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A case study research was executed to determine how Rijkswaterstaat can improve the current way of implementing sustainability into its construction and maintenance projects. Deficiencies and plus-points of the current approach were identified and recommendations are formulated to resolve the deficiencies. The recommendations are based on best practices that were extracted from the case studies.

Currently there are no clear and practical rules as to how risks should be allocated and how the process of risk allocation should be designed to come to the best result. In this research a distinction is made between effective allocation (i.e. the risk are allocated to the ‘right’ party) and efficient allocation (i.e. the time and effort of the process of risk allocation yield value for money).

The project leader of the design team controls and steers the design process in order to make a successful design with a balanced mix of aspects and has to adapt to complexity and the dynamic character of the design process. How should a design management approach based on steering by aspect systems be put into practice to improve coping with uncertainty, change and complexity in the design process of complex integral civil engineering projects?

Obtaining an understanding in the dynamics of project complexity and the suitable management approach to deal with complexity by studying the Bergermeer Gas Storage project at TAQA Energy B.V.

European railways have faced fundamental reforms to their organizational structures in the past decades. The reform plans, instigated by the European Union, resulted in a vast arrange of organizational structures visible today, more or less unique per EU member state. The main question that arises: do performances of European railways relate to the type of organizational structure in place? Did the EU reform plans indeed increase efficiency and effectiveness in Europe’s railway sectors? Israel’s railways possess a much shorter history than its European counterparts. The current organizational structure of Israel Railways presents a number of issues in adequately managing infrastructure and transport operations. Israel is interested to learn from experiences in European railway sectors if a renewed organizational structure might increase overall performance. The thesis work closely examines organizational structures and evaluates performances of railway sectors in 27 European countries. It investigates if a correlation between organizational structure and performance is visible at all and which lessons of the European reform plans can be taken along in designing optional new structures for Israel Railways.