Starting a project with partners of different backgrounds, expertise and ways of working can be challenging: you need to understand each other, to get to know one another’s working habits, to see how you can complete each other in the project and adopt a workflow that suits all parties. When this does not work, tensions might arise out of misunderstandings, delays might occur out of incompatible working methods and, eventually, project objectives might not be achieved as partners’ ambitions differ.

At the same time, successful collaboration starts with taking the time to understand each other, discover how we work best together and develop a shared way of communicating and delivering.

In the EUI ZERO project, one way of addressing it was to organise a Word Bingo. As a tool to familiarise partners with each other and to adopt a common and jointly understood vocabulary, the Word Bingo is a grounding tool that should be applied by complex projects to ensure a good working basis as well as efficient and effective project delivery. Continue reading →

On grid congestion the Netherlands and the solution proposed for ZERO

The Netherlands have long been pioneers in the energy transition and are now facing ambitious climate targets for 2030. Yet, because of this ambition and its related need for electricity, the energy grid is facing strong congestion.

Wieteke Hoftijzer, Ideation Consultant at the Innovation Hub of Alliander, an energy grid operator in the Netherlands, is enlightening us on the grid congestion and explaining the solution provided within the EUI ZERO project taking place in the Elderveld neighbourhood of the city of Arnhem. Continue reading →