Dutch Timber Sprint Week

Together with Holland Houtland, BLOC introduced Built by Nature to the Dutch built environment, focused on timber and biobased building. We analyzed the Dutch building market in several sprint sessions, performed a gap analysis, and distinguished challenges and opportunities. This resulted in concrete actions for Built by Nature to accelerate building with timber and biobased materials in the Netherlands.

Built by Nature

Built by Nature is a network and grant-making fund dedicated to accelerating the timber building transformation in Europe: radically reducing embodied carbon; safely storing carbon in our buildings for generations, and sequestering carbon by championing forest stewardship and regeneration.

Getting familiar with the Dutch timber and biobased building industry

Built by Nature is now preparing itself to strengthen, develop and empower the Dutch market and ecosystem related to construction in timber and other biobased materials. Fortunately, both market and ecosystem are very well researched already. Not only by us (Holland Houtland & BLOC) but for example also by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (BZK) who has published a heavy report on the dilemmas and opportunities. We now especially see the need for action planning on this strong basis.  

Timber Sprint Week

That’s why we organized a so-called ‘Timber Sprint Week’. A sprint week is a condensed week of brainstorming sessions, filtering and processing the outcomes, and presenting them to the participants. Every day has a different focus. Beneath a short description of how we perform such a sprint week:

Day 1: Baseline and Ecosystem

We gather insight into the current ecosystem of relevant parties, programmes and initiatives. We create an overview of relevant research and give an introduction to how the building industry in the Netherlands works. Together with the expertise of all the partners, we create a landscape overview of networks, stakeholders and dynamics.

Day 2: Gap Analysis

We gather insight into what is still missing to enable the Dutch timber market and ecosystem to be completely competitive. Based on the first day, we perform a stakeholder mapping.

Day 3: Opportunities

Coming up and filtering possibilities to fill in the gaps mentioned in Day 2, combined with the stakeholders and key players mentioned in day 1.

Day 4: Action

We developed a framework action plan. Different building blocks with concrete actions for Built by Nature.

Day 5: Validation

Validating the action plan with relevant partners, launching our ideas and if possible, already setting things in motion. Processing the gathered products into attractive products and presenting them.

End result

As a product, we developed 14 building blocks. 14 strategic lines with a specific action to accelerate the use of timber or biobased materials in the dutch building industry. We prioritized them on impact and suitability for BBN, so it is clear which actions have the highest priority. Built by Nature is now ready to act and radically reduce the carbon emissions of the building industry in the Netherlands.