Sustainability at Haskoning is embedded in all its services and operations. With CSRD on the horizon, it presented an opportunity to further strengthen the structuring and reporting of its ESG performance across countries and entities. Together with Finext, they built a hybrid CCH Tagetik solution that balances compliance with real business needs.
About Haskoning
Haskoning is an international engineering and consultancy company for the natural and built environment. Driven by their purpose Enhancing Society Together, 6,800 professionals work on complex projects in infrastructure, buildings, water systems, energy transition, and climate resilience.
As an independent company without external shareholders, Haskoning takes a long-term view on value creation, placing sustainability, employee wellbeing and societal impact alongside financial performance.
Since Haskoning advises clients on sustainability challenges, maintaining robust ESG reporting within its own organisation is viewed as an extension of the standards it helps clients achieve.
Grip on ESG Data across countries and entities
Getting ready for CSRD included that Haskoning's ESG reporting process needed to become more structured, reliable, and easier to repeat. Easier said than done when your data comes from many countries, and entities.
Key questions kept surfacing. Who owns which data point? Ownership was not always clear across corporate teams and entities. Where does the data come from? Sources varied per country. And how do you collect it consistently?
On top of that, Haskoning had specific requirements, such as reporting workforce data by country. A standard setup alone would fall short. Building everything from scratch would make the solution hard to maintain. The real challenge was finding the right balance: compliant, practical, and flexible enough for the business.
The choice of CCH Tagetik
Finext and Haskoning chose a hybrid CCH Tagetik setup. The standard ESG solution was used where it made sense, with custom components added where Haskoning needed more.
Together, we shaped the data ownership, so every data point has a clear owner. We designed the entity setup to support both entity-level and group-level reporting. The AFAS integration reduces manual work and improves data quality. And the analytical workspaces and workflows are tailored to how Haskoning actually works.
The goal was simple: make ESG reporting controlled and scalable, without making it unnecessarily complex.
The cooperation worked because there was trust on both sides. Haskoning brought the ESG knowledge and business context. Finext brought the Tagetik expertise and translated it into a practical, tailor-made solution that supports both compliance and useful management insight.
How we built on a reliable process
Haskoning now has a controlled and scalable ESG reporting process in Tagetik. ESG data is collected from most entities, covering more than 95% of the organisation based on people and revenue. Smaller or temporary entities are handled through a "rest of the world" entity. That keeps the process complete without making it heavier than needed.
Ownership is clear too. Corporate teams know exactly which data points they are responsible for, and the setup supports both entity-level and group-level reporting. With the AFAS integration and custom analytical workspace, Haskoning has less manual work, better data quality, and more detailed insight, for example into Workforce data per country.
Most importantly, ESG reporting has become a reliable process that gives Haskoning more transparency, better control, and stronger input for sustainability decisions.
"What really stood out to us was the genuine effort to understand our needs and tailor the solution accordingly. The process was smooth, communication was clear, and it felt like a partnership." Maarten Warnshuis, ESG Controller at Haskoning
Get the basics right before you build
This project shows that ESG reporting is a business project first. The real work starts with the organisation: who owns the data, where does it come from, what really matters, and how do you make the process repeatable?
The key lesson: get the basics clear before you build. Once responsibilities, data sources, and reporting needs are defined, technology can do what it does best: making the process easier, faster, and more reliable.
It also shows that a standard approach rarely fits perfectly. Haskoning needed a solution that was compliant and practical for their own organisation. The hybrid setup gave them both.
For anyone starting their ESG journey, the takeaway is simple: involve the business early, keep the process practical, and let technology support the change.
