In the first half year of 2017, consultancy and engineering firm Tauw Group improved its turnover with 9% to EUR 58.8 million (2016: 54.0) while EBITDA rose with 11% to EUR 3.3 million (2016: 3.0). Employee numbers increased to 998 fte (2016: 924). The company expects this line of growth to continue in the second half of 2017.
Annemieke Nijhof, CEO of Tauw Group: “The results in the first half of 2017 are an indication that Tauw is strengthening its position as the engineer and consultant for environment and sustainability in the authorities and industry markets. We are excited and challenged by the growing awareness and willingness to contribute to the big transitions on sustainable development. Resource depletion, loss of biodiversity and climate change fuel our creativity to assist our clients in solving their day to day issues in a sustainable way. We focus on innovation, creativity and translate this into tangible solutions. This leads to diversification in our service portfolio and client groups, and fuels our ambition to expand to new regions in countries like Germany, France and Spain.”
Tauw has offices in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. In all of these countries, Tauw’s turnover and order portfolio have increased or are stable in the first half of 2017. In general, most markets that Tauw is active in are showing good economic circumstances.
In the context of positive market conditions, maintaining and attracting new and qualified staff remains one of the major challenges in all countries that Tauw is active in. The company is implementing several programs (recruitment, training, international exchange) to ensure an adequate level of quantity and quality in its staff portfolio. Nijhof: “An important asset of Tauw is our sincere dedication to sustainability and the employee participation in governance.”
In the first half year of 2017, a new employee participation scheme was successfully introduced. The buy-out of investment company Wadinko and the implementation of a new employee participation scheme paved the way for full ownership of Tauw by its employees per 1 July 2017.
Winner Data Challenge 2017
Tauw and data science startup HAL24K have won the Data Challenge 2017 from Rijkswaterstaat and several partners. Employing advanced methods of data intelligence, Tauw and HAL24K modeled large-scale water level management with a high degree of accuracy. By using historical data in combination with machine learning and artificial intelligence, the team predicted which adjustments would be required in water levels for optimal energy consumption, water distribution and various climate conditions.
Urgent soil remediation at touristic beach of Mallorca
The popular tourist beach in Mallorca, Spain, was contaminated by cooling and isolating oil from an 132 kV electrical cable that connects the electrical power from Mallorca to the nearby island of Menorca. Because of the potential risk to the health of beach visitors and to the protected Red Natura area and dunes, this led to an urgent remediation project, including mounting and dismantling, just before the opening of the tourist season. The remediation was performed in three weeks by on-site washing of the polluted soil, and later refilling the remediated area with clean soil, as well as treatment of the extracted groundwater. The final results were a high reduction of the soil and groundwater contamination (>99,5%) allowing the beach to be opened for the public at the start of April.
Dredging the Den Helder harbour
Tauw started the preparation of large-scale dredging in the harbour of the northern town of Den Helder in the Netherlands. In total, some 300.000 m3 will be dredged. This give the port sufficient nautical depth for the largest ships.
One of the largest pumping stations
One of the largest pumping stations was opened in June 2017 near Volendam in the northwest of the Netherlands. The pumping station can pump up to 120 million liters of water per hour. The province of North Holland asked Tauw for tender and contract management.
Assessing the condition of 150 km of dikes
For the Rivierenland water board in the centre of the Netherlands, Tauw has started to assess the condition of 150 kilometres of dikes alongside some of the largest rivers in the Netherlands. This will take six years and is carried out together with enigineering company HKV.