Industrialised countries, the Netherlands foremost among them, are staring down a wave of bridge renewals that dwarfs historic maintenance cycles: assets erected in the post-war boom are expiring together, yet public budgets, labour supply and procurement routines remain locked in business-as-usual mode. Heijmans, a tier-one Dutch contractor committed to modular and circular building methods, asked how it might steer the early, “explorative” phase of public bridge projects so that Industrial, Flexible & Demountable (IFD) solutions become the default choice rather than an after-thought. Three questions framed the study: how is that front-end decision spiral organised, which forces help or hinder IFD inside it, and what concrete levers can a contractor pull to tilt outcomes towards modular adoption?
To answer these questions the research combined a literature synthesis on demand-side innovation and modular construction with twelve semi-structured interviews spanning national, provincial and municipal clients, engineering consultancies and sector experts. The analysis followed a three-cycle coding protocol into ten recurring themes and, ultimately, three influence modes: Cultivate, Configure and Convince mapped onto the Desirability-Viability-Feasibility (DVF) framework.

Theoretical insights
This thesis introduces the Cultivate–Configure–Convince (CCC) model and shows that its effective ordering is market-contingent rather than fixed. Derived from coded analysis of thirteen interviews (§5.3), CCC distinguishes three influence modes for suppliers: Cultivate (build awareness, legitimacy, trust), Configure (align technical, organisational, and contractual conditions), and Convince (evidence of viability and risk mitigation). The core contribution is that five procurement-market archetypes exhibit different CCC sequences, meaning CCC should be treated as a repertoire that adapts to procurement structure rather than a universal ladder. This market-sensitive interpretation is consistent with research on demand-side innovation in regulated, high-capital sectors, where public procurement shapes uptake and diffusion (Edler & Georghiou, 2007; Uyarra et al., 2014). Accordingly the figure to the right summarises how sequencing varies across archetypes; detailed rationale is provided in §6.3. Managerially, CCC functions as a market-sensitive sequencing framework: first diagnose the procurement archetype, then time Cultivate/Configure/Convince to focus resources, reduce transaction and political risk, and accelerate innovation adoption. In sum, the thesis reframes influence not as a fixed sequence but as a market-aligned playbook for suppliers and system integrators, with relevance beyond construction wherever procurement mediates innovation.


Practical insights
The evidence indicates that, although technical uncertainties are tolerated and cultural resistance is easing, public clients ultimately prioritise demonstrable life-cycle value. Viability therefore trumps feasibility and desirability. Contractors can break this stalemate only by supplying audited ‘cost-and-carbon’ dashboards, involving engineering consultancies, certified pilots and then hard-wiring IFD metrics into procurement templates. A five-horizon pathway emerges: ignite internally with a small certified span and open data passport, flip external bias by forming a multi-contractor coalition and harvesting tool, prove at scale via ordinary-span interface tests and shared cost benchmarks, lock-in with 3-to-5-span bundles and framework contracts, and, finally, normalise IFD through open data portals and multi-owner agreements. Each horizon is gated by an explicit go/no-go check to limit sunk costs and keep investment tied to verifiable savings...