Building trust – the key ingredient

On 23rd of November, Liesbeth, Marlies and Rikjan took part in the ‘Kantoor vol Energie’ EET-café (“Office full of energy Excellent Expert Team (EET)” in Rotterdam. A  gathering of forerunners in the development of energy neutral buildings and infrastructure.

Jaap Strating, procurement officer of the city of Eindhoven, presented our project ’the smart way towards sustainable municipal buildings’. With the core team we developed a new way of working that allows for maximum sustainability by optimally building on the qualities and the innovative solutions brought in by the different contributing organisations over time.

Jaap chose to highlight the key ingredient for making a successful transition: building trust, in the teams and in all people involved. He called his talk “bouwen aan vertrouwen in plaats van bouwen aan gebouwen” (building trust instead of building on buildings). As part of his talk, he showed this short movie, in which the core team members tell (in Dutch) what they contributed to building this trust. So take a look to see what Marlies, Rikjan and Liesbeth, and the others have to say!

The participants in the EET-café were all people actively working towards energy neutral and energy positive buildings and infrastructure. The attitude was very positive. In the past 5 years, so many lessons were learned, that now the norm for newly built offices is not energy neutral, but should be and can be energy positive, through applying the various existing technologies for renewable energy. The main challenge remains to make existing buildings energy neutral. The various example projects shown this evening, including our Eindhoven project, demonstrated that this is possible, with a new mindset and team approach for handling the development and the business case. Always with a perspective on a future in which we live within the limits of this planet’s resources.