“One minute I’ll be doing final touch-ups with the painters, a half hour later I’ll be standing with my boots in the muck, overseeing the pile driver.”

Take a moment to look around the district and you’ll see buildings shooting up all over the place. Development is advancing at an incredible pace. Hidde Bruinenberg, 27 years old and a site manager for G&S Bouw, is helping to shape all this growth in Zuidas. After secondary-level vocational training in construction engineering, he had his heart set on becoming a construction manager. His role model was his dad, also a site manager at G&S Bouw, and it was thanks to him that Hidde landed a work placement at the same company. It suited him so well that he was hired as soon as he applied for a job. 

The early bird...
“I’m at the site hut by half six in the morning and my days starts at seven am. Right now, we’re putting the finishing touches on Tripolis”, Hidde says. “I’ve also been engaged by Boele & Van Eesteren to set up another project on plot 6/7 in Beatrixpark. Because of that, I’m switching between all kinds of jobs at the moment; one minute I’ll be with the painters doing final touch-ups to the whitewash in an office that’s already in use, a half hour later I’ll be up to my boots in the muck, overseeing the pile driver!”

Valley pride
“Valley is a project I’ll always look back on with pride”, Hidde acknowledges. “We were one of five companies responsible for the façades. I was mostly involved with the scaffolding, which obviously is no easy feat at nearly a hundred metres up. So, I’ll tip my hat to the builders who worked on that! I don’t think I’ll ever forget when the time came to take down the scaffolding. It was one of the greatest moments: revealing another level of stone, week by week. It was like we were unwrapping the building!”

Challenging Tripolis
Work on the Tripolis building, where De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek will shortly join Uber, threw up a number of challenges, Hidde notes. “Particularly inside the building, in the space connecting the old and new sections, the details, quality and safety were a big thing.” Here, too, though, he looks back with satisfaction on a job well done. “It wasn’t always easy, but thanks to the brilliant team on-site and excellent communication with each other, we pulled it off yet again!”