prof. ir. W.L. (wim) Leendertse

Wim Leendertse has been working for the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water management since 1982. He started working after receiving a master in civil engineering from Delft University as a project engineer for the Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier, one of the biggest projects in the Netherlands at that time. He received a bachelor in 1992 from Nijmegen University in business administration. From 1993 up till 1997 he started and directed the Centre for Underground Construction, a public-private research partnership in soft-soil tunnelling. From 1998 up till 2001 he went back to the projects as managing director for the High Speed Line South Project, where he was among others responsible for the contracting and construction of the Green Heart Bored Tunnel, the biggest diameter tunnel in soft ground world wide at that moment. The Green Heart Tunnel was at that time the first major infrastructure project contracted as design-built in The Netherlands. In 2003 he worked at the Ministry of Economics on a project base introducing private involvement in the so called Gebiedsagenda’s and later at the Ministry of Finance to initiate PPP in Dutch national contrcating. After that he was asked to join the (new) staff of the Director General of Rijkswaterstaat to help reorganize the Rijkswaterstaat organization, especially in the field of PPP and market-government relations. Since 2007 he went back to the projects again. First as a project director for the Afsluitdijk project and after that as managing director of the ZuidasDok project in Amsterdam. Since 2009 (untill present) Wim Leendertse is a senior strategic advisor for Rijkswaterstaat in the field of project management and market involvement. Besides his carrier at Rijkswaterstaat. From 2012 up till 2016 he was the contract/project manager for the New Harbour Crossing (Blankenburgverbinding) crossing the Nieuwe Maas river in Rotterdam. In this function he was among others responsible for the contracting of a major design-built-finance-maintain contract, a large integral contract for engineering and advice services through “best-value” procurement and the planning and contracting of a 25-year toll concession. From 2016 up til,l 2018 he was project director of Innova58, a project in the planning phase featuring an innovation program regarding ITS and smart mobility. In April 2015 he got a PhD in Spatial Sciences from the University of Groningen for his research on public-private interaction in infrastructure networks. Since Februari 2019 Wim Leendertse is, besides his work as strategic advisor for Rijkswaterstaat, appointed as Professor in Infrastructure Planning at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the University of Groningen.