Thousands of houses have been built over the eighty years and more that the company has been active
L.H.G. (Lambert) Hendriks
Over eighty-five years ago, in 1922, L. J. Hendriks founded the building company in Oss that would become the foundation for the current company, Hendriks Bouw en Ontwikkeling. L. J. Hendriks ran the company until his death in 1954. In that year, his son L. H. G. Hendriks - Lambert Hendriks – took on the mantle. He passed the company on in turn in 1987 to his son L. J. M. Hendriks, Lambèr Hendriks, now the general director of Hendriks Bouw en Ontwikkeling. A look back at the history with Lambert Hendriks, who is still associated with the company in an advisory capacity.
Lambert Hendriks was born in 1930, when his father had been working independently for just eight years. 'In the pre-war years, nobody's business was really going well,' he says, 'so it was sometimes very difficult, especially with a big family like ours. There were ten of us at home, five boys and five girls. But my father always made the construction drawings himself, the blueprints, and offered them to the people who wanted houses. He also applied for subsidies for this. When my father built that house at the time for two and a half thousand guilders, they said: remember, three hundred guilders of that has got to be for us so that we can furnish the house! That was the way it was in those days. Some of the houses that my father built that way are still standing.'
Getting moving again
Immediately after the war, Lambert Hendriks started work at the age of fifteen in his father's company as an apprentice bricklayer for the rebuilding work. Both before and after his military service in 1950, he went on numerous training courses relating to building work and commercial knowledge. He had to take over the construction company entirely unexpectedly when his father died in 1954 at the age of sixty. 'I became the director from one day to the next,' he explains. 'In the first few years, it was as my mother's business representative. The first thing I did was go to see the mayor of Oss, Mayor Deelen. "What now?" I asked him. "Nothing," he said. "We just carry on where he left off!" Mayor Deelen then more or less helped get things moving again and regularly made sure that new houses were allocated to us.' Together with his brother H. L. Hendriks, who was at the time working as an independent, Lambert Hendriks started a joint venture, initially under the name Combinatie Hendriks and subsequently as N.V. Gebr. Hendriks Bouwbedrijf. It was only in 1984 that this combined venture was separated again, with an eye on the succession of the sons of the two brothers.
Housing builder
Hendriks says: 'In the post-war years, my father had taken on a number of housing projects in Schijndel, Veghel and Oss, and it had all gone very well. We were well able to match the prices and this was why we were asked by other town councils to put up housing there. I mean, there was a shortage of housing everywhere. At first, it would be thirty or forty houses, but in the end the really big numbers came along. In Den Bosch, we once got an order to build no less than fourteen hundred houses! Back then, we had thought up a labour-saving concept. By using formwork systems and working with large prefabricated elements, we needed fewer man-hours for each house. Because we had built up a reputation as a labour-saving builder, extra reserves were allocated to councils who got us to build their houses. So that was a very successful idea.'
Efficient construction
Under the leadership of Lambert Hendriks Senior and thanks to his good contacts within the housing corporations and at municipal, provincial and national levels, the building company was able to grow during the sixties and seventies into one of the leading housing builders in the province of Noord-Brabant. His vision on the way to run the business was clear: short lines and efficient construction, using his own people as much as possible. This vision led to the company's own concrete factory, carpentry workshop, plumbing, ironworking and materials services being set up in 1968. To make room for all this industry and to allow new office premises to be commissioned, the company moved from Industriepark Oost to the Kanaalstraat in Oss in 1968. To keep the lines of communication with the clients in the region short, as was desired, Hendriks opened branches in Uden and Cuyk (these were later assigned to his brother's part of the venture when the companies were separated again) and in 's Hertogenbosch. Hendriks transferred the company to his son in 1987. By 1995, he had been working in the construction sector for fifty years (forty of them as the company's director) and he received a royal honour for his services. He then formally said farewell to the company, but remained associated with it in an advisory capacity. 'I still like going to the building sites,' he says. 'The people are always glad when you show your face, but I actually do it because I still really enjoy it!'