More insight, more awareness, fewer costly errors
Case study:
How Vink Bouw uses early transparency to steer toward CO₂-neutral building and strengthen the supply chain
“Madaster helps us gain insight in an area where, as a contractor, we really need it. At the same time, we feed back real-world experience and data. That’s how we make each other stronger.”
Ernst Bouma – BIM Manager and Management Team member, Vink Bouw
Vink Bouw is a Dutch entrepreneurial builder with a clear social mission: building together for a livable, future-ready environment. To build fully CO₂-neutral buildings by 2030, Vink Bouw delivers innovative housing and commercial projects focused on quality, circularity, and collaboration.
The challenge: Decarbonizing and understanding materials
Construction faces pressure from climate change, material scarcity, and stricter regulations. For Vink Bouw, both a developer and builder with a CO₂-neutral target for 2030, circular building is no longer a nice-to-have – it is a necessity. The key challenge is gaining early insight into material choices and environmental performance so teams can make informed decisions during design and construction.
The solution: a strategic partnership and data-driven design
In 2024, Vink Bouw and Madaster formed a strategic partnership with a shared mission: making circularity a standard part of everyday building. This is not a traditional client-vendor relationship, but a two-way collaboration.
The Madaster platform provides clear visibility into material use, circularity, design for disassembly, and CO₂ impact. By linking to BIM models, teams can influence performance as early as the design phase. Vink Bouw contributes practical experience and project data, while Madaster translates that input into actionable insights.
During the first year, the focus was on pilot projects, knowledge building, and exploring the platform’s capabilities. Projects such as Hooghe Delft, Bad Zandvoort, and Woonkoop in Delft offered a wide range of insights, from concrete-heavy construction to innovative timber systems.
For the first time, Vink Bouw was able to clearly understand material impacts while projects were still in progress.
Results: clarity, speed, and awareness
The partnership quickly delivered clear and tangible outcomes:
- Clear material insight: Project teams see how different materials and systems perform.
- Growing internal knowledge: A core group actively uses the platform and develops simple, practical guidelines.
- Data-driven decisions: In early design stages, teams compare scenarios based on MPG (the Dutch environmental performance score for buildings), circularity, and design for disassembly.
- Stronger supply chain: Suppliers are encouraged to provide digital product data for use in Madaster.
These insights drive awareness and action. Some materials previously considered “safe” show a larger environmental footprint than expected, giving teams opportunities to act well before construction begins.
In-house expertise
Early design steering
Material insight
Faster process
”Now we can instantly see how a design choice affects MPG or CO₂ impact. Before, we only found out at the end. Now we can get ahead of it. That helps prevent rework and speeds things up.”
Carol Rolink – Technical Plan Developer, Vink Bouw
What’s next: from pilot to standard practice
The goal is to make Madaster a standard part of every new project. The platform is increasingly used earlier in the process, starting in the design phase, so decisions can directly address circularity, CO₂ impact, and design for disassembly.
At the same time, Vink Bouw is expanding collaboration across the supply chain. Suppliers, architects, and advisors are actively involved, making product data easier to access and improving collaboration across the chain. By sharing knowledge and insights with peers in the sector, Vink Bouw helps accelerate the shift toward circular construction.
“Our partners hold crucial information about their products. By involving them directly in data collection, we not only improve data quality, we also raise awareness and strengthen collaboration across the entire construction chain.”
