The engineering and consultancy firm Witteveen+Bos, which has been in Plus Ultra II for a year now, has much in common with WUR. Location manager Willem Hendriks sums it up: his company makes use of biobased materials in infrastructure projects and seeks WUR’s advice on that. The firm employs Wageningen ecologists and hydrologists in the ‘Room for the river’ programme, as well as working with WUR on climate issues and sustainable land use, and with Wageningen environmental technologists on water projects.
This common ground has been there a long time, but it was last year that Witteveen+Bos (75 years old, a global staff of 1400, headquarters in Deventer) decided to set up an office on the campus. ‘We want to intensify the collaboration with WUR,’ says Hendriks. The firm is now working with WUR in the Expertise Centre for measuring ammonia levels in livestock barns. Witteveen+Bos also supervises ACT (Academic Consultancy Training) groups from WUR.
The firm has a lot in common with WUR
These student groups supply the company with new contacts with professors and potential WUR clients, and of course with talented young professionals.
About 15 people work at Witteveen+Bos’s campus office, most of them staff who live in Wageningen or have a project here. The number will increase, Hendrik thinks, because the company is growing fast. There is a lot of work to be done in the areas of sustainable land use, the transition in the countryside, biobased materials, and waste streams, environmental technology and nature-based solutions in the city and the delta.
There are about 100 companies on campus. We introduce them to you in Resource. This time, Witteveen+Bos in Plus Ultra II.
