Engineering Matters Podcast
Life Extension for Infrastructure
Published
03 Jun 2025
In the second half of the 20th century, the world was transformed through infrastructure construction. New roads and railways, levees and power lines, delivered unprecedented comfort and convenience, and laid the foundation for an economy driven by easy transport and trade. But today, as many governments struggle with budgetary constraints and the need to balance decarbonisation with growth, that infrastructure is reaching the end of its design life.
Design life does not set a limit on an assets’ safe and productive use. But it does mark the target the original architects and engineers aimed for when they designed and built this infrastructure. Now, their successors must reconsider each asset’s health, and come up with a plan for its replacement or ongoing use.
If a structure must be demolished and replaced, asset owners face heavy carbon and financial costs. But by truly understanding these assets, they can focus this investment where it is needed and will have the most impact.
In this episode, we learn how engineers and asset owners can work together to collect this data, and identify cost- and carbon-effective solutions. The Netherlands has led the way in infrastructure development, for hundreds of years. Since 1848, this has been overseen by Rijkwaterstaat (RWS), the agency responsible for the country’s famed canals, as well as its roads.
We learn how RWS has worked with Fugro to make the best use of existing transport assets, as demand for them has soared; and we hear how our engineers have used cost-effective sensors to monitor the impact of a specific failure mechanism affecting tunnels across the country, allowing them to safely remain open, without unnecessary interventions.
Guests
Edo Noordermeer, Business Consultant, Monitoring, Fugro
Patrick Bakhuizen, Commercial Director, Infrastructure, Fugro
Harry Dekker, Senior Adviser, Tunnels and Geo-Engineering, Rijkwaterstaat
Diederick Bouwmeester, Manager, Geotech, The Netherlands, Fugro
Partner
This episode was produced by Engineering Matters.
Geo-monitoring
Are your building projects often complex, costly, and fraught with hidden ground risk? Our automated geotechnical and structural monitoring solutions help identify, quantify, and mitigate these risks. How? By providing real-time data in sensitive on- or offshore environments. We help you acquire and analyse Geo-data from the surface, subsurface, and assets. Our insights empower you to make informed decisions – so you can design and build safely and sustainably. With minimal impact on the surrounding infrastructure.