How Van Gelder became Dialog's oldest customer and implemented the platform for environmental managers across the entire organization in the Netherlands and various divisions."
Introduction
As a contractor in civil engineering and infrastructure, the family-owned company Van Gelder has been operating for over 100 years. Starting in cables and pipelines, it has grown into a full-service infrastructure company in various sectors. Throughout the years, the company has witnessed frequent changes in the market and has continuously adapted to them. This includes the field of environmental management, which has become increasingly important in the market. Since 2012, William Verbij has been involved with Dialog as a coordinating stakeholder manager, and since 2021, as the head of stakeholder management. He recognized Dialog's vision early on. As a customer since 2017, William, along with Van Gelder, has made a significant contribution to the development of Dialog into what it is today.
The challenge
In 2017, stakeholder management was still developing. As a coordinating stakeholder manager, William was always seeking for something to help support stakeholder management. There was a lack of insight and traceability, and it consumed a lot of time for the stakeholder managers. The existing tools were not quite suitable, as they often fell short. It was then that Marcel Hoogsteder showed him his vision in the form of the Dialog program in early 2017. This tool was not only intended for stakeholder management, but also allowed him to influence further development, organize project communication and complaints.
The solution
In collaboration with Dialog, the communication calendar was further developed for use by contractors and specifically by Van Gelder. This allowed for scheduling activities and corresponding communication tools, and additional features were developed to quickly select mailing lists for newsletters. Furthermore, the initial setup of the complaints management structure in Dialog was developed based on working sessions with Van Gelder users.
The result
More efficient stakeholder management and communication within Van Gelder's projects, spanning from infrastructure to cables and pipelines, from smaller civil engineering projects to comprehensive projects. Stakeholder management at Van Gelder is traceable and transparent for the internal organization and Van Gelder's clients. To this day, they continue to work together on smarter features and make stakeholder management data measurable. A concrete measurable result is that it is now possible to effectively address and manage complaints within Van Gelder projects, based on the complaint management structure developed in Dialog and the experiences gained from similar projects.
How Van Gelder achieved it
From day one, the implementation of Dialog within Van Gelder involved a collaborative effort, not only in further developing Van Gelder's requirements through user sessions but also in learning how to use the platform. The organization now possesses sufficient knowledge that projects and users are managed independently, with colleagues explaining how it works to each other. Communication with the Dialog support team remains accessible whenever necessary, and suggestions are still seriously considered and developed.
Progress
Dialog has become an integral part of stakeholder management at Van Gelder. The current challenge is to make the available data and information from recent years accessible throughout the entire company, so it ca improve and learn from it during and after a project. This is not only for making it measurable in terms of performance indicators in stakeholder management but also as concrete input for new tenders. Additionally, combining data from Dialog with other data fields in the company provides new insights and corresponding opportunities.
Special development inquiries
Development of the communication calendar and its features.
Development of the complaint management structure and its main features.
William's Dialog tip
"Saving mailing areas in the communication calendar for later reuse ensures that all relevant residents receive the same project information at the same time throughout the project."