Five appointments between the plant room and the occupier

Mandate

Turn an analytics product sold to landlords' sustainability teams into a platform that landlords, their contractors and their tenants all use, and make a building cheaper and quicker to connect.

Outcomes

• Moved pricing from data points to floor area; connected points per building more than doubled and net revenue retention rose from 103 to 111 per cent.
• Ended gateway hardware sales; median time to first data fell from 19 to 6 days, and new buildings connected rose from 610 in 2023 to 1,050 in 2025.
• Launched an occupier product built to WCAG 2.1 level AA, with 46 per cent of tenants still active after a year.
• Built a measured-performance view and an adviser export used for 1,140 buildings around the Dutch office label deadline.
• Introduced consent-based tenant data sharing, reaching 78 per cent coverage of tenant floor area where landlords use it.

Decisions in context

I joined Lindevaart in September 2021 as its first chief product officer, when it had revenue of €24 million, about 2,000 connected buildings and a product used mainly by landlords' sustainability teams. My mandate from the chief executive was to make the platform useful to the people who actually operate and occupy buildings, and to remove the friction that slowed every sale. The growth-equity investment in 2022 brought a supervisory board with two investor members and two independent members, to which I present product strategy, pricing and the annual roadmap each quarter. The three largest decisions of my tenure, declining a label estimator, moving to floor-area pricing and ending gateway sales, each removed revenue before they added it. I lead 52 people and share the roadmap with a chief technology officer whose 190 engineers build it. By June 2026 recurring revenue had reached €68 million across 5,200 buildings.

Reason for the move

Current role. Not seeking an executive move; considering one non-executive seat with my chief executive's agreement.

Mandate

Build the member app, room booking and building-access systems for an operator opening a new location every few months.

Outcomes

• Restored physical credentials beside app entry; failed entries fell from 4.8 to 0.6 per cent of attempts.
• Reduced accessibility defects in the member app from 212 to 9 in an external audit against WCAG 2.1 level AA.
• Launched day passes and part-time team plans in 2020; they made up 27 per cent of membership revenue by mid-2021.
• Raised the share of meeting rooms booked online from 41 to 88 per cent.

Decisions in context

Hallenbrook was my first role on the occupant's side of a building. I joined in March 2017 to lead member product for an Amsterdam flexible-office operator with 38 locations and 21,000 members, and became vice president for product and digital in 2019, reporting to the chief executive. My team built the member app, room booking and access control. The app-only entry system we introduced in 2018, and reversed in 2019 after members with older phones and assistive technology were shut out, shaped everything I have built since. In 2020 the pandemic cut revenue from €118 million to €84 million, and we rebuilt the product around day passes and part-time team plans that reached 27 per cent of membership revenue by mid-2021. I left because I wanted to work on the building itself: the plant, the meters and the energy that a service layer above them cannot change.

Reason for the move

Wanted to work on the building itself, where energy and comfort decisions are made, rather than on the service layer above it.

Mandate

Make the supervisory software something integrators could configure quickly and building owners could actually use.

Outcomes

• Cut median integrator configuration time for a standard office from eleven days to four through templates and an equipment library.
• Added support for open building-automation protocols beside the company's own bus, over the controller division's objections.
• Introduced the first owner-facing dashboards, in use in about 1,900 buildings by 2016.
• Completed a part-time executive master's degree in management in 2015.

Decisions in context

I joined Grevenmoor in February 2011 as product manager for its supervisory software, the screens through which operators watch and adjust a building's controllers. I lived in Eupen and crossed the border to Aachen each morning. The company sold through system integrators, and I spent much of my first two years on site with them, timing how long it took to configure a standard office. Templates and an equipment library brought that from eleven days to four. In 2014 I became head of product management for building automation software, with nine product managers by 2016 and a product line of €38 million. My most contested decision was to support open building-automation protocols beside our own bus, which the controller division saw as a threat. I left in 2017 because I wanted to work for the people who occupy buildings, whom a controls maker rarely meets.

Reason for the move

Wanted to work closer to the people who use buildings, not only the integrators who configure them.

Mandate

Commission and hand over building-automation systems in offices and hospitals, and from 2009 run those packages as projects.

Outcomes

• Commissioned controls in two hospital wings, a harbour office and twelve office buildings.
• Introduced a seasonal recommissioning visit after handover, later sold as a paid service.
• Reduced defect calls in the first year after handover on my projects by about 40 per cent.

Decisions in context

I moved to Moerhoven Technieken in April 2007 to understand why buildings I had helped design consumed more than intended. As a controls commissioning engineer I tested and handed over building-automation systems, and from 2009 I managed those packages as projects worth up to €2.1 million, with as many as six technicians. Over four years I handed over two hospital wings, a harbour office and twelve office buildings around Antwerp and Brussels. I learnt that commissioning stops at a contractual date rather than when a building works, so I proposed a seasonal recommissioning visit after handover, which the company later sold as a service. The hospital ward where night staff covered a diffuser with cardboard taught me to talk to the people who live with a system. I left in 2011 because the same software failures kept appearing in every building, and I wanted to fix them at the source.

Reason for the move

Convinced that the recurring faults I commissioned were software faults, and wanted to work on the software.

Mandate

Design heating, ventilation and cooling systems and carry out energy audits of existing buildings.

Outcomes

• Designed heating, ventilation and cooling for eleven projects, including schools and two clinics.
• Carried out 34 energy audits of existing offices and public buildings.
• Built the firm's first comparison of designed against measured consumption across the buildings it had audited.

Decisions in context

I joined Studiebureau Kalvenaar in September 2003, three months after graduating, as an engineer in a Brussels consultancy of about sixty people designing building services for offices, schools and clinics. I sized boilers and air-handling units, drew duct runs and wrote specifications for eleven projects. The energy audits were the formative work: 34 of them over three and a half years, in offices and public buildings across Brussels and Wallonia. When I compared what the firm had designed with what the meters later showed, the buildings typically used half as much again, and the causes lay in schedules, manual overrides and control logic rather than in the equipment we had chosen. That comparison became the firm's first internal study of the performance gap. I left in 2007 to work where systems are commissioned, because that was where the gap seemed to open.

Reason for the move

Wanted to see why buildings behaved differently from their designs, which meant working where they are commissioned.