Heddes Bouw and Schouten Techniek's digital puzzle: 'Engineering is the bottleneck'

They once made Jumbo puzzles here, but since 2004 Ursem Modular Bouwsystemen has been building entire houses here. The pace is good, but still needs to pick up a bit. Meanwhile, shareholders Heddes Bouw and Schouten Techniek are tightening the digital thumbscrews. "Engineering is the bottleneck."

"We're still puzzling, but now with housing," says Boaz de Boer, commercial director at Heddes Construction and Development. Recording for the podcast Bureau Stoer has just begun. The conversation is about digitization in the sector; here in Wognum they have big ambitions in that area.

Sitting next to De Boer is Jeroen Coenders, founder of the companies Packhunt and Voortaan. You don't have to tell him how to get computers to do your dirty work for you. He already did that as a 9-year-old boy with a Commodore 64. Today he has two companies specializing in parametric design and digital building and works on behalf of some 90 (industrial) builders, installers, engineering firms and architects who want digital.

Since 1978

"Why we're here," Coenders responds soberly. "Because a lot is happening here. 'Construction is old-fashioned,' you sometimes hear 'them' say. Here (at Ursem Modular Construction Systems) they prove otherwise. If you see what they are doing here in terms of industrialization."

Anyone who thought that factory construction had only just sprung up will be disappointed here. Modular construction has been core business for this company since 1978. Although they have mastered the secret of the industrial blacksmith quite well, shareholders Schouten Techniek and Heddes Bouw still see plenty of opportunities for growth.

Jeroen Coenders and Boaz de Boer

Which one exactly? And what does their digital dream look like? "We want to remove the digital bottlenecks from the process, activate cooperation with our chain partners and speed up and simplify processes," De Boer summarizes.

Heddes builds 1,700 homes every year. Not ground-level houses, but apartments made of wood and concrete that take to the air. De Boer signals that the sentiment of the outside world, the market, citizens and consumers has turned. "They no longer care if a house comes from the factory. People have come to think it's normal, they've gotten used to it."

No surprise

Industrial construction is a no-brainer for him. "The staffing problem in the industry is getting worse. We have less and less technically skilled personnel. Then factory construction makes a lot of sense. With traditional construction, sometimes it's still a surprise what you get. Not with us."

The factory in Wognum is not fully automated. At the production site, man and machine go hand in hand. "We make about 4, 5 units a day. We need to scale something up. For a large project in The Hague, we will soon need 8 of them daily," De Boer knows.

The pace has to pick up. In terms of manufacturing, but also when it comes to drawing and calculation. De Boer: "Currently, we still do a lot of puzzling manually. With every project all over again."

From project to product

Precious time is lost in the process, is his analysis. "We want to move from project to product development. That means we have to put all the knowledge about that product and manufacturing process into a digital model. Once something becomes a project, it's just a matter of pushing a button a few times."

Photo: Thomas van Belzen

Engineering as a bottleneck. Kill that one and you're bacon at a time when labor productivity is coming under further pressure. Separately, digitizing is not only necessary, but it also brings back the joy of play. "It leaves you time for more fun things," he says.

Even more important, according to the two, is that all the chain companies involved also feel ownership of the solution. "That is why we have built a kind of partner network of companies that simply believe in this," says Heddes.

Digital building is like a marathon

That collaboration is not yet a given in the sector, Coenders experiences. He points to another traditional mistake that several managements make. According to him, investing in digital processes is like running a marathon. "After all, then you have to be able to run the same pace indefinitely. However, many parties who want to digitize think they have to run a sprint: 'I need one million euros and a year, and then I'll have it solved.' That is the wrong strategy. Digitalization should be a structural part of a company."

That's not the end of the matter, the duo continues. You can design and produce faster and smarter, but what use is that if the planning process takes 10 years? They have their ideas about that too. Curious which ones? Listen to the entire conversation in episode 35 of the podcast Bureau Stoer.

More Bureau Stoer

Bureau Stoer is a weekly podcast about area development. Three future thinkers and a journalist bite into the questions of today and tomorrow together with different experts. From grid congestion to affordability, from nitrogen to climate goals and problems that listeners manage to bring to the attention of "the bureau.