· · · Institutional Repository

Public transport has to be succesfull to maintain mobility in todays dense urban areas. Many scientific disciplines make contributions on how to achieve that success, with diverse and sometime contradictory recommendations. The thesis shows how policy makers can use the existing recommendations to improve the overall performance of public transport.

‘De duivel had een betere pers in de Middeleeuwen dan marktwerking in de 21ste eeuw’, schrijven Baarsma, Theeuwes en Koopmans (2010). Dit artikel geeft het marktwerkingsdebat rondom infrastructuren weer en stipt vier argumenten aan die node worden gemist. Dat was twintig jaar geleden al zo toen de voorstanders in de meerderheid waren. En die argumenten ontbreken nog steeds, nu de sceptici de overhand hebben. Door voorstanders worden alle positieve veranderingen opgehangen aan marktwerking; en de tegenstanders schrijven alle kwaad toe aan de liberalisering. Dit artikel laat zien dat achter de zwart-witbeelden een ingewikkelde en genuanceerde werkelijkheid ligt, die het onmogelijk maakt om ofwel alle verdiensten ofwel de zwarte piet toe te delen aan marktwerking. Marktwerking is geen panacee noch een ziekte. Het is een instrument dat, mits kundig gebruikt, bepaalde problematische situaties in een infrastructuursector kan verbeteren.

Het transportsysteem is afhankelijk van complexe technische systemen, gerealiseerd in projecten. In die projecten zijn een besluitvormings-, ontwikkel-, en realisatiefase te onderscheiden. De complexiteit van de systemen leidt in de verschillende fasen tot onzekerheid en tot te hoge verwachtingen ten aanzien van de prestaties van het te realiseren systeem. Veel wordt vaak verwacht van innovaties. Hogesnelheidslijnen, tunnelveiligheidssystemen, matrixborden; van dergelijke systemen wordt vaak veel verwacht. Juist die innovatieve systemen stellen vaak teleur. Wetenschappelijke literatuur stelt dat projectmanagement geen passend antwoord heeft op onzekere en innovatieve projecten. Innovatie eist intensieve samenwerking tussen projectteam, technologieleveranciers, klanten, omwonenden, toezichthouders, toekomstige gebruikers en beheerders. De literatuur geeft ook alternatieve managementstrategieën, procesmanagement genoemd. State-of-the-art van wetenschappelijke literatuur is op het punt waar erkend wordt dat beide aanpakken essentieel zijn. Hoe dat te doen in projecten is nog onontgonnen terrein. Dit artikel beschrijft een literatuurstudie, interviewreeks en workshop die een inductief beeld van dergelijke combinatie opbouwen. De uitkomst is dat de wetenschappelijke literatuur de dilemma’s van de practitioner passend weergeeft. Die practitioners geven aan dat zij project- en procesmanagement, gericht op robustness en governability toepassen. Zowel literatuur als de practitioners in deze studie zijn nog zoekende naar de intelligente balans van beide aanpakken in innovatieve projecten.

The competitive tendering regime introduced in The Netherlands in 2001 aims at stimulating innovation in service design. One can observe, in the meantime, a variety of arrangements as transport authorities vary considerably in the level of service design freedom they give to operators, both in tendering and within contracts. This paper presents facts and problems encountered and uses the results of a stakeholder evaluation of current practices to formulate perspectives for further improvements of the, by and large, current positive results of competitive tendering in public transport.

A publicly owned Dutch energy distribution system operator (DSO) interacts during local infrastructure projects with its direct stakeholders to maximize utility in the public interest. These projects are about replacing, relocating, removing or reconstructing parts of the gas and electricity networks. At the same time, this DSO is heavily regulated since the market reforms, although it remained public, but because it remained a monopoly. This regulation forces the DSO to yearly increase its efficiency and production. These two ambitions – made‐to‐measure projects and yearly more efficiency – increase pressure on the DSO and its interactions to arrange for trade‐offs. The authors describe how this pressure works out in day‐to day interactions between a DSO and its social environment, its many stakeholders. The empirical question of this paper is how the interaction between a DSO and its stakeholders is currently organized and how this works out for concrete infrastructure projects. The current context of increasingly multilateral, commercial, fragmented and connected energy systems, triggers, and at the same time hinders, great ambitions to design and develop energy systems in more interactive, democratic ways. In this paper, a DSO aspires to make its direct stakeholders essentially leading in the design and development of energy systems. Realizing this ambition ultimately boils down to the operational capacity of a DSO to have lively and flexible interaction with its stakeholders on sensible trade‐offs for concrete infrastructure projects. The operational capacity to interact has been studied in three cases. The first is about a DSO interacting with municipalities to fit urban development plans aboveground with the energy networks underground. Note: In the Netherlands, nearly all energy distribution networks are buried underground. The second case is about a DSO interacting with water boards about the safety risks of current networks buried in dykes. The third case is about a DSO systematically evaluating a diverse portfolio of projects by inquiring customers in order to increase their satisfaction for future projects. For these three cases, we observe in detail how the organizational ambition to increase efficiency thins out the social interaction to arrange for thoughtful trade‐offs of different actors that adhere different value systems. The conclusion provides a new perspective on possibilities and limitations of DSO’s to organize forms of interaction with their stakeholders under the current conditions.

This paper reports on how a Dutch energy network distribution company interacts with stakeholders in the decision making and execution of infrastructure projects. A multitude of external stakeholders can be involved having many different roles (Moore & Khagram 2004). In the Netherlands, these stakeholders can be subdivided in those related to the energy value chain (customers, energy producers, energy transport companies, energy sellers), those related to the space occupied by the infrastructure (local population and traffic, governmental agencies, water boards, project developers), those regulatory related to the sector (safety regulators, market regulators, law enforcement), and many more.

Due to the uncertainty involved in many complex infrastructure engineering projects, it is not always possible for managers to establish detailed terms of reference at the departure. Although the flexibility of ‘open’ terms of reference is often indispensible, it makes the arrival at a successful outcome much of a gamble. Complex infrastructure construction projects often include the tension that the values and interests of clients and functional managers diverge or even contradict each other. This is especially evident when managing the project management values of time, cost, scope and quality in relation to each other while the results of trade-offs and decisions can not be predicted. Client’s administrators defend objectifiable, instrumental values, while functional managers have an interest in relaxing them in order to realise the project. If these two contradictory sets of interests are not recalibrated, either the values are not met, or trade-offs may be made in an uncontrolled way, which can lead to suboptimisations or even project failure. Using RandstadRail as an example, this paper will show the problems that may occur in such situations and how unmanageability arises. A few lessons are derived to provide entrance to better manageable practice.