

Wim, could you tell us something about yourself and about your role at BLEI? What do you do?
“I would rather tell you more about the academy than about myself, but why not. I worked in underground infrastructure for almost thirty years, and today I’m the manager of the BLEI Foundation. To put it in a nutshell: I see to it, together with a team of course, that students of infrastructure technology are trained well and in a uniform manner, using this uniform training and examination among other things for MBO in the Netherlands.
We make sure that water runs from the tap, that we can switch on the light, that the gas heaters keep on burning, that everybody can make phone calls and use the Internet, and that people using the heat-distribution grid can heat their homes. In short, that we maintain the high level of our advanced networks in the Netherlands, for the level is truly high. Everybody thinks it’s normal that everything is available to us 24 hours a day, but it takes quite an effort.”