Minister Boekholt-O’Sullivan wants to speed up housing projects and make them more sustainable through digitization. But how does she plan to pull that off? You’ll find out in the latest episode of the Bureau Stoer podcast.
This episode’s guests are Irene Niet, a digitalization policy officer at the Ministry of the Interior, and real estate expert Nicole Maarsen. Irene Niet explains the minister’s plans and argues that the entire sector—from municipalities to construction directors—must adapt to drive digital breakthroughs. According to her, this is no easy task, because the construction industry has a natural aversion to digitization. “The intrinsic motivation to get started on this is lacking.”
Maarsen agrees and even goes so far as to suggest that digitizing procedures and decision-making processes may well be one of the minister’s last trump cards for getting the housing market to flourish.
“If we can shorten the development time (planning phase) from ten years to three years, we’ll save seven years in construction cost indexation per project, seven years of workflows involving all kinds of people, and two cabinet terms, each of which entails all sorts of risks.”
How will Boekholt-O’Sullivan get everyone on board? What data is needed to get construction projects off the ground faster? Should she regulate or incentivize? Are you simply curious about the minister’s digital housing plan? Then listen to the Bureau Stoer podcast here.
