During this period, Koen, Jef and Giel were working as project managers in the high-voltage sector. Partly due to the upturn in the market and the energy transition underway in Europe at the time, this sector was on the up and up. The projects are getting bigger and bigger, and we are joining forces to successfully complete them.

Meanwhile, we are focusing on coordinating our projects more efficiently and trying to modernize and professionalize our processes and methods.

As more and more players enter the market, the landscape is also beginning to change. Foreign contractors are presenting themselves which gives a boost in using other methods and entering into joint ventures. Slowly but surely, hop are coming into view. The idea is beginning to grow that we as a management agency might have our place in this growing market.

On June 6, 2017, we start up hop and can immediately start working as a project team with various contractors. With the size of projects and timeframes under pressure, client expectations are also rising and there is a great need for professional project management.

Meanwhile, there is also time to work on innovative ideas that have been dormant in our heads for several years, such as an app focused on site management. This app can visually display and categorize project information. In the process, we get the chance to further mature our ideas at KBC start-it (a startup accelerator). We get a lot of energy from working on projects like this, and our customers also see the benefits. Innovation is immediately ingrained in the DNA of hop and is given a central position in further expansion.

In 2019, we may add several large projects to our portfolio and will have the opportunity to coordinate projects outside the high voltage sector.

With so much work on the books, it is time to expand the team. The team will be reinforced with an administrative assistant and we will start our search for new colleagues.

In 2020, we are hiring two new project managers and continuing our strategy of expanding our management office into an accelerator for realizing projects in the energy transition.

We believe very hard in this energy transition, but also see that it is a very complex story of different technologies, sectors and people that need to work together to realize these projects.

In this we have a clear vision: hops wants to be a catalyst that can both make the response more efficient and accelerate it. Partly because of our background in different technologies, we also see opportunities to be more involved in the preliminary process and to work closely with building owners or developers.

In 2022, Europe's energy transition will gain momentum. Renewable energy production is proving to be the cheapest form of energy in practice, and hard work is being done to expand flexibility on the power grid, often in the form of large-scale battery farms. Hydrogen solutions are also being explored.

Whereas the focus in the early years was on supporting projects in the high-voltage sector, this is being systematically extended to energy storage and generation in an increasingly broad spectrum of customers and sectors.

The team continues to expand; there are currently 9 of us including 7 project managers.

In 2025, we take an important next step in our growth. The organisation continues to take shape with a clear structure, built around four pillars: strategy, engineering, execution and — with a view to the future — operations, which we plan to further develop in the coming years.

Our team is growing alongside these ambitions and now consists of 12 colleagues, including 10 project managers, supported by an operations manager and a dedicated administrative specialist. This means the team has almost doubled in size, and we expect this growth to continue in the years ahead.

Building on the knowledge and experience gained through large-scale development projects with developers, we are broadening our focus. We increasingly see opportunities to translate this expertise to companies as well. As a full-fledged energy manager, we will work alongside businesses to future-proof their energy systems and guide them through the electrification transition — a shift that is both inevitable and full of opportunity in the years to come.