This spring, Johny De Nutte retired after a fulfilling career in the construction and certification sector. He helped chart the path at COPRO for 34 years and colleagues behind the scenes can still rely on him.
Together we look back on Johny’s personal journey, full of variety and peppered with a mix of quality, warm collaborations and a lot of pioneering work.
How do you look back on your career at COPRO?
A broad range of interests and the will to explore new themes in depth: it’s the nature of the beast. I view my career at COPRO as a rich exchange: COPRO offered me opportunities, I seized those opportunities and did something with them. To this I owe a very varied career in which I could and was allowed to make a difference as a pioneer. Think of the certification of recycled and aggregates from secondary sources, hydraulically bound mixtures and the start-up of road concrete.
Within various domains I was also able to develop a good working relationship with professional federations and certification bodies. The collaboration within COPRO has also always been of paramount importance to me. The best compliment I received came from an ex-colleague: “The best thing that ever happened to me during my career was working with Johny.” That sentence says it all for me. As Unit Manager, I was the leader of my team, but everyone was allowed to excel at what they did best. For me, collaboration means giving people opportunities in complete confidence, delivering quality work in the context of a healthy mix of knowledge, quality and focus on people. The fact that I’ve been able to inspire others and help them grow means something to me.
What has been the most important evolution for you within the road construction and certification sector?
I started in the pre-certification era, the time of sampling and testing product deliveries on site. Gradually I saw many things change. I observed the strongest evolution in two areas, namely the use of recycling materials and the monitoring of their environmental-hygienic impact on the surroundings.
Recycling is the processing of waste materials into new construction materials. Example: construction and demolition rubble is crushed, sieved and cleaned to produce aggregates that are used in road foundations, but also for example as a raw material in the production of concrete. In the early years of my career, recycling was virtually non-existent. At that time, only primary, natural products were used. I noticed a change in this from the 1990s onwards, and certification was certainly an important part. It makes me happy to be able to look back on this now and see that recycling has become self-evident and is further evolving towards the circular use of materials.
In addition to certification of construction quality, I also saw the environmental legislation for recycled materials gradually expanding. Protecting the environment is extremely important for the future of our society. Certification is an effective means of enforcing environmental legislation. Hopefully, the quality assurance system for the environmental-hygienic quality of raw materials, imposed in the Unitary Regulation for Building Material, will be established by Ministerial Decree in 2024. Such a document provides producers with reliable guidance in marketing construction products in accordance with the relevant legislation. I refer, among other things, to aggregates obtained by the treatment or cleaning of waste materials (slag or bottom ash from waste incineration processes, foundry sands, railway ballast, aerated concrete, …) or by-products (slag or bottom ash from the ferrous and non-ferrous metal industries, …). Such certification certainly also strengthens customer confidence in these products.
The bar for quality was gradually raised and I’m proud to have been a part of this.
What advice do you have for the new generation of COPRO employees?
I always insisted that my colleagues had a good knowledge of the construction-technical and environmental-hygienic quality of the products that were certified under their supervision. Attention was also paid to the applications of those products. Keep this up, know your product’s characteristics and know how your product is used in applications. Learn about the impact on the environment and the sustainability of your product and its application.
Some good advice from an experienced professional: keep an open mind in your job, in the sector, and always aim for the highest quality guarantee. Look beyond the control procedures and make sure that you make your products your own, that you are an expert. Obviously this requires some effort, but it makes a world of difference for the image of you as an inspector and of COPRO as a certification body.
What keeps you awake at night?
I regularly reflect on a proper understanding of sustainability. It’s a term that is very popular today. However, it’s crucial to reflect on what it means, on paper and in practice. With attention to the economic, social and environmental aspects, now and in the future. In my view, these three aspects are inextricably linked and the great challenge lies in realising these links in practice.
The expansion of the use of circular materials and the introduction of new production processes that reduce the burden on the environment and climate are music to my ears. However, what if this means products with a shorter lifespan are brought onto the market? Then it turns out to be a net zero operation with regard to the environment. And the future generation does not benefit, the social aspect is completely lost. Because it is they who will ultimately pay the price for the waste that is processed into products today.
An initiative has been developed with TOTEM to calculate and optimise the total environmental impact of buildings from the design phase. An assessment of the circularity of materials will play a role in this. This is being extended to include the infrastructure sector. COPRO can play a pioneering role in this: in raising the awareness of the various actors in the construction process, from producer, through contractor, to clients, cities and municipalities.
In conclusion, would you like to share your personal motto?
You can’t manage what you don’t measure: when you measure it yourself, you’re certain.
Johny, thank you for your years of effort and dedication. We wish you all the best for the future.
