Heijmans : Nijmegen road network in good hands

Frans: 'The maintenance contract started in May 2016 but prior to that Heijmans had already been our maintenance partner for five years. During those five years we managed to complete as much as ten years of work together, that's how many projects we worked on. Exceptional. On top of that, many of the main roads here go straight through the centre of the city. The local residents and the accessibility of shops and businesses are very important to the municipality. Intensive high quality local communication is therefore required.

Due to the good collaboration with Heijmans we were able to work day and night on the main roads on some projects. Heijmans puts a great deal of thought into these projects and is an important and reliable contact for the area. That is worth a great deal to us. Working in the middle of the city is not something for just anyone to take on.'

'Our organisation offers very flexible deployment options', says Johan. 'We have many people originating from this region who know the situation in the city very well. The same team has been together for many years. There have been some changes, but the core has always remained the same. These people can react swiftly, help resolve problems and be on site quickly. This is how we can best serve the needs of the municipality.

Usually the projects remain on the planning a little longer but sometimes you just have to react swiftly. We can plan the projects mostly ourselves, the municipality has confidence in us. Moreover, we jointly apply the rule 'a deal is a deal'. We also fulfil these deals together. The short reporting lines enable us to do that. That works very well.'

An example is the Berg en Dalseweg, which is a three-kilometre long main road in East Nijmegen. Frans: 'The plan was to replace the asphalt in two phases. It had to be done in phases because the maintenance budget was limited. However, there were increasing complaints from local residents and road users. The alderman stepped in and the work had to be carried out quickly after all.

Not only that, but we had to start within a week. On Friday we called Heijmans and on Tuesday the first machine was already milling off the asphalt. During the work we decided to not only renew the bad sections but the entire road. The best thing was that, after taking traffic measures, Heijmans was able to keep part of the road open at all times throughout the work. Because everything went quickly there were relatively few complaints. In a matter of ten days the old asphalt had been removed. We then drew up a plan together with a detailed phasing of house number to house number.