Construction logistics as a challenge: building in the Amsterdam inner city

HBB Group is constructing two buildings on the Hoogte Kadijk in Amsterdam. On the Nieuwe Vaart side, a six-story building will rise with 88 rental units. On the street side is room for a block of six luxury urban villas. Superintendent Ruth Langemeijer shows us around the construction site.

The building site borders water on two sides, the street on one side and an existing building on one side. The new building spans the site. So there is no space around it, which makes the execution of this project logistically challenging, to say the least. Fortunately, superintendent Ruth Langemeijer is used to some things. 'The order is super important,' she states. 'Everything has to be right. Today, five boatloads of canal floor slabs arrive. Made in Brabant, taken by road to Amsterdam-West, and from there PK Waterbouw transports it via the IJ to the Nieuwe Vaart and the construction site. Emission-free, as is mandatory for all passenger and transport vessels on Amsterdam's inland waterways since January 1, 2025.'

In a barge goes fifty tons of weight, she continues. 'That's about the capacity of two trucks. For a whole floor, we need about five barges full of floor slabs. The second floor will be six meters high. The steel structure for that is already in place.'

Floating pontoons

Because there is no space around the site, there is a storage barge alongside and the construction huts are on floating pontoons. There must also always be room for the barges bringing materials. Langemeijer: "Another point is that we cannot build scaffolding on the outer sides of the facades from the ground. We solve that by attaching steel beams to the columns. On these, we lay a temporary floor on which the scaffolding will stand. HBB Group's planning department and its subcontractors have had a lot of headaches with this. They think about how it should all be done. As the foreman, I think along with them, of course. And unforeseen problems always crop up, which I solve on the spot.

Extra alert

Langemeijer is present every morning at 6:30 a.m.; the men arrive a little later. Today there are eight, but later with the dismantling this will increase to about twenty-five. She says, "We start the day with a work meeting: what are we going to do today? This is followed by the LRA: last minute risk analysis. Then we discuss what can go wrong and where we have to be extra alert. Today we are unloading the floor slabs from the barges and entrapment is a possible risk. We are also using an aerial platform today. That poses a fall hazard, and so there is extra attention to leash up. Furthermore, it froze heavily last night. Now the sun is shining, but the temperature will remain below zero during the day as well. Not everyone can take this well. If someone is very cold, I think it's fine if they take an extra break for coffee or chocolate milk.'

Looking ahead

Such a construction site in the middle of a densely built-up area requires above all secure preparation, looking ahead and very good planning. 'We always have to make sure that the sequences are right,' Langemeijer explains. 'With a truck, you put the floor slab that is laid first on top. Because the plates go from the manufacturer in Brabant first into storage, then into the boat and then out again, that takes a lot of attention. Because, as you can see, there is no room to lay everything in the right order first. It has to be done right the first time. Everything is therefore marked.'

For the employees, it is not standard work; everything goes differently than usual. 'That makes it exciting at times, but mostly a lot of fun. The structure itself is actually not that complicated. It is everything around it that makes it special, especially the logistics. We work here with JIT planning. That means just-in-time delivery: no stocks but processing everything immediately. Sometimes that causes problems. If the wind blows harder than force six, the crane stops. That doesn't happen very often because we are in a densely built-up area, but recently we had a number of fog problems. Very annoying, because then no sailing is allowed and the supply of material stagnates'.

Grout pumping

In October 2024, HBB Group began construction on behalf of BLVG development. First, concrete piles three by three meters and one and a half meters thick were poured. Under each pile are four metal tube bored piles to a depth of 21 meters. 'There is a solid layer in the soil there. The piles are four meters long and were welded together until they were the right length. The metal piles were then filled with grout, a mixture of cement and water. So this creates concrete piles in a steel tube. Super strong. The steel support structure was built on the "pour" on the piles. Today we start laying the second floor, at a height of six meters. So the floor boards will arrive by barge. With the concrete being poured, that's not possible. That comes by cement/truck here and then we hoist the contents by cubel to the dump site. For the grout, we had a silo a little further away, we pumped that through a hose here.'

The sky

When the construction workers head home by four o'clock, Langemeijer takes an average of another hour to at least prepare the work for the next day. 'The schedule has to be adjusted regularly,' she says. 'By April or May next year, everything has to be ready. With a project like this, I calculate for convenience six months in the ground and a year above ground. The first six months is over, so we're going up in the air here now, as you can see. Then you see it grow quickly, which is always nice.'