Maasvlakte 2 Project

Introduction:
The Maasvlakte 2 project is a large scale engineering project covering approximately 2,000 hectares
in the Maasvlakte area of the Port of Rotterdam. The main goals of the project as outlined by the
Dutch government are to both increase the capacity of the Rotterdam transportation hub and
improve the living environment in the area around the port.
As the client of this analysis, The Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment has the following
problem statement:
How can we strengthen the Port of Rotterdam infrastructure for the Dutch citizens and companies,
whilst maintaining environmental sustainability?
This report will provide suitable alternatives that satisfy this problem statement, as well as
satisfying the other actors interest regarding to the Maasvlakte 2 project.
Problem conceptualisation
In order to understand the complex problem and thereby give a neutral analysis, all potential
stakeholders and their objectives have been identified. By using a goal tree, the stakeholders actual
problems and needs were clarified into measurable factors, see Appendix B.
Key criteria were chosen and then by categorizing the criteria from different actors the most
common goals were identified. These criteria were later used to measure the effectiveness of
different alternatives.
The criteria chosen were Harbour Traffic, Employment Rate and Emissions. Harbour Traffic was
chosen as it was a key goal for several actors, including The Ministry of Infastructure and the
Environment. Emissions was chosen as it was the main dilemma of the problem owner and a key
goal for some other actors (Residents etc.). And Employment Rate was chosen as it was a key goal
of many actors and another new dilemma for the problem owners as automation will lead to job
losses.
Using the causal diagram we can shows different factors and criteria influence and affect each other,
see Appendix C. By doing so, the correlation and causation between external factors, internal
factors and criteria were determined. The main purpose of the conceptualization phase was
identifying the goals of all actors and factors which affect these goals.

Identifying Alternatives:
From the actors means end trees, some alternatives for the project were created. The following
alternatives were chosen as they influence the criteria most important to the client, as well as factors
that have a high priority for other actors in this project.

Additional electric railway from Rotterdam to Maasvlakte

Imposing higher port tariffs for ships using fuels with higher particulate emissions

Upgrade Alternative Ports

Education programmes for unemployed dock workers

As well as these, the zero option of making no changes to the current plan was also analyzed.

Additional electric railway to Maasvlakte and Education:

This strategy will have a social, economic and environmental impact. Estimates suggest that the
increased capacity of the railway to Maasvlakte will increase harbor traffic by up to 1,000 ships
each year.
Higher tariffs for high polluting ships:
This strategy will have primarily environmental and economic impacts. Estimates suggest that
harbor traffic would be reduced by approximately 500 ships per year if this alternative were to be
implemented. However, this alternative has its merits in reduction of CO2 and particulate
emissions.
Upgrading multiple Dutch ports further inland:
This strategy suggests upgrading parts of the Port of Rotterdam that are further inland than
Maasvlakte. One of the benefits to doing this as increasing the rail and road capacity to and from
Maasvlakte will not be needed. Lastly, the benefit for the transhipment companies is a reduction in
travel costs between the port and final destination. Estimates suggest that the increase in harbor
traffic could be 7,000 ships more per year than the current project.
Dealing with uncertainty
The future is uncertain and by thinking in terms of scenarios its easier to consider a broader range
of potential futures and thereby get a more robust basis for decision making. Two external factors,
oil price and exchange rate Euro/Yuan, have been chosen since they have a high impact on the
criteria important to the actors. They are external factors since the Ministry cant influence their
outputs, not even the Dutch government has effective input to these factors.
The oil price has a high impact on the employment rate since transhipment companies ship their
goods regardless of the oil prices. If the oil price is low there is more money left to pay for salaries
and conversely if it is high then companies must make sacrifices to adjust e.g. reducing employees.
Appendix J shows a graph of the correlation between oil price and employment rate and also the
uncertainty in price over the last 20 years
The exchange rate between Euro and Yuan has a high impact on the harbour traffic since the
majority of the harbour traffic in Rotterdam is related to trade with China. When the Euro is high
value relative to the Yuan, Dutch companies are able to import goods cheaper and then export them
to Europe at a high margin. However when the Yuan is strong the profits from import-export is
much lower and this particularly affects jobs in the Rotterdam Area as shipping is its main income.
In Appendix J the correlation between employment in Rotterdam and the exchange rate is shown
and it has significant impact on harbour traffic and employment.

Rationalizing the alternatives

Impact Table
The first impact table represents how the alternatives compare to meet the three criteria assuming
external factors remain at their current values.

The remaining four tables give a picture of how the alternatives hold up when the external factors
vary in value across the range we determined in the previous paragraph. For each table the
alternatives effect is compared against these scenarios to see how they hold up.
When the values for criteria in the four scenarios are compared to the first impact table of just the
alternatives there is a large range of values depending on the state of the external factors. This will
be discussed further in the conclusion

Score Card
A scorecard is shown in Appendix L based on the High Euro, Low Oil scenario. From this scorecard
you can see that the additional train line provides two satisfactory criteria and one neutral criteria
for you. The zero option only provides one satisfactory outcome and improving inland ports
provides a negative result for emissions.
SMART Diagram
The first SMART diagram is for you, The Ministry. The criteria are given weight factors based on
your own preferences for the outcome. Namely Harbour Traffic and Emissions are given higher
weighting as they are directly referenced in your problem statement and were key criteria of your
goal trees. Employment Rate is still given a reasonable weighting but as it was not a significant part
of your previous statements we left it relatively low.
The second SMART diagram is for a Resident of Rotterdam. They care much less about increasing
harbour traffic and for this reason their weighting for Harbour Traffic is very low. However
Employment Rate and Emissions are high as they want a clean environment to live in and job
security, as mentioned in their goal trees.
Conclusions
From this analysis we can draw several conclusions. The SMART diagrams show that the highest
ranking alternative is not the same for varying actors.
Upgrading the entire port appears to be a robust solution when external factors are considered as it
has higher employment and harbour traffic scores for all scenarios. Also the negative effect of
higher emissions could be less depending on how external factors behave in the future. But the
additional train line also scores high in two criteria with no negative results for emissions.
The score card shows that, in terms of the criteria, there are two alternatives that may give more
positive results than others. And that the highest scoring SMART alternative, improving the
alternative port, does have negative results to consider also.
The impact tables show what we would like to make our main conclusion on. The external factors
have been calculated to have a large effect on the outcome of the project regardless of the
alternatives chosen and the end results will vary considerably depending on these two external
factors.
We conclude from this that with such high impact external factors it would be prudent to carry out
more analysis on these and research how the Port of Rotterdam would cope with the worst case
scenarios.