tower crane lift on one of our projects once again underlines the need for such a commitment. The death of the employee concerned hit us all hard. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, loved ones and colleagues. At Heijmans, the employees involved on the project have been offered greater support. We are helping each other to process this tragic incident.

Learn and strengthen each other

It goes without saying that we are constantly working to further improve our safety performance. We are slowly making progress towards an industry where everyone has to work safely, although we know that our sector will always involve risk. This awareness helps us to remain vigilant and alert.

At Heijmans, we are aiming for 'No Accidents' (GO!). GO! has been in place since 2013 and focuses on developing proactive safety conduct. GO! has been developed further in recent years, and in 2025 we saw further growth in ownership across the business units. The Safety department increasingly focused on coaching and support, making a clear move from rules to conduct.

Our VR training sessions once again reached a record number of colleagues and were widely used in various aspects of safety. Special attention was paid to high-risk activities (HRAs) this year, with the topic highlighted through awareness-raising campaigns and supported by videos, toolboxes and project-oriented sessions.

Psychosocial safety has become an integral part of work meetings and leadership programmes, making discussions about risks, near misses, incidents and doubts increasingly easy.

We have paid more attention to near misses (situations that could have caused serious injury) over the past year. These have been discussed according to the "1-3-14 methodology" (a systematic approach to investigating and following up on safety incidents) in order to learn from them and further improve our work processes. This approach contributes directly to a proactive and learning safety culture.

In 2025, members of operational management were trained in crisis management, while the team of trained crisis managers was expanded. We follow a script in situations that are considered to be a crisis, and our staff are trained to take immediate, effective action. The crisis management team operated smoothly when the fatal accident occurred. In addition, we worked on drawing up a multi-year safety strategy focusing on the 2025-2030 period.

Safety in the value chain

Staying safe and healthy at work is non-negotiable. We are in constant dialogue with clients, subcontractors and consultants about risks, improvements and shared responsibility.

In 2025, this was underlined by Heijmans receiving the Stedin Safety Award for our approach to working safely when laying cables and pipes. This recognition shows that our commitment to safer working is also seen and appreciated from an external perspective.

Safety remains an important focal point when working on and around infrastructure. All too often, our road workers are still confronted with road users who ignore red crosses or enter cordoned-off work areas at high speed. The importance of environmental safety and ongoing dialogue with clients, highway managers and the authorities therefore remains key and unchanged.

Heijmans continues to actively contribute to the Governance Code for Safety in Construction and to knowledge development, including through the 'Professor of Practice for Integral Safety' at Delft University of Technology (UoT). In 2025, we further enhanced this collaboration with the arrival of a dedicated Professor of Practice for Integral Safety. The position is financed by Heijmans and is intended to demonstrate clear increases in integral safety together with the sector. This allows us to work towards strengthening constructional safety from the design to the utilisation phase and contribute to embedding safety as an established industry standard.

Value creation

It is important that we are and remain financially sound so that we can continue to invest in the future. We do what we can to strengthen our earning capacity and constantly monitor the balance between risk acceptance and return. This means that we are looking closely at where we return a profit and where sustainable growth is possible, both in the short and long term. In doing so, we dare to say no to activities that do not make a sufficient contribution. As an example, we do this by applying a selective tender policy, partly in light of the increased supply, with a clear focus on projects that fit our core skills. By focusing on margin above volume, we target sustainable value creation for the present and in the future. You will find more information on this in the Financial results chapter.

Quality

Heijmans focuses on guaranteeing and further improving our quality every day. For us, that goes beyond delivering products and services to a high quality standard – it's also about how we organise our work. Clients and end users can count on maximum effort and expertise during both the design and implementation process and the end result. We are constantly working on improving our core processes in order to stay in great shape. We do this together with our teams and using modern resources, such as generative AI, to ensure we can take a smarter, more consistent and increasingly predictable approach to our work.

Process improvements

Quality control is an important part of our processes. Effectively safeguarding the quality of our products, projects and processes 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. Technological developments such as generative AI allow us to recognise trends and see opportunities for improvement more quickly. We also use this method to monitor our success stories, as we can properly assess, share and use project experiences in new tenders and projects to further enhance quality. 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. We make structural improvements to our way of working by continuously standardising our way of working. Employees experience support from simplified processes, enabling them to perform their work better, more enjoyably and more easily.

In 2025, the 'Improve' team organised a major improvement event for Heijmans employees, where information was shared on how to make processes smarter, faster and better to help us guarantee higher quality on an internal level and greater control over our objectives. 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.

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 employees, 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 2025, employees received regular training in the field of information security. After all, everyone at Heijmans must know how to act, how to identify risks, how to prevent cyber incidents and thus keep Heijmans safe. In this area, colleagues have completed various training programmes, including the use of secure passwords, recognising phishing and information classification. We also used an internal campaign to raise awareness of these issues.

AI as a digital building block for the future

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an essential digital building block in allowing Heijmans to work smarter, faster and better. It offers great opportunities for faster design and analysis processes, automation of routine tasks, reduction of failure costs, and access to new technologies and better decision-making, allowing us to increase our productivity, quality and innovative strength. At the same time, it presents risks such as inaccurate data and models, privacy issues, ethical dilemmas and changing earning models by competitors or new entrants. As such, we invest in a robust data infrastructure, compliance (such as the EU AI Act) and clear governance around privacy and transparency.

Heijmans' AI strategy aims to increase knowledge throughout the organisation and embed AI into our business processes at the same time. In 2025, the AI Empowerment Hub was launched as a central location for knowledge, training and support within Heijmans. The AI Empowerment Hub encourages AI literacy, knowledge sharing and monitors the rules surrounding responsible use. The Digital Transformation Council (DTC) provides guidance and ensures coherence across all digital initiatives. The DTC monitors the strategic direction, prioritises resources and encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing to make digitalisation a key part of our 'Together towards 2030' strategy.

Risk management

Risk management is an integral part of business at Heijmans. We only accept risks that we can manage and bear as an organisation, and that are aligned with our earning capacity. We keep our business operations predictable and financially sound by carefully selecting projects with a healthy balance between risk and return. Where the risks are disproportionate to the expected earning capacity, we choose not to take part.

You can find more information about this in the Risk management chapter.