My contribution to a board
I would bring three things to a board. The first is an engineer's understanding of how buildings and their systems actually behave, as opposed to how they are specified. Boards of property and infrastructure owners now approve renovation and electrification programmes worth tens of millions of euros, and the papers they receive describe installations at a height from which the risks disappear. I have designed, commissioned, sold and measured those installations, and I know which questions expose a weak plan: what the commissioning period covers, who will operate the system after handover, and what data the owner will be able to read once the contractor has left.
The second is judgement about technology and data commitments that are hard to reverse. A building-management platform, an access-control system or a metering contract can bind an owner for ten years. I have been on the vendor's side of those commitments and I know where lock-in hides: in proprietary gateways, unpublished data models and prices that rise with use. I would ask management to show the board how the organisation would leave any system it is about to buy, before it buys it.
The third is the occupant's point of view. Boards hear from asset managers, lenders and contractors far more often than from the people who use a building. My work at Hallenbrook and on Lindevaart's occupier product has taught me to look for the person a decision quietly excludes, whether because of a disability, an old phone or a lease they did not negotiate.
I would not bring deep financial or audit expertise, and I would not offer to chair an audit committee. I would learn the organisation's accounts properly, and I would contribute on audit matters where they concern information security, data protection or the controls around systems. A supervisory board needs members who know the edges of their competence, and I would state mine in the room.
Judgement in practice
01Asking our own board to attach a condition to my proposal
When I proposed ending gateway hardware sales in 2024, the paper I sent to Lindevaart's supervisory board included a forecast of churn and a recommendation that approval be conditional on a quarterly report of gross revenue churn to the audit committee. Our chief financial officer had argued that the change would make leaving easier, and she might have been right. I wanted the board to have a way to see it quickly if she was. Churn fell from 4.1 to 3.6 per cent, but the report also showed configuration errors in about one new building in eight during the first six months, which the board would otherwise not have seen. As a director I would ask management for the same thing: the measure that would show the board early that a decision was going wrong.
02Taking a data request to the audit committee instead of deciding it commercially
In 2023 a landlord with forty buildings on our platform asked us to load several years of tenant meter data it had obtained under lease clauses. Commercially the answer was easy, since the account was worth about €0.6 million a year. I took the question to the audit committee instead, with our data-protection adviser's view that we could not show that every tenant had agreed to the purposes we would use the data for. The committee supported declining until tenants confirmed, and the landlord moved the portfolio to a competitor. I learnt that a board committee is most useful when management brings it a question before the answer is convenient, and I would encourage executives to do that with me.
03Declining a sponsor's condition at the Haverwijk Foundation
In 2022 a manufacturer of door hardware offered the Haverwijk Foundation €150,000 over three years, about a third of our annual budget, on condition that our accessibility guidance for building owners named its products as examples. Two board members favoured accepting, because the money would fund a second adviser. I argued that our guidance was only valuable if owners trusted it to be neutral, and proposed that we accept sponsorship only without conditions on content. The board adopted that as a written policy; the manufacturer withdrew, and we hired the second adviser a year later with funding from two municipalities. On any board I would test income against what it might do to the organisation's credibility.
My first year on a board
Before the first meeting I would read, not listen. I would ask for two years of board and committee minutes, the asset or network plan, the register of major technology and maintenance contracts with their end dates and exit terms, and recent reports on energy performance, safety and accessibility. Then I would go outside. I would spend a day at each of two sites with the people who run them, including a plant room and a reception desk, and I would ask to meet the external auditor and whoever is responsible for information security.
The next part of the year would belong to the committee I joined. On a sustainability or technology committee I would want to know which commitments the organisation has made in public and what evidence supports progress against them, and I would ask for measured figures and estimates to be shown separately. I would hold back from proposing changes in the first six months unless something was urgent; a new member who arrives with solutions from another company is usually describing that company.
At the end of the year I would ask the chair two direct questions: whether my questions had been useful, and whether twenty days had been enough.
Conflicts and their management
Lindevaart sells to about 260 landlords in three countries and competes with a dozen software vendors, so the field of possible conflicts is wide, and I would draw its boundary generously. I would not join the board of any current Lindevaart customer, any prospect we have bid for in the previous two years, any building-software or building-automation vendor, or any installer certified to connect buildings to our platform. I would also decline organisations in which the fund that controls Lindevaart holds an investment.
If a conflict appeared after I had joined, for instance because the organisation began a procurement in which Lindevaart might bid, I would tell the chair before the next meeting, leave every discussion of that procurement and ask Lindevaart to say in writing whether it intended to bid. If it did, I would offer to step down rather than leave the board to manage a standing conflict.
Information must not travel in either direction. I would not bring Lindevaart's customer, pricing or roadmap information into a boardroom, and I would not carry anything I learnt there back to Lindevaart. My chief executive has agreed that I may take one seat on these terms, and the Haverwijk Foundation board already knows who employs me.
My independence statement
I am a full-time executive of Lindevaart Systems and take part in its management equity plan, so I am not independent of Lindevaart or of the fund that controls it. I would accept a seat only where neither Lindevaart nor I have a commercial, family or financial relationship of substance with the organisation, and I would set out every relevant interest in writing before an appointment is considered. Independence criteria differ between governance codes, such as the Dutch Corporate Governance Code for listed companies, and between listed and unlisted organisations; whether I meet them for a particular board is that board's judgement, made on what I disclose.
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Lindevaart Systems B.V.
Supervisory board: product strategy, pricing changes, the annual roadmap and the decision to end gateway hardware sales
2022–present
Presents each quarter to a five-member supervisory board with two investor and two independent members; attends for product items only and holds no vote.
Reported to a committee
Lindevaart Systems B.V.
Audit committee of the supervisory board: data protection, tenant consent, information security and the revenue effects of pricing changes
2023–present
Reports twice a year with the chief technology officer and chief financial officer; the quarterly churn report on the gateway decision went to this committee.
Served as a director
Haverwijk Foundation for Accessible Buildings
Board of a Rotterdam not-for-profit that advises building owners on accessibility
2020–present
Unpaid, non-executive board member; approves the annual accounts, programme and sponsorship policy and takes part in the board's yearly self-evaluation.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Hallenbrook Workspaces B.V.
Board and owners' investment committee: member-product and access-control investments
2019–2021
Presented the case for reversing app-only entry and the 2020 day-pass product; held no seat on either body.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
I live and work in the Netherlands and am not pursuing a seat at an Indian company, so India's IICA Independent Directors' Databank has no bearing on my candidacy and I have not registered with it. The status shown is recorded only because the page format asks for one.
- Six years on the Haverwijk Foundation board, including its annual accounts, sponsorship policy and yearly self-evaluation
- A twelve-session programme for new supervisory board members, completed in 2025
- Quarterly attendance at Lindevaart's supervisory board for product items since 2022, and twice-yearly reports to its audit committee
- Study of the Dutch Corporate Governance Code and of supervisory board practice in Dutch two-tier companies with Lindevaart's general counsel
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to chair | Technology and data committee, after a year on the board, if the board has or creates one |
|---|
| Ready to join | Sustainability committee · Technology and data committee · Audit committee, contributing on information security and data controls |
|---|
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 20 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- District heating and local energy networks · Car parks, mobility hubs and their charging infrastructure · Hospital, university and public-building estates · Property owners outside Lindevaart's customer markets
- Company type
- A supervisory or non-executive board in the Netherlands or Belgium: an unlisted company with a professional board, a semi-public or regulated infrastructure operator, or a not-for-profit estate owner, with no commercial relationship with Lindevaart
- Company stage
- An organisation entering a long renovation, electrification or digital programme, where the board must judge technology and data commitments it cannot easily reverse
The seat I am pursuing
I am looking for one non-executive or supervisory board seat in the Netherlands or Belgium, at an organisation that owns or operates buildings or infrastructure and faces a long programme of renovation, electrification or digital change. A district-heating company, an operator of car parks and mobility hubs, a hospital or university estate, or a property owner outside Lindevaart's markets would all suit. I would want to join a sustainability or technology committee and, after a year, I would be willing to chair a technology and data committee if the board has or wants one. I am not seeking to chair an audit committee.
I am pursuing this because the decisions I find most consequential in my executive work, which systems to buy, how to measure what a building does and who must be able to use it, are increasingly taken at board level. I would like to contribute to them from the side that bears their cost for decades. I can offer about twenty days a year, and I would not take a second seat while I remain an executive.