Where the name comes from

Terravek is a compound of terra and vek. The first part is obvious. The second is a contraction of the Dutch vaak — often — and it is the part that carries the meaning.

The company was founded to solve a problem of repetition rather than resolution. Measuring the ground once is a survey, and surveying was already a mature profession in 2007. Measuring the same ground consistently, over and over, for long enough that change becomes visible — that was the thing nobody was doing well, and it is the thing the entire company is organised around.

Saskia Bakhuis has said that the original shortlist also contained Deltameet and Vlakwerk, and that Merijn Vroegh vetoed both on the grounds that neither would survive contact with a German customer.

The contour lines in the mark are a terrain cross-section; the vertical stroke is a measurement datum. The mark has been through four revisions and the datum has been in all of them. The current version dates from the 2021 rebrand and is documented in the brand guide.