Heijmans: Scaling Nature Intelligence in Construction with Spirefly
Heijmans is a major Dutch construction and infrastructure company. They are strategically committed to sustainability, which includes having a dedicated Corporate Nature Strategist, Daan Reith. While Heijmans has established a mature approach to managing biodiversity around construction sites, the significant nature impacts hidden within its material supply chain remained largely invisible.
larger supply-chain impact than the construction site itself
nature & biodiversity indicators assessed
Challenge
Backing up the supply chain’s nature impact with data
Daan knew from the start that the value chain plays an important role in Heijman’s mission to reduce its impact on biodiversity. However, moving an organization of Heijmans’ size requires more than convictions; it requires a concrete “story” backed by hard data. Daan needed a way to understand in more detail which materials, locations, and nature topics were truly material in Heijmans’ value chain.
Solution
Procurement data turned into material-level nature intelligence
Spirefly provided a scalable data platform to analyze the full material footprint of a major infrastructure project. By performing impact and risk calculations across nine critical nature and biodiversity indicators, the system transformed raw procurement lists into high-resolution nature intelligence. This enabled Daan to:
- Identify impactful materials driving ecosystem loss in the value chain, such as bitumen and steel, as a starting point for impact reduction.
- Quantify Heijmans’ exposure to risks across water stress, deforestation, and biodiversity loss.
Result
Supply chain impact ten times greater than the construction site
For the first time, Heijmans could prove that their supply chain impact was ten times greater than the direct impact on the construction site. Daan was able to take this quantitative insight one step further and use it directly in Spirefly’s analysis workflows to put it into context for Heijmans. What it means for their regulatory compliance, for their competitive positioning, and importantly: to efficiently and confidently disclose their biodiversity journey.
“Finally, I have the ammunition to make people realize the scale of our impact. It’s no longer just an opinion; I can say with confidence: this is the reality of our footprint, and this is where we need to act.”
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