July 9th, 2013

Jeroen Warmerdam - Tygron

Name
Jeroen Warmerdam

Place of residence
The Hague

Organization
Tygron

Core Business
Tygron offers decsions makers in spatial planning and infrastructure tools to become next generation planners, thereby streamlining urban planning and infrastructural development such as ports, logitics hubs or EDZ’s. Based on a custom built simulation of the client environment, Tygron facilitates workshops in which all the stakeholders cooperate in collective sessions.

Why did you participate in the Port & Corridor mission?
Tygron is currently expanding its business into South Africa. The mission offered an ideal channel to key decision makers in several African ports.

What were your expectations/targets for this mission?
Our prime targets was to demonstrate our innovative workshop approach to interested parties that we had spoken to in the past and or that had shown interest based on SANEC's networking activities. We expected to use the interest that was generated during these workshops to progress to the proposal stage with these same people.

What did you cover in the master class during the Africa Port & Harbours Show?
During the Masterclass participants worked with SimPort, a Serious Game on the strategic management of a major port expansion. SimPort was initially created as an exploratory instrument during the planning phase of the Second Maasvlakte project. In this Masterclass participants were grouped up into teams and asked to tackle the challenge of building a 2000 hectares large new port expansion and make it economically viable. Participants gained insight into the benefits of using next generation instruments like SimPort within large scale infrastructure projects.

How did you experience the Port & Corridor mission?
SANEC paved the way for our business development team, allowing us to focus on the core elements of our proposition. The match making session was especially useful. The only downside was the organization in the convention center itself, which led to some large missed opportunities. This leaves some room for improvement within an otherwise excellent mission.

What are important outcomes of the Port & Corridor mission?
Tygron officially launched its new office in Johannesburg during the mission. This helped finalize a couple of important first contacts. This, in combination with other mission activities, have led to several key partnerships and a number of requests for proposals.