Sweltering Open Day of Construction draws 700 visitors

By the early morning hours, the mercury was already climbing towards 30 degrees on Saturday 20 June 2026. It didn’t stop around 700 visitors from showing up at ‘t Jaagpad, the meeting point for the Day of Construction at the Nieuwe Meer interchange. From here, they walked together with staff  from Construction Consortium TriAX (Besix, Dura Vermeer and Heijmans) onto the brand-new fly-over linking the A10 Zuid and the A4.  Beforehand, they had the opportunity to leave their signature on one of the Schinkel Bridge support structures.

The first to “sign” was Minister Boekholt-O’Sullivan of Housing and Spatial Planning. She opened the national Day of Construction, right on top of the new fly-over connecting the A10 South with the A4. After the official opening, the public was given the opportunity to walk across the freshly poured concrete. For anyone who found the ground too hot underfoot, there was plenty of cooling shade beneath the Schinkel Bridge. In the shade we handed out ice creams and water (and chips in the afternoon).

The average age of visitors was low this year: both on top of and beneath the fly-over, there were children everywhere. They could make their own candle holder from concrete and, for anyone who still had energy to spare – children, after all, do not feel the heat quite so quickly – there was a bouncy castle. Being allowed to operate a real crane proved especially popular, with young and old alike.

A day earlier, during the so-called Schools Day of Construction, around 65 pupils from Amsterdam were given a sneak preview of TriAX’s construction site. Enthusiastic primary school pupils from KC De Kinkerbuurt spent the morning building their own bridge with Lego, while pre-vocational secondary school pupils got to work calculating right angles. Secretly, that last group found the Lego more interesting after all, so we cannot deny that they played with it too. Or rather: built with it, of course.