VenhoevenCS Academy

Knowledge Development

Continuous knowledge development for all employees is a spearhead policy at VenhoevenCS: it is important for maintaining your professional expertise, your vitality and personal development, your career potential and your sustainable employability. We have grouped all our knowledge development in the VenhoevenCS Academy program.

The VenhoevenCS Academy consists of training courses, research projects and research groups, excursions, lectures, workshops, conferences, fairs, professional traineeships and internships.

The  VenhoevenCS Academy has 3 objectives:

Vocational Training

Maintaining and developing professional expertise is vital to the individual careers of our employees but also to VenhoevenCS as a whole. Obviously this includes software skills and knowledge about legislation and regulations. But further ‘up’ a career, it also involves skills regarding presentations, negotiations, contracting, and so forth.

Research & Development

The VenhoevenCS Academy is directly connected to our projects and research activities. There are four R&D Groups:

  1. Sustainable Buildings
  2. Design Tools
  3. Building Techniques
  4. Materials & Interiors

All employees can take part in one or two of these groups. The groups function bottom-up and top-down and advice the project teams and the management. They play a key role in identifying knowledge gaps, collect, development and share expertise. In-house experts are also part of the R&D groups, such as BREEAM-NL expert in Sustainable Buildings; BIM expert in Building Techniques; wood expert in Materials & Interiors; and parametric design in Design Tools.

Developing Personal Skills

The organizational structure of VenhoevenCS is quite informal and non-hierarchal. Project teams are relatively small and every team member is expected to contribute actively to create the best result in terms of design concept, aesthetics, sustainability, technical detailing, and so forth.

This means VenhoevenCS values specific personal skill sets, such as initiative, team work and communication. VenhoevenCS invests yearly in developing these skills among teams and individual employees.

Learning Dutch

All non-Dutch speaking employees can take Dutch lessons paid for by VenhoevenCS. Although we speak English in the office, it is important to learn Dutch in order to interact with Dutch clients and various experts.

Bildung

Our work at VenhoevenCS is very broad and with a forward thinking approach. It is also very much embedded into society. Therefore VenhoevenCS also attaches a great importance to Bildung, e.g. keeping track of other disciplines (such as philosophy or the visual and performing arts) and keeping up with general trends such as the influence of technological advancement, current affairs and changes in society and culture.

Knowing the context within which we work helps seeing the bigger picture of our design practices. Bildung also stimulates critical and creative thinking, which VenhoevenCS considers one of the most important skills of the 21st century: critical and creative thinking helps us to make informed decisions through thoughtful analysis.

Guided tour explaining the ecosystems of the Vlieland coastal area

Professional Traineeships and Internships

In the EU the titles for architect, urban designer, landscape architect and interior architect are protected. VenhoevenCS has various schemes in place to help employees get their title.

BEP

BEP stands for “BeroepsErvaringPeriode” (Professional Traineeship). It is a two-year period within which a participant will experience all phases of a project. Find all information on BEP here.

“The personal guidance from the mentor at VenhoevenCS was of high added value to my BEP experience”

Lucas, architect title since 2020

VenhoevenCS has set up a standard internal program for BEP. Jos-Willem van Oorschot, one of the partner-architects, is the designated mentor of all our BEP participants.

As of January 2020, 5 participants have finalized the BEP and received the architect title and 2 employees are enrolled in our program.

“The BEP has challenged me to explore and develop my personal position and vision as an architect. I can sincerely recommend the BEP-trajectory at VenhoevenCS”

Max, architect title since 2018

HMONP

HMNOP stands for  L’habilitation à exercer la maîtrise d’œuvre en son nom propre. Employees with a MA from a French university have the option to participate in the Dutch BEP or enroll in the HMONP program at the university they graduated from.

As of January 2020, 1 employee is enrolled in a HMONP program.

AvB

AvB stands for Academie van Bouwkunst. It is an education based on a concurrency model: as a student at the AvB you work 4 days at VenhoevenCS and spent 1 day at school. Many employees at VenhoevenCS are graduates of the AvB. VenhoevenCS always strives to have several AvB students within the work force.

Internships

VenhoevenCS believes that an internship is an important part of a student’s curriculum. VenhoevenCS offers internships for students in the field of architecture, urban planning and architectural engineering.

To apply for an internship, students need to be enrolled in a relevant educational institute, or – if graduated –participate in the Erasmus+ program.

Work placement

VenhoevenCS is an accredited work placement company. We provide practical training with expert supervision for those that are following vocational education or training and guide them towards a professional career.

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