Decisions on life-cycle reliability of flood defence systems

Many countries rely on flood defence systems to prevent economic damage and loss-of-life due to catastrophic floods. Asset managers of flood defence systems need to cope with the consequences of structural degradation, and changing societal and environmental conditions, in order to satisfy performance requirements and optimize societal value of...

A topological characterisation of looped drainage networks

Hydrodynamic models are used to analyse water networks (water distribution, drainage, surface water, district heating, etc.). The non-linear nature of water flows necessitates the use of iterative solution methods in hydraulic modelling. This requires a relatively large computational effort. To reduce this effort, networks, network forcing...

Accuracy of visual inspection of flood defences

Prioritisation of flood defence maintenance is typically based on visual inspection. However, literature shows that the Probability of Detection (PoD) of visual inspection can vary significantly. Here we investigate the PoD for visual inspections of flood defence structures, the consistency of damage classification, and the influence of...

Identifying critical elements in drinking water distribution networks using graph theory

Drinking water distribution networks (WDNs) are a crucial infrastructure for life in cities. Deterioration of this ageing, and partly hidden from view, infrastructure can result in losses due to leakage and an increased contamination risk. To counteract this, maintenance strategies are required to maintain the service level. Information on...

Life-Cycle Management Model for Tunnels

Tunnels are a vital link in transport networks which represent a significant investment in all life cycle phases from planning, investigation works, construction and operation. Decisions through the whole life cycle of a tunnel should be based on solid facts and reliable data especially in the context of considerable impacts on both the...

Risk Based Maintenance in Electricity Network Organisations

Presently, maintenance management of assets in infrastructure utilities such as electricity, gas and water are widely undergoing changes towards new working environments. These are mainly driven against the background of stringent regulatory regimes, an ageing asset base, increased customer demands and constrained financial resources. Therefore,...

A Maturity Model for Maintenance Departments of Public Organisations: An adaptation of the EFQM model

The growing awareness of delivering public services into more costumer-oriented minded triggers the public organisations to manage their assets professionally. Building assets are one of the resources owned by the public organisations that need to be maintained. Maintenance departments are part of the public body that have responsibilities to...

A framework towards forward cooperation in the product life cycle of dredging equipment

The Dutch shipbuilding industry has a real competitive force in building complex, specialized and multipurpose vessels (Rabobank, 2014). However, the Dutch maritime sector has to deal with strongly growing competition worldwide. For the dredging sector this implies the need to innovate in order to remain competitive. This research focuses on the...

Upcoming Role of Condition Monitoring in Risk-Based Asset Management for the Power Sector

The electrical power sector is stimulated to evolve under the pressures of the energy transition, the deregulation of electricity markets and the introduction of intelligent grids. In general, engineers believe that technologies such as monitoring, control and diagnostic devices, can realize this evolvement smoothly. Unfortunately, the...

Analysing outsourcing policies in an asset management context: A six-stage model

Asset managers of civil infrastructure are increasingly outsourcing their maintenance. Whereas maintenance is a cyclic process, decisions to outsource decisions are often project-based, and confusing the discussion on the degree of outsourcing. This paper presents a six-stage model that facilitates the top-down discussion for analysing the...

Improving industrial maintenance contract relationships

Unavailability of technical systems, such as aircraft, is expensive. Technical systems require maintenance to prevent and to remedy defects that cause unavailability. Users of technical systems usually bear the consequences of the risk of unavailability, in particular the loss of productivity. This is based on the presumption that users are best...

The purchasing of maintenance service delivery in the Dutch social housing sector: Optimising commodity strategies for delivering maintenance services to tenants

For housing associations, maintenance is an opportunity for high quality interaction with their tenants, and thus an opportunity for effectively influencing the quality of service delivery to tenants. Dutch housing associations have a market share of about one third of the entire Dutch housing stock. They spent around 2.8 billion euros a year on...

Performance-based maintenance procurement by Dutch housing associations

OTB Research institute has established a long-term research program to performance-based maintenance procurement in the technical management of housing stock. Stakeholders: housing associations, contractors and the Dutch Building Research Foundation are directly involved in this research program. Literature reviews, case studies, expert meetings...

Asset management of water-related infrastructure

This report identifies the need of the developing world for introducing asset management plans as a key condition for financing infrastructure investments. It highlights the lessons learned of the management of the Dutch water-related infrastructure and provides recommendations on the application of the Dutch experience and expertise in projects...

Management and maintenance of hydraulic infrastructure: Dutch experiences

This report has been prepared for the refresher course for alumni of IHE in Bangladesh. The goal of the refresher course is to: Familiarise participants with new insights and focal points in integrated water resources management and the delivery of services, which are at the very purpose of water management. One of the points to which special...