• Integrated insight into performance and collaboration within the ROK approach
• Shared understanding between Vitens and market partners on structural improvement areas
• Concrete improvement actions focused on governance, roles, collaboration, steering and knowledge sharing
• Clear insight into differences and applications across various ROK models
• Foundation for a programme-based improvement approach with shared ownership
To ensure the continued delivery of sufficient, clean and affordable drinking water in the future, Vitens faces an increasingly large and complex challenge. Pressure on space, capacity and resources is growing, while the investment agenda is expanding. This calls for a different way of collaborating with construction and delivery partners, with a strong focus on feasibility: projects must remain deliverable and the supply of drinking water must be safeguarded.
Against this backdrop, we are evaluating Vitens’ sourcing strategy. The aim is to further strengthen and future-proof collaboration with market parties in a tight market, while sharing tangible results and success stories and making bottlenecks visible to enable more effective steering towards relational contracting.
From insight to shared understanding
The first phase of the programme focused on creating overview and insight within Vitens. Through data analysis, document studies, and interviews with employees, a comprehensive picture was formed of how the framework agreements operate in practice. These insights were consolidated in an integrated report, including a bottleneck analysis and a SWOT analysis. This formed the starting point for the next step. In the second phase, these insights were enriched with input from market parties. Through surveys and interviews at different levels, additional perspectives were gathered and the insights were further deepened. This resulted in a broadly supported and shared understanding of collaboration within the chain and the opportunities to strengthen it further.
Collaboration as the starting point for improvement
Based on this shared understanding, Vitens and market parties entered into dialogue through joint sessions. In these sessions, the key themes and underlying bottlenecks were discussed and translated into concrete improvement directions for collaboration. The strength of this approach lay in bringing together insights from both Vitens and the market. This has led to a set of concrete improvement actions that are recognised and supported by both parties.
“It greatly helped us that the gut feeling and opinions about the framework agreement were translated into a concrete, fact-based report with clear recommendations and actions.”
Dennis van Wieringen, Manager Markt & Samenwerking
From analysis to a programme-based approach
The outcomes of the internal and external analysis, together with the results from the dialogue sessions, have been consolidated in an integrated report and translated into a programme-based approach to strengthen the relational contract. In this approach, execution and improvement are explicitly connected. By combining “run” and “change”, a way of working emerges in which improvement actions are directly linked to day-to-day operations and are structurally followed up. Organising these improvements in a programme-based manner ensures coherence, focus, and continuity in the further development of collaboration between Vitens and market parties.
Impact: stronger value chain and improved delivery
The combination of structured analysis and joint follow-up contributes to further strengthening the collaboration between Vitens and market parties and lays the foundation for more predictable and efficient project execution. By jointly defining improvements and organising them programme-based, a sustainable foundation for continuous development within the chain is created. In doing so, this approach supports the realisation of Vitens’ investment agenda and contributes to the continued delivery of reliable and affordable drinking water.
"By bringing together internal and external insights and translating them directly into collective action, a sustainable foundation for improvement is created across the entire value chain."
Schiphol Infrastructure | Strengthening steering on maintenance and replacement
How we work together with Schiphol Infrastructure on greater coherence, insight and more explicit choices in the maintenance and replacement portfolio.
