There needs to be a national registry of approved equivalent solutions, argues Jan Willem van de Groep in this episode of Sightlines. Because often people are cautious about what is new, while safe innovation is desperately needed in construction for the big acceleration.
When engineering has no home in law
In the specialist journal Bouwrecht, Nico Scholten and Arnoud Neerhof recently analyzed how the Administrative Law Division of the Council of State dealt with disputes in which construction knowledge is decisive. Their analysis deals with specific rulings, but touches on a broader uncomfortable reality. The Dutch building and licensing system assumes technical expertise but does not structurally organize that expertise. Precisely where legal judgments lean on technical concepts, the necessary technical depth does not always appear to be present or leading.
When the Van Dale wins out over construction practice
One of the rulings discussed concerns the concept of supporting structure. In a home, a wooden floor was replaced with a much heavier floor without a permit, resulting in constructive damage to a wall of mandelins. The competent authority considered the intervention to be permit-free and the Division followed that opinion. A dictionary definition was used, from which it was deduced that a floor would not be a load-bearing structure.
For those educated in construction, this chafes. A floor is part of the main load-bearing structure via disc action and contributes to the stability of the building. This is not a matter of interpretation, but basic structural knowledge. The legislative history also confirms that the term load-bearing structure was deliberately left undefined precisely because it has a fixed and technically based meaning in building practice.
From individual statement to structural problem
This case study does not stand alone. It is illustrative of a deeper problem. Once legal interpretation becomes detached from technical context, the meaning of regulations shifts. Concepts intended to guarantee safety are fleshed out linguistically. As a result, physical reality disappears from the picture. Rules are applied as if they were words, when in reality they are about force effects, risks and failure mechanisms.
That this is happening in the highest administrative court makes it clear that the problem is not with individual performers or municipalities. It is a systemic issue. If technical complexity cannot be sufficiently guaranteed even at this level, it is unrealistic to expect individual permit issuers to be able to do so without support.
Municipalities between space and risk
This touches directly on the daily practice of municipalities and permit issuers. The current system explicitly allows for customization, equivalence and innovation. At the same time, the system leaves those same municipalities largely alone in its interpretation. Every new application, every new material and every new building concept increases the individual responsibility and the legal risk of the licensing authority.
In that light, caution is not a sign of unwillingness, but of rational behavior. The risk of municipalities delaying does not come from being against innovation, but because they have insufficient guidance. The system demands assessment of complexity, but does not provide a shared framework to interpret and legitimize that complexity.
Acceleration requires national interpretation
That is precisely where an important key lies. Part of the solution lies not in stricter standards or further detailing of regulations, but in better national interpretation. Government guidance, guidelines and interpretation frameworks can make all the difference. Not as new rules, but as authoritative explanations of existing rules. Not without obligation, but solid enough to fall back on.
The STOER report also touches on this need. It calls for more uniformity, predictability and enforceability in the construction and permitting system. STOER is aimed at speeding up construction. This is necessary, but not sufficient. Besides acceleration, renewal is necessary, because otherwise the system cannot anticipate future developments, new insights and the standards that arise from them. Acceleration without renewal means building faster within a framework that has already caught up with reality.
The missing link: collective knowledge assurance
One crucial building block is still missing. As long as equivalent solutions must be substantiated and assessed anew at each municipality, investing in innovation remains unnecessarily risky. This applies not only to municipalities, but also to entrepreneurs who develop demonstrably lawful and technically safe solutions.
A nationwide registry of approved equivalent solutions could break that deadlock. Not an automatic permit, but an authoritative basis on which municipalities can build. A collective memory that captures previous assessments, assumptions and preconditions. This shifts responsibility from the individual case to the system as a whole.
Why newness is slowing down now
Here is the crux of the paradox. It is precisely new solutions with demonstrable evidence that they can lead to acceleration that often lead to delay. Not because that evidence is lacking, but because the system is not set up to collectively carry that evidence. Each innovative but proven application therefore becomes a one-time exercise. Each permit an individual consideration. Every mistake a personal risk.
Without national clarity and shared knowledge building, innovation remains structurally risky anyway. And risk leads to delay. Not out of unwillingness, but out of self-protection. This explains why equivalence processes so often run stiffly and why novelty, despite good substantiation, rarely accelerates.
Accelerating is also learning faster
Acceleration, therefore, requires something more than just pace. It requires knowledge infrastructure. For shared interpretations. For a system that offers room not only for acceleration but also for innovation in which responsibility and risks are borne collectively. As long as acceleration is understood solely as building faster, and not as learning faster, the system will continue to work against itself.
Scholten and Neerhof's analysis makes this sharply visible. Not as a reproach to the judiciary or to municipalities, but as a signal that the assessment framework has lagged behind the complexity of construction practice. As long as dictionaries are used where constructive interpretation is needed, and as long as equivalent solutions must be fought over again and again, the gap between regulations and built reality will remain. This is not an individual failure, but a systemic task that calls for national direction.
This article was written by Jan Willem van de Groep, program maker, future thinker and publicist. Among other things, he is known for the government program Building Balance. In his column Sights, he gives his views on the big picture in construction.
