BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

What is the vision that enabled Van Oord to remain a private, family-owned company in the 150 years of its existence during which it grew from a small Dutch business into a successful international operation with a turnover of more than 1.5 billion euros a year? According to Koos van Oord, CEO from 1995 to 2008 - when he handed over to his cousin Pieter - and still an influential voice as a member of the Supervisory Board and Chairman of the family holding company, its driving force is the Van Oord family's entrepreneurial spirit.

"It is a combination of wanting to be your own boss, shaping your own destiny, the desire to go beyond traditional boundaries, to draw up your own plans in a field you love and you are passionate about. Then you must have a firm dose of perseverance, a talent for the field in which you work, and a family that supports you.

"As a company we are used to taking major risks, for example when we went into offshore wind power in the Netherlands. When we started with these activities in 2002, the market was limited. Was that move thought through? No. Was that all planned? Barely. But it was entrepreneurship, seeing opportunities that drove us to enter that market. We originate from the Biesbosch region, an area where land and water meet. Many entrepreneurs come from there. So it's also a bit in our genes.

"Our founding father had a vision, but not a kind of grand vision from which all the other decisions developed logically. Without a vision you cannot be an entrepreneur but I think the entrepreneurial drive was more important for our family than the vision. The vision came along the way. To stay ahead and remain competitive, you need to think about new opportunities all the time. If I had asked my father, who ran the business earlier on, 'Dad, have you ever in your life been innovative?' he would have said, 'Help me, can you explain that word? What are we talking about?

"But was he innovative? Yes, by asking questions like: how do we avoid becoming too dependent on one market? Should we broaden our activity base? How do we as a company stay on top of events? How do we attract good people? Those kinds of questions determined his direction step by step".

The company was founded by Koos's great-grandfather Govert van Oord in 1868. He set up his own business, selling wood and reed products grown in the marshy land of the Biesbosch. He proved to be a talented, hard-working, and original entrepreneur who liked taking risks, the kind of qualities that have characterized the Van Oords ever since.

By 1948, the company had split into three competing family businesses, all active in the field of marine contracting. One was established in the city of Utrecht. It was Van Oord Utrecht that was the basis of today's successful construction company. It was owned and managed by Jac. G. Van Oord and his sons Goof and Jan (who were later joined by their younger brothers Koos and Andries). Jac. G. Van Oord had a vision: to develop the company by expanding it into a broad spectrum of marine-related activities. It was well-positioned to take advantage of the Netherlands' economic expansion after the Second World War along with most of Western Europe.

The company benefited from winning projects to replace the infrastructure destroyed or damaged during the war, and after that from the many other projects needed to fuel the country's steady economic development in the 1950s and 1960s. Projects included the expansion of the Port of Rotterdam, building canals such as the Scheldt-Rhine connection and the Amsterdam-Rhine canal, and the development of new industrial estates such as the Sloe industrial area in the province of Zeeland. The Netherlands' unique geographical situation also played a major role.

Van Oord was heavily involved in a number of projects that were part of the Delta Works (Deltawerken) carried out after the flooding in 1953 in which nearly 1,600 people lost their lives. The Delta Works were a series of construction projects in the south-west of the Netherlands aimed at shortening the primary seawall that defended the land against the sea by 700 km and intended to protect a large area of land around the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta from the sea to prevent the disastrous consequences of future storm surges.

The massive challenges and size of the Delta Works projects turned out to be too large for one individual company. So in 1959 a new company called Aannemers Combinatie Zinkwerken [ACZ] was established to combine the expertise of its four shareholders, all companies active in the field of marine activities. Van Oord Utrecht was one of them. Because of their specific knowledge and experience, all four companies jointly developed many new innovative working methods such as machine manufacturing of subsea concrete protection mattresses. The collaboration proved to be a success.

It participated in the construction of a number of dykes and barriers culminating in the famous Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier (Oosterscheldekering), the largest and last of 13 ambitious projects which marked the completion of the Delta Works in 1986. This cutting-edge engineering and construction project involved closing off the Oosterschelde river by a dam and a barrier. A four-kilometre section in the barrier has huge sluice gates, which are normally open but can be closed in adverse weather. This complex solution was chosen to maintain the saline condition of the ecological environment in the Oosterschelde. The influx of salt water and the tides in the Oosterschelde national park have thus been retained, though restricted.

As a result of the Delta Works and the qualified staff Van Oord developed over time, the company gained a vast amount of experience in handling big, complex marine projects. This was the driving force for developing into a leading international business.

Van Oord did not get involved in the dredging business until 1953: it did so to avoid being too dependent on other companies for the dredging work that was crucial for the building of marine-related projects. It started by buying a 27-year-old dredging vessel, the Westerschelde, after which it bought a second dredger, the Waddenzee. Van Oord adapted it for its own purposes. In 1958 the company built a third vessel, the Oosterschelde, in its own yard. It was still a small fleet by Dutch standards, but Van Oord was on its way.