RWS is building the Blankenburg link in conjunction with partners from the region. This means that they are working together to improve access to Rotterdam. The Blankenburg link is a new motorway being built to connect the A20 at Maassluis to the A15 at Rozenburg, through a tunnel under the Scheur river. AT Osborne has helped RWS to prepare and execute this project for several years, with our consultants having been – and are currently – involved in the area of project management and assistance with processing the political and technical files, in particular. At present, AT Osborne is providing quality management within the project, and is managing the intersection that the Blankenburg link creates where it meets the A15 near Rozenburg.
Depending on the needs of the project at any given time, AT Osborne provided different consultants. This allowed our consultants to use their individual skills and expertise within the project tasks to optimise the outcomes. For example, for one of the tasks we paired up a colleague with experience in process management and water with another with a civil engineering background. Together they proved the right consultants to carry out an analysis of the interfaces between the Blankenburg link project and the A15. The defining consideration for this interface is that it covers solely the technical interface between two stretches of motorway, but it is also the interface between two Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) contracts and their respective contractors and project organisations within RWS.
In the analysis performed by Joost and Thomas, they first mapped out all the technical implications for the addition of the Blankenburg link for the existing A15, meaning that they could make a proposal of how the land area and the activities could be divided between the two contractors. In addition, they suggested how RWS could intelligently include this division of activities and the resulting responsibilities in the contracts for the two contractors.
To move forward with the process, Joost and Thomas reached agreements with a variety of stakeholders within the RWS organisation, and by involving all the relevant internal parties, a long-lasting agreement was reached. This is currently being set out in further detail during the drafting of the contracts for both projects. Thomas is involved in the ongoing development and implementation of the advice we provided on behalf of AT Osborne.