AT Osborne ResearchFund

AT Osborne has for many years devoted a lot of time to research and development. In order to join all our forces, we founded the AT Osborne Research Fund in 2006.

Investing in Knowledge
The Research Fund offers employees room for research and development and contributes to state-of-the-art consultancy. The AT Osborne Research Fund works with attractive parties like knowledge institutes both in the Netherlands and abroad. An excellent example is Netlipse. Netlipse is a network of all of the high-profile European infrastructural works, the objective of which is sharing knowledge. AT Osborne is one of the driving forces behind Netlipse.
The Research Fund is one of the ways in which we anticipate the challenges of a dynamic environment: the continued development of our staff, their knowledge and our services.

The AT Osborne Research Fund
AT Osborne’s employees encounter interesting developments with respect to the market, policy and technology every day. The insights and experiences they gain during their daily activities often give them surprising research ideas. The AT Osborne Research Fund supports employees in this respect. The Fund makes time and funding available for the further development of research ideas and supports the process from plan to product. The research teams are supported by a committee, comprising:

• prof. dr. ir. Jan Kerstens, external chairman, Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology
• ir. drs. Marcel Hertogh, Director of Infrastructure, Spatial Development and the Environment
• ir. Gerhard Jacobs, Housing & Property Director
• ing. Marcel van Rosmalen, AT Osborne Academy Business Manager
• dr. Jurgen van der Heijden, staff representative
• dr. Ineke Meijer, secretary

New products and services
These past years, the Research Fund has yielded a number of new services, including:

• SQUARE: a consultancy and calculation tool, enabling well-considered investments in care-related property. SQUARE provides insight into the connection between production, investment costs and exploitation costs. Both for individual departments and the hospital as a whole. The innovative aspect of SQUARE is the fact that it combines production, costs and scope in a single model. This model also calculates the ambitions of the hospital, such as the effects of a healing environment. This will more rapidly lead to sound recommendations and in a higher level of detail.
• TOUCH: The Office U Can Have. This represents a new vision on office housing. A vision that is in keeping with the wants and needs of a new generation of office workers. TOUCH provides an early insight into the desired qualities of the new working environment. TOUCH is preferably used for the first exploration of the needs of your organisation, resulting in inspirational workstations.
• SynEnergy: creates added value through the combination of infrastructures - a better environment, sustainability, lower costs and a better image. This approach focuses on producing synergy benefits at an early stage in the project. Would you like your water supply system to double as an energy source? What of glasshouses that also serve as heat collectors, heating the surrounding neighbourhood? The SynEnergy people seek, recognise and find all kinds of profitable combinations. The basic principle is that such synergies make development, management and operation cheaper and contribute to a sustainable society.