Alistar supports these teams by providing functional application managers for the Digital Construction Team. Tristan van Grevenbroek and Sol Titarsolej are two of them. Together with Marijn, they are exploring how well BAM and Alistar complement each other and how end users and residents of the Netherlands benefit from this partnership.
Marijn: When hiring external experts, I expect certain qualities from the people who come to help us. Autonomy, the ability to work independently, the ability to hold your own in a massive organization without too much guidance, and a desire to understand that organization. But also the ability to stay calm and maintain a clear perspective in stressful situations. It’s a combination of a very pragmatic and solution-oriented attitude. You need to have the skills to assess situations, recognize their severity, and step in to help people. Our department supports the developers; construction projects throughout the Netherlands are carried out based on the applications we manage. It’s important to keep that in mind when you work here.
Tristan: That’s also something you notice right away when you come here for the first time. Every day that colleagues are unable to work, they’re less able to contribute to the company and the projects we’re working on. I mainly work with employees who are new to BAM or who are starting new projects. I make sure that all the necessary apps are installed within a day and that they work flawlessly.
Above all, an end user wants to be helped as quickly as possible.
Sol: That’s pretty essential, because an organization like BAM uses hundreds of different applications. If there weren’t functional administrators like us, it would be a mess. Then there would be too many purchases, you’d end up with duplicate contracts, and people would forget that some valuable applications even exist. That creates confusion and costs a lot of money, so it’s very important to have a central point where all of that is managed.
Tristan: Above all, end users want to be helped as quickly as possible. Sometimes they’re already so familiar with the technical aspects that I can help them just by sending them a step-by-step guide. Fortunately, there’s rarely any stress. Our end users are very level-headed; they understand that things don’t always work perfectly. It only becomes a problem when we say we can fix something within three days but then fail to follow through. It’s all about good planning and clear communication.
Sol: If there are applications that aren’t working, we make sure the user can get back on track as quickly as possible. Otherwise, projects come to a standstill—and at BAM, those are sometimes massive projects involving huge amounts of money. Problems simply have to be fixed as quickly as possible. It also helps that we serve as a central point of contact for the vendor: we collect reports and feedback from our users and forward them all at once. That also cuts down on a lot of confusion.
Marijn: Preventing that noise is important. Communication is essential in this line of work. It’s all about managing expectations—letting people know that you’re working on something. People need that. They don’t need an immediate solution, but they do want to know that you’re working on finding one. Alistar understands that—this pragmatism is in their nature. Don’t stop; keep pushing forward. Always moving forward. I can really count on that, and it’s incredibly valuable. Someone from Alistar thinks and acts. They just get things done.
Tristan: It’s a mindset I’ve developed through a combination of my previous work experience and working at Alistar. Alistar selects people with a certain level of empathy—people who are service-oriented. You then acquire the technical skills through training, courses, and simply by getting down to work. It’s also something I see in all my colleagues. These are qualities that fit well with Alistar.
We manage more than a thousand different applications here.
Marijn: In the construction industry, you work with software that no one else uses. It’s a world of its own, with a huge variety of IT needs. That doesn’t make our work any harder, but it does make it more extensive. We manage more than a thousand applications here, some of which are really very specific. There are software packages used by just a handful of people in the Netherlands, which requires specialization and adaptability.
Tristan: Outsiders might naturally view construction as a traditional field and IT professionals as technical and solution-oriented. But IT professionals aren’t that different from engineers. We’re all grappling with challenges; we’re all solving puzzles. That similarity ensures that we understand each other well and can quickly get to the heart of a problem.
Sol: A good example of such a challenge is the Leavers project. BAM employs about 20,000 people. So every month, quite a few employees leave, and we have to revoke their permissions and access to applications. Otherwise, sensitive information might end up in the wrong hands. Previously, we’d receive a list of employees who were leaving, and we had to manually check which licenses they held and which applications they used. That was a lot of tedious and time-consuming work. That’s why we’ve now built a number of RPA bots to do that work for us. Not only does this save us a lot of work, but it’s also more reliable than manual labor.
Together, we’ll make sure the Netherlands stays dry.
Marijn: That’s what makes this partnership so valuable to us. When I need someone with a pragmatic approach, I call Alistar. They provide reliability we can count on. At BAM, we collaborate with the rest of our organization in a dynamic and specialized way, so I look for people who can handle that. And of course, it’s also great when they—like Tristan—feel connected to the work we do.
Tristan: Over the past few years, I’ve become much more aware of the infrastructure in the Netherlands. When you work here, you immediately get a sense of how, for example, the construction work on the Afsluitdijk is progressing. I think that’s wonderful to see—BAM ensures that the country stays dry, and I’m doing my part to help with that. It makes me very proud.
Alistar is a young and dynamic company whose employees make a significant contribution within BAM. They are technically and functionally skilled, and on top of that, they foster a positive work environment. I appreciate their dedication and assistance here, which provides not only pragmatic but also structural value to BAM.
Kwok Lau, Business Information Analyst
