Alex Jansen

Dutch Boosting Group

Changing a strategic decision with SE

Bio.
Alex is een zeer ervaren consultant en manager in de infrastructuur met meer dan 30+ jaar ervaring. Hij vervult diverse rollen, variërend van Systems Engineering manager (2GW programma van TenneT) tot projectleider Groot onderhoud Papendrechtsebrug (Rijkswaterstaat) en Technisch manager (project Guisweg). Het toepassen van de principes van SE is een rode draad door alle projecten en rollen die hij oppakt. Als medeoprichter van Dutch Boosting Group wil hij laten zien dat een brede inzet van SE bij de maatschappelijke opgaven van deze tijd leidt tot de juiste oplossingen binnen aanvaarbare kosten. Kenmerkend voor zijn stijl van werken is zijn sensitiviteit voor processen en zijn hands-on mentaliteit. Hij doet dit met een grote mate van betrokkenheid en enthousiasme. Zijn specialisme is het samen brengen van (externe) partijen om te werken vanuit een gezamenlijk belang.

Abstract.

Project history
The Guisweg level crossing in Zaandijk, where a busy local road crosses the Alkmaar–Amsterdam railway and the N203 Provincialeweg, has been a safety and capacity bottleneck for years and blocks the national High-Frequency Rail Programme (PHS) timetable. The chosen response was a grade-separated crossing, developed since 2006 around one principle solution: closing the Guisweg to motor traffic. This gave clarity, but a review of the design history from 2006 to 2025 shows it also narrowed the search for alternatives, which were tested only briefly, in 2017 and 2022, and dismissed quickly on spatial grounds. The resulting Definitief Voorkeursalternatief (DVA) was internally consistent, but grew more from such narrowing constraints, and from choices inherited from earlier ones, than from a balanced comparison of full alternatives. A technical constraint at the A8 later forced a redesign, and nitrogen-permit and cost assessments pointed to a viable alternative. In October 2025 the project partners decided to work out a second full alternative, Alternatief Guisweg, to the same level of detail before choosing which one would proceed to the next

Project phase.
The challenge of applying Systems Engineering
By the time Alternatief Guisweg was introduced, the project was well into the design phase: a mature top-level and system requirements set, many stakeholder requirements already approved, and a detailed system- and functional breakdown structure. Reopening that baseline for a second, equally valid alternative was not a methodological failure of systems engineering, but it did create friction in re-weighing requirements already promised to stakeholders. One example: a tennis court relocation, promised under one alternative, was not needed under the other, leaving the club with a requirement that was later withdrawn.

Systems Engineering as an enabler
Instead of forcing an early choice, the project ran two complete, parallel systems engineering tracks: two scope documents, two system and functional breakdown structures, and two sets of Top and system requirement specifications, one for each alternative. Both tracks were kept at an equal level of maturity throughout, so that neither alternative was disadvantaged by being less developed than the other. This allowed the team to show, on a like-for-like and traceable basis, where and why the alternatives differed in scope, function allocation, cost, nitrogen impact and safety, instead of relying on an informal comparison. The resulting trade-off analysis was captured in a joint comparison report and fed directly into the governing partners’ decision on which alternative to carry forward to the Realisation Decision. In this way, systems engineering did not resolve the governance process itself, but supplied the rational, traceable and comparable information a complex, multi-partner decision needed.