Who We Work For
Liander
Collaborating above and below ground
Challenge
The energy transition requires a massive expansion and renewal of our underground infrastructure. At the same time, space is scarce, and people, materials, and implementation capacity are limited.
Municipalities, grid operators, drinking water companies, and contractors all work on their own tasks. Each has its own schedules, interests, responsibilities, and methods. But ultimately, all that work must take place in the same subsurface.
Everyone understands the importance of collaboration. Yet in practice, it proves difficult to coordinate plans in time. As a result, opportunities to combine work are not always utilized.
Commissioned by Liander, we investigated how excavators can collaborate earlier and better. Not just by exchanging information, but primarily by making the joint planning process concrete and workable.
Approach
We started in Rotterdam, where we brought together existing knowledge and experiences with a multidisciplinary team from Liander, Stedin, the municipality of Rotterdam, and contractors Van Gelder and Siers Groep.
During a Design Sprint, the team investigated where the main bottlenecks were and developed an initial visual prototype for the tactical planning of excavators.
Next, we broadened the research. We spoke with stakeholders from various municipalities and organizations and investigated how underground collaboration was organized elsewhere.
The knowledge and results gained formed the starting point for a subsequent iteration in Leiden. There, we worked further on the process for integrated programming with Liander, Dunea, and the municipality of Leiden.
Together, we mapped out the various process steps, information needs, responsibilities, and interdependencies.
In doing so, we consciously chose not to think from the perspective of a new application, but from the actual collaboration process. Because a shared system doesn’t automatically mean that organizations actually work well together.
Pieter Gockel
Solution Manager, Alliander
Results
The project resulted in a detailed, visual process map for integrated programming, building on the earlier prototype for tactical planning.
The process map shows which steps excavators must go through together, when information needs to be shared, and how strategic, tactical, and operational planning align.
This also made a key insight concrete: good collaboration doesn’t start when the work is already at the doorstep, but much earlier, when plans can still be coordinated with one another.
The research also made it clear that collaboration requires more than just shared planning. Organizations must be willing to put their interests and information on the table in time, agree clearly on responsibilities, and make choices together.
The result is a practical starting point with which the involved organizations can further develop their collaboration. Furthermore, the insights and visualizations offer starting points for other municipalities, grid operators, and excavators facing similar challenges.
About
Liander manages and develops electricity and gas grids in a large part of the Netherlands. In this project, Liander collaborated with Stedin, the municipality of Rotterdam, Van Gelder, and Siers Groep. The knowledge gained was then used in the further development of integrated programming with Dunea and the municipality of Leiden.
