Windward Roads Infrastructure

The Island Builder with its Own Asphalt, Concrete—and Playbook for Tough Terrain

A ‘one team’ approach to delivering top tier infrastructure results

Headquartered on St. Maarten with operations in Saba, St. Eustatius, Anguilla, and the French side of the island, Windward Roads blends in-house materials, tight logistics, and a “one team” culture to deliver quality infrastructure where schedules and supply lines are anything but simple.

From small intersections to multi-island delivery

Founded in 1986 as a small subcontractor on St. Maarten, Windward Roads has scaled by adding capability where island projects need it most: asphalt production and paving, ready-mix concrete, and aggregate recycling. “We started small—intersections and local infrastructure,” says [Witteveen]. “The philosophy was never too big to do a small job. From there, we built the pieces to control quality and time.”

Today, the company runs 80+ employees and a broad subcontractor bench, operating as Saba Roads & Construction on Saba, Statia Roads & Construction on St. Eustatius, Anguilla Roads & Infrastructure on Anguilla, plus an administrative entity on the French side. St. Maarten serves as the hub: procurement, customs, staging, and trans-shipment move through the main office and port before materials dispatch to the satellite islands.

“Nearly everything flows through St. Maarten,” Witteveen says. “We’ve got boats almost daily, planes daily, and a 20-minute boat to Anguilla every half hour. But once you’re in Saba or Statia, weekly sailings can be the difference between a one-day fix and a one-week delay.”

The island challenge: plan deep, move fast, improvise smart

Building on small islands means constraints—parts aren’t around the corner, immigration and tax regimes differ by island, and subsurface and marine works always surprise.

• Availability: Specialty parts or materials often aren’t on-island; even on St. Maarten, lead times are longer than on the mainland.
• Transport windows: Saba/Statia sailings are weekly; miss Tuesday’s ship and you can lose a week.
• Rulesets: Saba and St. Eustatius are special Dutch municipalities with different immigration, tax, and labor rules than St. Maarten/Anguilla—Windward Roads navigates three countries’ frameworks across four islands.
• Subsurface risk: “Go into the ground or underwater and you’ll find what you didn’t plan,” Witteveen says. “That’s normal here. So preparation is everything.”

Capabilities that change delivery math

Windward Roads built in-house capacity where it matters most to island infrastructure:

• Asphalt production & paving: The company operates St. Maarten’s only asphalt plant and is the island’s primary asphalt applicator. “Most comfortable roads are asphalt,” Witteveen notes. “On small islands, the volumes can’t justify multiple producers. Our plant creates the quality and schedule certainty projects need.”
• Concrete production: In-house ready-mix allows QC control, on-time pours, and reduced dependence on third parties.
• Heavy equipment fleet: Excavators, loaders, transport, and specialty gear sized for infra/marine work—maintained for reliability over rental risk.
• Recycling & circularity: On-site crushing of demolished concrete, wood/green waste shredding, and aggregate reuse wherever engineering allows.

“We prefer to own the critical path,” Witteveen says. “If the plant is ours and the paver is ours, we control quality and timing, and our clients see the difference.”

People: hire character, train skills, build one team

Windward Roads runs a Caribbean-first hiring posture—local teams across the islands, complemented by Dutch, English, and other expat supervisors or engineers where specialist skills are thin regionally.

“We hire character and train skills,” says Witteveen. “The team is Caribbean at heart, with a few Dutch supervisors and engineers where needed. We put real effort into training and transparency so everyone understands the plan.”

Culture is intentionally close-knit: Friday beers, team events, and open comms reinforce belonging. Four values show up on the walls and in project reviews: Team-member strong, Transparent, Educated, Enthusiastic. As a subsidiary of a 90-year-old Dutch group, the company also brings Dutch standards in safety, QA/QC, and documentation—while respecting Caribbean work culture. “It’s a different rhythm,” Witteveen says. “That’s the field you play on. It’s fun.”

Quality, service, reputation—measured on small islands

In a market of ~58,000 people on St. Maarten (and smaller on the satellites), your work is visible for years—and so are your relationships. Windward Roads bakes follow-ups and guarantees into close client handling.

• Structured updates: Scheduled meetings and as-needed briefings on progress, budget, quality, and issue resolution.
• Post-handover attention: Periodic checks and warranty actions to protect longevity.
• Repeat business focus: “Most of our clients are repeat,” Witteveen says. “That only happens if you keep surprises low and communication high.”

Recent and upcoming work

With so many competing projects, Witteveen highlights some of the more significant ones to emphasize the scale and importance of the projects the company is undertaking:

• Statia (St. Eustatius) – “Blue Circle” drainage: Island-wide stormwater improvements to guide rainwater safely off a cliff-edge historic town and reduce erosion risk. “It’s a safety project as much as infra,” Witteveen says.
• St. Maarten – Airport asphalt: Taxiway resurfacing and forthcoming runway works in staged sequences to protect operations.
• St. Maarten – Vie L’ven resort siteworks: Early and upcoming packages for a planned ~230-key, five-star-plus resort by North American investors—bringing a higher tier of hospitality quality to the island (including plans for a Michelin-starred restaurant). “It’s a new bar for local tourism,” Witteveen notes.

Logistics as a competitive advantage

Because every out-island job runs through the St. Maarten hub, Windward Roads treats customs, staging, and shipping like critical scope—not overhead. The firm sequences containers, consolidates local buys, and pads contingencies around weekly sailings and airfreight limits. Small islands magnify small misses: a part that’s a same-day courier elsewhere can be a seven-day slip in Saba. “We plan so that one missed ship doesn’t sink the program,” Witteveen says.

Sustainability: pushing the curve, island by island

Windward Roads is leaning into circularity and decarbonization—areas where small islands often lag due to scale and Witteveen points specifically to:

• Solar: Installed arrays on facilities, with more projects queued.
• Fleet: Electric cars for corporate use—unusual for the island construction sector.
• Recycling: Crushing of concrete for reuse; shredding of wood and green waste for proper disposal or repurposing.
• World Bank demolition: Current program to demolish and responsibly process three buildings, diverting materials back into the island economy where feasible.

As part of a larger Dutch group active across Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba (including a limestone aggregate mine, concrete, asphalt, and heavy civil), Windward Roads shares best practices across the Dutch Caribbean to bring circularity forward. “We’re ahead of the local curve—and we want to pull the curve with us,” Witteveen says.

Supplier relationships: be the contractor vendors want

The company’s approach with vendors is simple: be easy to do business with—clean takeoffs, clear orders, tight QC—then ask for the best pricing. “We eliminate ordering errors at the back office,” Witteveen says. “Reliability earns trust, and trust earns value.”

How Windward Roads measures success

When asked about success and what it means to the company, Witteveen answers without hesitation pointing out what he feels to be the keys to growth:

• Delivery reliability under island constraints (hit the ship, keep the pour, finish the paving window).
• QA/QC that holds up on highly visible assets (airport surfaces, town centers, seafronts).
• Client retention in a very small market—repeat work as the primary KPI.
• Team engagement—low turnover, strong local participation, steady skill-building.

The road ahead: balance the pipeline; lead on circularity

Looking ahead, Witteveen has a set of priorities for the immediate future and plans for long term growth for years to come:

When assessing the next 12–24 months: Keep the work mix balanced to avoid the “too hot / too cold” swings common on small islands—sequencing airport, drainage, hospitality, and municipal jobs so people and plants remain utilized, not overrun.

Looking towards the next 5–10 years: Extend leadership in recycling, low-carbon ops, and durable paving standards—partnering with the airport, harbor, and government on CO₂ accounting, recycled materials specs, and end-of-life strategies for concrete and asphalt.

“On islands, waste has nowhere to hide,” Witteveen says. “We have to design it out.”

AT A GLANCE

Name: Windwards Road Infrastructure

What: Leading infrastructure contractor and builder skilled in top tier projects and focused ont future growth

Where: Sint Maarten, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Anguilla

Website: www. windwardroads.com

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