Lisa Santen

Two years ago I got to know Count & Cooper through the Business Course and from the first moment I felt at home. This was primarily due to the colleagues, but the challenging work also appealed to me. So I didn't hesitate for long to apply.

I have now been working as a project analyst for over a year and my feeling appears to be correct. My colleagues at C&C are open, tough, fun, sharp, critical, competitive, creative and real team players. You notice that all the more when you spend another day at the office. The energy that this gives me is unprecedented!

"Ondanks het verschil in mate van kennis en expertise van ons als project analisten en de twee partners, heb ik me altijd enorm gewaardeerd gevoeld om mijn werk."

But the work is also cool! In the first two months after my start, I had the honor of participating in a small team in the tender for a major project in Amsterdam: the renovation of the quay walls. As an Amsterdam resident, I loved writing a plan for such a project, especially when I realized that a tender is a real competition. I wanted to win that one. That meant hard work, but in a team. This team consisted of a partner, project leader and two project analysts. Despite the difference in the level of knowledge and expertise of us as project analysts and the two partners, I have always felt greatly appreciated for my work. Our input was taken seriously and when finishing our tender pieces late at night, with a beer in hand, I felt like I had really contributed.

Immediately afterwards I started work on the upgrade of the Twente Canals, a beautiful project in the east of the country. Here we work together with three major hydraulic engineering parties in a consortium and we manage the project with a team from Count & Cooper. The big challenge is to bring together all the different disciplines of such a project and to ensure that we organize the processes in such a way that the contractors can realize the work. This requires a sharp analytical attitude in which you ask many questions to uncover the right information and move forward together.

For me, the work is extra fun when we face challenges and things don't go as smoothly as expected. Because we are risk-bearing in the projects, the extrinsic motivation is the same as the intrinsic motivation: namely setting up a high-quality project. So when things are a bit difficult, a project management team has the big task of getting everything back on track. You have to coordinate the technology, processes and - most importantly - the people.

Every week I spend two days at the project location in Almelo. Because it is such a long journey from my current home in The Hague, I stay in a hotel there, together with a number of colleagues from the project. In the evening we eat together, sometimes we do sports or do something fun in the area. Recently we went mountain biking with a group. It is these kinds of extras that ensure that we develop a good mutual relationship and that working at Count & Cooper feels self-evident.