Almost 60 young employees from four members of International Association of Dredging Companies (IADC) came together on June 12, 2019, at the Hilvaria Studios in Hilvarenbeek, the Netherlands.
René Kolman, Secretary General of IADC, welcomed the participants and started with an introduction of IADC, what the association stands for and its activities.
After this short introduction, Serge De Gheldere came on stage. Serge is Founder and CEO of Futureproofed and a well-known and inspirational speaker about the exciting prospects of a fossil-free, circular economy.
In his presentation, “Future and Innovation” he educated the participants about climate change aspects and developments.
The next presentation was given by Frank Verhoeven, President of IADC and member of various supervisory boards like Deltares, an independent institute for applied research in the field of water and soil.
With his presentation “Drivers of the Industry”, Frank spoke about drivers like ‘World trade and trends’, ‘Energy demand: oil and gas’, ‘Urban development’, ‘Environmental awareness and dredging’, ‘Climate change’ and ‘Tourism’. He closed his session with a few words on the development of dredging equipment and the developments within the IADC member companies with a focus of the types of contracts.
After lunch the plenary session continued with a lecture by Prof. Julius Sen.
Julius is Associate Director and Senior Programme Adviser at the London School of Economics Enterprise. His areas of responsibility include project design and delivery of executive education and consultancy programmes relating to economic and trade policy issues especially as they relate to globalization debates.
His approach is to explore political management issues arising from these debates and to look at policy options to advance developed and transition economies.
The rest of the afternoon was filled with 2 workshops, called Drivers and Innovation.