Global contractor Kanadevia Inova has stepped into the Dutch biomethane market by acquiring a majority stake in Groengas Cothen The acquisition was made through its subsidiary Iona Capital, which was purchased in January this year The acquisition included 11 Iona-managed biogas assets The Groengas Cothen is a 100GWh per annum biomethane facility in the central Wijk bij Duurstede municipality It will include planned biogenic CO2 capture BioValue – which operates across the Netherlands and wider Benelux region – will construct It currently has a portfolio of four operational plants and several others in the construction and development phase The Cothen facility is the latest addition to its portfolio as an experienced investor and operator in biogas is an ideal new partner as we look to grow the BioValue business “The deal strengthens our balance sheet and ability to develop larger assets whilst complementing our own in-house expertise with the Iona and wider Kanadevia Inova teams.”  added: “This is a landmark step for Iona Capital with its first investment in the Dutch biomethane market a key growth sector within the European Union We are delighted to back the BioValue platform and team who have a strong operational track record as well as capability to develop and build significant greenfield assets.”  executive vice president asset management at Kanadevia Inova welcomed the acquisition as “a strong signal of our intentions to develop biomethane assets in a strategic market.”  He continued: “We see this deal as a highly promising bridgehead into Europe’s biomethane market and a further step towards realizing our vision of becoming a global green utility in the waste infrastructure space.”  Iona received legal advice from Norton Rose provided legal advice tax advice from RSM and technical advice from SLR and eKwadraat EY provided financial and tax advice and Royal Haskoning provided technical advice to BioValue Full contact information: HERE Get the latest waste and recycling news straight to your inbox We are using cookies to give you the best browsing experience on our website You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings we will not be able to save your preferences This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again This website uses cookies to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site Keeping these cookies enabled helps us to fund and improve our website which is free to visit and use All such information remains confidential and we use only to determine which pages are popular with readers Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences More information about our Cookie Policy In the city of Wijk bij Duurstede in the Netherlands you can find what is perhaps the world's only drive-through windmill after Anthony van Eyndhoven submitted a request to build a windmill on one of the town gates the mill was used to grind tree bark that could be used in the leather tanning process. Van Eyndhoven also bought the house next to the mill it would house the people who owned and maintained the mill Rijn en Lek was purchased by De Vereniging de Hollandsche Molen (the Dutch Mill Society) the need for the mill's grinding abilities had faded But the society wanted to preserve the history that came along with the building Rijn en Lek is often confused with the windmill depicted in a 17th-century painting by Jacob van Ruisdael, titled Windmill of Wijk bij Duurstede. The structure seen in the painting was torn down around 1820 This is one of the very few intact windmills built by the Knights of St fish-shaped water spouts guard Savannah’s historic facades A historic Puebla estate featuring a striking castle A century-old ancestral home was home to some of the key figures of the Philippine Revolution The World Heritage-designated site of Japan’s industrial revolution Malta’s largest cemetery is a Victorian-era architectural masterpiece This windmill has been grinding pigments for traditional paints for more than 200 years One of the oldest suspension bridges in the world blends in perfectly with a medieval castle Meg Vickery receives funding from the University of Massachusetts Amherst for research UMass Amherst provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US View all partners Amid the economic and social fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people see the process of restarting society as a chance to do things differently. Some organizations are calling for big investments in infrastructure, both to generate jobs and to promote green economic growth But projects that sound worthy in the abstract can meet stiff resistance when it’s time to break ground locally in 2012 I served on a committee tasked with choosing an energy provider to build a solar farm on an old landfill in the progressive town of Amherst fought to preserve a bucolic meadow that had grown up on the landfill site It also highlights contemporary projects that successfully marry infrastructure and community into places where people want to be In European landscape paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Jacob Ruisdael’s Dutch landscapes windmills compete with church spires for prominence on the skyline Painters focused on windmills because they generated wealth and prosperity Classic English landscape gardens include a feature called a ha-ha – a grassy trench running across a lawn reinforced by a sunken wall that was invisible from the main house This created a view of what looked like unbroken lawn grazed by sheep and cattle – key sources of wealth and prosperity – while separating visitors from the animals and their waste In the 19th and 20th centuries a handful of architects and artists wrangled with weaving infrastructure and nature together. Frederick Graff’s 1823 Fairmount Water Works protected Philadelphia’s water supply and drew hordes of visitors to admire its Neo-Palladian architecture and landscape park along the Schuylkill River artists and landscape architects began to downplay or separate industry and infrastructure from their views of nature People came to understand nature as something unspoiled and separate from modern communities – a view that still dominates today As cities and suburbs expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries water treatment plants and waste facilities these structures were built on the industrial fringes of metropolitan areas Often they were located in underserved communities that lacked the political clout to object often perpetuate this destructive tradition are lifeless slabs encircled by chain link fences the idea that infrastructure can be inviting and aesthetic seems contradictory In my book I highlight recent infrastructure projects whose creative teams included artists architects or landscape architects and invited community input These facilities don’t just generate electricity or process waste: They also offer recreation and education and connect visitors to the sources of their energy and drinking water Hampden, Connecticut’s water filtration plant is one such ecological and aesthetic asset which resembles an inverted silver teardrop emerges from a landscape carefully designed to mimic the filtering processes that happen within the building Paths and ponds around the site provide recreation The Solar Strand at the University at Buffalo is a dramatic contrast to fields of solar panels arranged in unbroken rows irregular placement of arrays creates breakout spaces for outdoor classrooms It is a place of learning and recreation that showcases the school’s commitment to clean energy but developers built a new apartment complex near Amager Bakke to take advantage of the recreational opportunities it offers and large windows offer views of the treatment processes taking place inside All of these facilities involve the surrounding community educate the public and include nature and the landscape Such creative approaches could have avoided the bitter dispute Amherst experienced in 2012 Projects like these demonstrate that infrastructure can do more than provide energy and water: It can also create aesthetically welcoming spaces for society leaders consider how to restart the economy I believe they should consider investing in projects that are not only productive but enhance and revitalize the communities around them [Insight, in your inbox each day. You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter.] Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Dear Reader,Unfortunately our comment platform isn\'t available at the moment due to issues with our paywall and authentication vendor. Thanks for your patience. I thought of that brief Chilean encounter when I read about Laura Dekker, the 13-year-old Dutch girl who wants to sail alone around the world. She was born in New Zealand when her parents were circumnavigating, and she has become a sailor in her own right, sailing single-handed in Holland and in the waters off Friesland. Her parents are now divorced. Her father reluctantly backs the idea of her solo circumnavigation. Her mother is opposed to it. Recently, Laura sailed solo on the 26-foot Guppy to Britain, where she was detained and placed in a children's home. Her father went there to retrieve her, but allowed her to sail home alone instead. The Dutch authorities were not amused. They have taken Laura into temporary guardianship until a child psychologist can assess her ability to withstand the rigors of a solo sea voyage that could last as long as two years. On Oct. 26, she will learn whether she can weigh anchor for parts unknown. This isn't pure Huck Finn on Laura's part. Huck wasn't trying to be the youngest person to float down the Mississippi. In fact, Laura hopes to beat the record set by Mike Perham, the British 17-year-old who, on Aug. 27, finished a nine-month circuit of the globe in a 50-foot racing yacht. He broke the previous age record by two months. Laura would be at sea, utterly and sometimes abjectly solitary, at just the time in her life when most kids find their social world reknitting itself around them. Some people - looking back on their own adolescence - are likely to wish they could have spent those years alone at sea. Laura says she knows exactly what she's getting into, and the question, finally, is whether we believe her. The telling contrast isn't with 13-year-olds who want to stay home. It's with Perham, who crossed the Atlantic solo when he was only slightly older than Laura. His feat embodies the modern ideal of adventure. His boat was well-sponsored, and he had the vocal support of his family. Above all, there was never a sense that he was fleeing anything. He was sailing within the social contract, fund-raising for two charities every mile along the way. Laura Dekker's desire, as she told Dutch television, is "to live freely." Knowing adults everywhere will hear her youth in that phrase, and they will recall that the usual response to adolescents who want to live freely is, "grow up." She is, in fact, proposing to grow up at sea, to face without relief the almost unrelenting challenge of the ocean. And she's also proposing to do it in the shortest rounding she can, in order to take the Guinness record away from Perham. It may well be that for Laura, a solo circumnavigation is the shortest way home. She may, in her 20s, come to inhabit the sort of floating household that my friends and I came upon in Chile, the very kind she was born into. So far, she has done an excellent job of calling her father's bluff. If, in the end, the Dutch court allows her to set sail aboard the Guppy, the only bluff she will have to call is her own. Verlyn Klinkenborg is an editorial writer for the New York Times. This video is proof.What really mattersIn a world with too much noise and too little context We don’t flood you with panic-inducing headlines or race to be first We focus on being useful to you — breaking down the news in ways that inform We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today by Jeff Stein LinkOver the past few weeks, MSNBC show host Joe Scarborough has been leaning into the hate part of his love-hate relationship with Donald Trump with the two swapping insults on Twitter over Scarborough’s ratings and the intelligence of Scarborough’s co-host Mika Brzezinski The next logical step may have been for Trump and Scarborough to just duke it out during recess on the school playground. But Scarborough instead did what may be the next best thing to hit back at Trump: releasing a “thumping” music video going after Trump on his Facebook page Scarborough’s song is called “Amnesty Don,” and it mashes together racist stereotypes, footage of old Western films, Scarborough singing in a weird accent, photos of Trump scowling, hashtags, and many, many, many references to Donald Trump’s penis. (The Washington Post accurately describes it as “Crazytown.”) After busting out of a Turkish prison while serving consecutive life sentences for some minor offenses that won't be discussed here ended up in Amsterdam where we met a plucky young band that caught our ear because of our good timing I can pass along the new song written and recorded all in one day about Donald Trump's battle with premature softening it's performed by those same crazy kids you've grown to love from Wijk bij Duurstede Netherlands whom the natives adoringly call "Morning Joe Music." While the original version is in Dutch the boys luckily recorded an English version of "Amnesty Don" for posterity last night after returning from Hamburg Musical thanks to Nicholas Wells and Mikhail Pivovarov (Trump) said he’d deport Mexicans before they raped our wives And ban a billion Muslims before they took white lives That #Amnesty Don was never sticking to his plan Scarborough is trying to demean Trump by attacking him for “softening” his immigration position He does that by saying it’s like other parts of Trump that are going “prematurely soft.” (Did you get Scarborough’s subtle penis allusion there the joke is that Trump’s penis is soft like his immigration position.) But to attack Trump for becoming “soft” on immigration Scarborough takes the mindset of those who believe in the hard-line position So the video uses a lot of shockingly racist and offensive stereotypes — that Mexicans will rape wives and Muslims are out to get “white lives” — to accomplish its goal of portraying Trump as an immigration sellout It’s not that Scarborough himself believes in these racist stereotypes Scarborough has spent months criticizing Trump’s proposals on Mexican deportation and Muslim immigration as too draconian.) But the video doesn’t make clear whether it’s a satire of Trump’s flip-flops or of the xenophobia driving those beliefs in the first place Scarborough winds up trafficking in racist tropes to get his point across It’s enough to leave you with more questions than answers Is Scarborough mocking Trump for having racist beliefs Is he mocking Trump for not sticking to those racist beliefs Or is he trying to do both — while actually accomplishing neither Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day Auto workers supported tariffs to protect their jobs The most surprising consequence of Trump’s trade war Today, Explained podcastMay 4Love on the Spectrum stars call on RFK Jr. to resignTwo cast members of the hit Netflix reality TV show on what the HHS secretary misunderstands about autism The Gray AreaMay 3Did our politics fail us during Covid?Political scientist Frances Lee examines the “noble lies” and truth-seeking failures of the pandemic. Yes, it’s radical. But no, it’s not on the cusp of becoming law. He was born in Haarlem in the Netherlands in 1628 or 29; travelled very little (his longest trip seems to have been to the eastern provinces in the early 1650s); was living in Amsterdam by 1657; had one documented pupil (Meindert Hobbema); never married; cared for his relatives; occasionally suffered ill health; painted hard; sold decently but not spectacularly; and died aged 52 or 53 in 1682 and no letters or other personal documents have come down to us All this helps to explain the approach Seymour Slive takes to Ruisdael in his catalogue to the new show at the Royal Academy emeritus professor of fine arts at Harvard is expert at tracing the ownerships of paintings at connecting them to recognisable geographies at making connections between contemporaries and at tracking references over the centuries He is also bracingly appreciative of a work's magnificent effects of depth and solidity as well as its attention to things-in-themselves But he is just as bold in his resistance to allegorical readings in which a few animal bones are scattered at a crossroads in which more bones strew a path leading to a road he says: "There is no reason to call the bones nor do I see the crossroads in them as references to two ways of life." Elsewhere he adds: "An interpretation of Dutch landscape that admits one and only one reading impoverishes the subject it fails to take into account how skimpy and flimsy is our knowledge of the interpretation of Dutch artists Broad generalisations based on it are correspondingly shaky." and the fact-deficiency he keeps mentioning it seems foolish to disagree: very few paintings by Ruisdael court an allegorical reading which can't help suggesting the transience of life perched in a blasted oak and perhaps being mobbed by smaller birds in Oak Tree and Dense Shrubbery at the Edge of a Pond or simply to discord in the world at large there are the two masterworks The Jewish Cemetery with its gloomy ruins and admonitory tombs where the massive building towers over a shoreline and surrounding houses; even Slive admits that "it was not uncommon for analogies to be made between the natural forces that power what man has made and the divine spirit that gives him life" townscapes and portraits of buildings come with no obvious pointers as to how we might interpret them one of Ruisdael's most appreciative admirers Constable conceded that The Jewish Cemetery (which he knew as An Allegory of the Life of Man) had a message to communicate but felt this damaged the painting because sermonising lay "outside the reach of art" and was anyway unclear: "There are ruins to indicate old age and rocks and precipices to shadow forth its dangers But how are we to discover all this?" This appears to mean that Constable thought the painting "failed" simply because it lacks what Slive calls "an exegesis of [its] signification" It also suggests that Constable felt landscapes were best able to deliver their meanings when the viewer's attention is concentrated on physical realities Constable is a wonderful guide to Ruisdael He first came across him as an apprentice painter and soon focused his praise on the purity of the older artist's vision He felt that whereas several of Ruisdael's contemporaries made "an incongruous mixture of Dutch and Italian taste [and] produced a bastard style of landscape destitute of the real excellence of either" the man himself was faithful to things as they actually appeared "I have a print hanging up in the room where I am now writing," he told his wife Maria once "a view of the shore at Skeveling by Ruisdael The waves are so well done that it is impossible to look at it without thinking on Bognor [which the Constables liked and knew well] and all that is dear to me." Constable is enjoying a sympathetic association here but his further implication is crucial: it would not be possible without clear-seeing Constable's brother once said: "When I look at a mill painted by John which is not always the case with those by other artists." It was a smart remark and takes us to the heart of Constable's genius where accuracy and authenticity generate a mighty emotional strength This is what so pleased him about Ruisdael: we can hear it in the remark to Maria and even more clearly in his response to Thatched-Roofed House with a Water Mill "It haunts my mind and clings to my heart," he told his friend Archdeacon Fisher "and has stood between me & you while I am now talking to you not unlike Perne's Mill - a man & boy are cutting rushes in the running stream (in the 'tail water') - the whole so true clear & fresh - & as brisk as champagne - a shower has not long passed." The same sort of admiration fills his great copy of Ruisdael's Winter Landscape where it is once again fed by Constable's family-knowledge of mills and milling "The picture represents an approaching thaw," he said "The ground is covered with snow and the trees are still white; but there are two windmills near the centre; the one has the sails furled and is turned in the position from which the wind blew when the mill left off work; the other has the canvas on the poles which appears by the glow in the sky to be the south (the sun's winter habitation in our hemisphere) and this change will produce a thaw before morning The concurrence of these circumstances shows that Ruisdael understood what he was painting." Slive writes unsurprisingly well about Constable's insights It helps to settle the difficulty of how to look at a Ruisdael: to relish the minute botanical precision the marvellous depiction of trees (especially oaks and beeches) and the delicately cross-cutting waves in his marine paintings But it still leaves open the question of how to interpret what we see the clarity of his views rests on a paradox: yes we can tell that creamy-flowered shrub in Dunes By the Sea is the wayfaring tree viburnum lantana which even the great Linneus missed when he was botanising in the vicinity; yes birds and so on - but what about the features of the landscape that Ruisdael invented His friend - and presumably to some extent mentor - Allart van Everingden encouraged him to produce a number of Swedish scenes which Ruisdael painted without ever leaving the low countries His monumental painting of Bentheim Castle hoists the whole edifice on to a hill that did not in fact exist Even the decay that appears genuine in Two Water Mills and an Open Sluice is introduced for effect The easiest way to solve this apparent conflict of interests is to say that both of them - the accuracy and the make-believe - exist to promote a higher artistic good arranged clouds and altered watercourses because he wanted to create the best possible spatial relationships the perfect interplay of foreground and distance and the most telling ambivalence of light and shade But does this mean we should look on the paintings as being most definitively about themselves the rewards are immense: these are very beautiful images executed with an extraordinary mixture of skill and panache respect for littleness and thrill at grandeur Yet saying these things does not account for the whole of our experience when looking at them seems a degree too lofty and chill compared with the pictures it puts on display Loftiness isn't a bad word to use of Ruisdael but the loftiness of a grand vision that combines magnificently with things at ground level and thereby becomes not just approachable but admirable and warm He is a painter in whom artifice and observation are inseparable and while this means that we are always conscious of his works as compositions it hardly prevents us from bringing our own associations and - through those associations - our own readings to bear on them Just reminding ourselves of their recurring subjects proves the point Ruisdael's paintings are obsessed by heroic trees (often showing signs of age and damage) Where people appear at all (and by no means all the figures in these paintings are by Ruisdael himself but by contemporaries who specialised in figure-painting) they are occasionally shown working - in the gorgeous group of paintings that show the Haarlem bleaching fields for example - but are much more often found travelling along lonely tracks or halting in sandy by-ways Slive is correct: these are not pictures that wag their finger at us and ask us to accept a single moral point of view But they are paintings where the observer feels the lot of human beings is to be isolated (even when working) and transitory Where the cycles of nature offer the consolations of natural process without any more immediate and individual comfort Where even the strongest have no proof against time (those crumbling castles) And where a spire or church tower might or might not be able to hold its own under enormous skies the overwhelming mood of the paintings is melancholy - but it's a melancholy that is at once braced and offset by a love of particulars just as it was two centuries later in paintings by Constable is evident in nearly every picture in the RA show To take just one example: Cottage Under Trees Near a Grainfield shows a thatched red-bricked building with smoke rising gently from the chimney a woman at the door and a couple resting in the shade in other words - but complicated by the massive oak leaning above them and by the single cartwheel mouldering in the scrubby foreground It's an image that recalls the mixture of endurance and vulnerability as well as some of the principles of design in Constable's A Cottage in a Cornfield - and in doing so it anticipates Constable's great maxim: "We see nothing till we truly understand it." It &middot Jacob van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape is at the Royal Academy of Arts, London W1, until June 4. Details: 020-7300 8000 or royalacademy.org.uk Professor of Psychology Liesbeth Woertman has taken emeritus status her roots in the Utrecht’s working-class neighbourhoods Liesbeth Woertman (64) was interviewed by a magazine for women over the age of 50 about her book Core of the interview: beauty isn’t about perfection When the magazine was delivered to her home in Wijk bij Duurstede and the professor opened it Her face was photoshopped to a completely wrinkle-free image If they’d just used lighting to make me look my best Others imposing a beauty ideal on you – if only it had just been an incident Woertman reflects on an anti-wrinkle cream commercial “A man tries to take a photo of his wife on the grass while the music in the background becomes more and more sombre I think it’s the most offensive commercial there is I tried to study this: when do we experience beauty If I were to compare my looks to those of my students But if you just compare yourself with regular men of your age us Dutchies are fairly satisfied with our looks I try to give a little beauty back to life again A vase of tulips of which the leaves are falling off can be gorgeous Woertman doesn’t think very long before she says things They’re remnants of a youth spent in Sterrenwijk and Oudwijk both working-class neighbourhoods in Utrecht Colleagues and managers at Utrecht University sometimes had to get used to that directness Many young people with issues knew where to find her she was already the kind of person who stood up for children who had issues young people have sensed that Liesbeth can take them under her wing She was named teacher of the year multiple times – of her study programme “I did my best to understand what level of knowledge my students were at That’s why I never created a lesson by myself I wouldn’t get any further than the first one even in a lecture hall with five hundred students I’d be teaching gender identity development and asked: ‘Who among you thinks I’m a boy?’ ‘Huh because I am wearing trousers.’ That’s how I’d build it I’d say: ‘What if one of my male colleagues wore eyeliner underneath his eyes What would you think?’ Some would say: ‘Yeah I guess he’s gay.’ I’d say: ‘That’s curious when I arrive wearing trousers: that’s a transvestite?’ We’d continue like that endlessly I wanted to make people aware of their own ideas about what makes a woman or a man And that everyone is constantly discriminating all day long I thought: would I be able to do the next one you feel that you’re not completely appreciated the same way middle class or upper class people are I quickly caught on to what was real and what was fake I thought it was curious that people who had the most money were allowed to sit at the front of the church A pregnancy at a young age did not form an obstacle to her development After the ‘moedermavo’ – evening secondary school classes specifically geared towards mothers at the lowers level of secondary school (mavo) you’d think: that woman is highly ambitious I’d think: would I be able to do the next one I was more or less waiting for something to stop me at some point That I wouldn’t be capable of doing something I’d get this strange desire to explore the new worlds that had opened up.” I felt a child-like joy to grab my toga and hat from a kind of dress-up chest where people had to work themselves sweaty for their money I could sit on my lazy arse and read beautiful texts Just dive into the history of something completely I thought it was amazing that this existed.” Next to her job as a teacher and became professor and educational director I felt a child-like joy to grab my toga and hat from a kind of dress-up chest and put them on.” She’d meant to say goodbye to the university as educational director “I’ve never felt as vulnerable as I have during my illness I don’t necessarily have to become all that old Because I don’t know what else I’m capable of.” The concept of publishing and researching so much has gone too far she was a counsellor of scientific integrity She’d have preferred taking up her previous work again: working on smaller-scale education the UU became a little less like my university Young people especially were in charge of education the concept of publishing and researching so much has gone too far I’m of the generation who want to get to know their students we’ve started to create consumers instead of future professionals who want to understand their discipline “The reform of the first year of psychology was successful We linked the tutors and mentors to work groups I’d have loved to see the status difference between university of applied sciences and university disappear and is almost completely separated from health care we’re supplying graduates who’ve barely ever seen a client or a patient They’ll only learn the job after graduating Why don’t we live more intergenerational lives She never regained the sharpness of mind from before her illness Woertman is full of praise for her employer’s approach thinking along with her and not just removing her she’ll have to wait for an official farewell with the working title of The Most Beautiful For Last “We do everything in our power not to look old Out culture has a very negative image of the elderly people have been using terms like ‘dry wood’ and ‘worn out’ But we’re all getting older with each other “I think it’s amazing that Jan Terlouw is calling for young people to create a manifest for a better world together Why aren’t we living more intergenerational lives I’m happy to say I have friends from all age groups Two of my best friends are in their thirties.” And her farewell address isn’t going anywhere “I’m going to call for education to be open to people who aren’t from academic environments it just depends on which one’s spoken to.” During that official farewell the girl from Sterrenwijk will be full of wonder again “I’m definitely going to be there in full regalia Heb je een tip of opmerking? Stuur ons je nieuws of foto via WhatsApp of mail Hoogheemraadschap De Stichtse Rijnlanden (HDSR) wil drie partijen inschakelen voor de versterking van de Lekdijk: Mourik Infra Van Oord Nederland en het Lek ensemble (Heijmans Infra Zij gaan samenwerken volgens de formule van innovatiepartnerschap Het streven is om de dijkversterking emissieloos uit te voeren Het project heet Sterke Lekdijk en maakt onderdeel uit van het Hoogwaterbeschermingsprogramma (HWBP) De dijk langs de Lek beschermt al negenhonderd jaar een groot deel van Midden- en West-Nederland De primaire kering voldoet niet meer aan de nieuwe veiligheidsnormen in de Waterwet en wordt tussen Amerongen en Schoonhoven over een lengte van 55 kilometer versterkt Hoogheemraadschap De Stichtse Rijnlanden heeft de opdracht voorlopig gegund aan Mourik Infra Het gaat om de gehele dijkversterking: zowel planuitwerking als realisatie Die is opgeknipt in zes deelprojecten (zie de kaart onderaan) De partijen zijn gekozen na een Europese aanbestedingsprocedure Als er geen bezwaar komt van een van de andere inschrijvers wordt de gunning definitief en gaan het waterschap en de bedrijven vanaf augustus samen aan de slag Innovatieve oplossingenHDSR streeft ernaar dat de dijk goed wordt ingepast in het landschap en de omgeving en waar mogelijk kansen voor natuur cultuurhistorie en mobiliteit worden benut Daarvoor zijn innovatieve oplossingen nodig Om dat te stimuleren koos het waterschap voor de Europese aanbestedingsvorm van innovatiepartnerschap “Hiermee willen wij innovatie verder helpen” zegt communicatieadviseur Marc Wessels van HDSR “Met innovatiepartnerschap kunnen we innovatieve oplossingen voor dijkversterkingen die op pilotschaal beschikbaar zijn Bij het project Sterke Lekdijk gaat het om innovaties uit de projectoverstijgende verkenningen (POV’s) Macrostabiliteit en Piping van het HWBP contractmanager van HDSR bij het project Sterke Lekdijk en verantwoordelijk voor de aanbesteding “Wij richten ons specifiek op succesvolle innovaties in bestaande pilots zoals barrières van grof zand en kunststof filterschermen Die willen we verder brengen tot echt doorontwikkelde technieken We hebben daarom de deelnemers aan de aanbesteding de vraag gesteld: bij welke innovaties binnen de POV’s zien jullie kans deze verder te ontwikkelen en een goede rekenmethode te krijgen zodat de techniek aantoonbaar veilig en beheerbaar is?” Streven naar nul emissieDuurzaamheid was een belangrijk aspect bij de aanbesteding Hoogheemraadschap De Stichtse Rijnlanden daagde de marktpartijen uit om de dijkversterking uit te voeren zonder bij te dragen aan de uitstoot van broeikasgassen Deze ambitie gaat verder dan materieelbewegingen en transport tot het strikt noodzakelijke te beperken “Onze ambitie is om de Lekdijk emissieloos te versterken Er is behoefte aan een transitie bij het materieel dat buiten bij werkzaamheden wordt ingezet.” Volgens Molendijk zien de aanbieders hiervoor goede mogelijkheden “Zij vinden de omvang van ons project en de samenwerking daarbij interessant om erin te investeren Een van de winnaars heeft recent al een emissieloos netwerk opgebouwd waarbij de hele keten in kaart is gebracht.” Aan de slag bij deelprojectenDe drie innovatiepartners gaan ieder aan de slag bij een van de zes deelprojecten: Mourik Infra bij Salmsteke Van Oord Nederland bij Culemborgse Veer – Beatrixsluis en het Lek ensemble bij Wijk bij Duurstede – Amerongen De uitvoeringswerkzaamheden beginnen in 2021 bij Salmsteke Daarna volgen de andere deelprojecten elkaar op De planning is dat de dijkversterkingsoperatie in 2029 wordt afgerond  'Er komt ook proces- en sociale innovatie bij kijken' Wessels licht de aanpak toe: “Partijen die bij de eerste deelprojecten hun ambities waarmaken Daardoor is het voor hen de moeite waard om te investeren in het doorontwikkelen van innovaties En ontstaat er een langjarige samenwerking tussen innovatiepartners en waterschap Alleen als een van de partners echt niet waarmaakt wat die zegt Niet alleen technische innovatieLeren van elkaar staat volgens Wessels tijdens het project voorop “Wij vragen de aannemers onderling en met ons samen te werken We willen toe naar een samenwerking waarin we met elkaar echt één team vormen We trekken samen op en dragen allemaal verantwoordelijkheid om het project tot een succes te maken maar het gebeurt in de praktijk nog weinig.” Het gaat dus niet alleen om technische innovatie “Er komt tevens proces- en sociale innovatie bij kijken Bij het innovatiepartnerschap is ook onze eigen beheerorganisatie keihard nodig We zullen de komende jaren met elkaar ontdekken hoe de gezamenlijke verantwoordelijkheid het beste lukt.” Financiële risico’s beperktInnovatiepartnerschap betekent een andere manier van financieren “Na het uitwerken van een innovatie bepalen we met elkaar wat daarvoor een realistische prijs is” “Op deze manier worden financiële risico’s zo klein mogelijk gehouden en ook niet eenzijdig bij de aannemer neergelegd Wij verdienen zelf het meeste aan een project dat soepel loopt Molendijk merkt tot slot op dat de markt enthousiast heeft gereageerd op de aanbestedingsvorm van innovatiepartnerschap “Een dik compliment voor de zes inschrijvers bij de tender Hun aanbiedingen waren van zeer hoge kwaliteit De marktpartijen hebben het goed opgepakt en dat geeft vertrouwen voor de toekomst.” De zes deelprojecten in kaart gebracht I Beeld: HDSR Laat je reactie achter en start de discussie.. 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