Strategic Asset Management at Rijkswaterstaat

Over the past decades, Iv has provided strategic, tactical, and operational support to Rijkswaterstaat in the development and implementation of risk-based and data-driven asset management, in accordance with ISO 55000 and iAMPro.

Rijkswaterstaat, the executive agency of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, manages approximately 3,500 kilometres of motorways, 1,300 bridges and viaducts, ninety locks and an equal number of weirs, sixty pumping stations, and 1,300 kilometres of primary flood defences such as dikes, dams, and storm surge barriers. To manage these, Rijkswaterstaat operates a large, nationwide, and highly decentralised organisation. The major challenge lies in developing—and more importantly, implementing—a robust and standardised asset management strategy that can be applied consistently, practically, and lawfully across all levels and departments of the organisation.

Iv has supported Rijkswaterstaat for many years through, among other things:

• Designing, elaborating, and implementing the RAMSSHE€P framework;

• Contributing to the development of key guidance documents, including the ‘RAMS Guide – Performance-Based System Management’, the ‘Risk-Based Asset Management Guide according to the ProBO methodology’, the ‘Maintenance Planning Manual (IHP) for Wet Infrastructure’, and the governance plan ‘Risk-Based Maintenance’, which sets out the nationally adopted maintenance strategy for all types of physical assets in the National Road Network, Main Waterway Network, and National Water System;

• Developing a methodology and supporting toolkit to optimise the maintenance of banks and riverbeds by adjusting performance, risk, and cost parameters—this led to the creation of our DREAM® concept;

• Developing the format for Object Risk Analyses (ORAs);

• Creating specialised methods, tools, and manuals within the probabilistic asset management methodology (ProBO), including fire risk analysis and quantification of human error probabilities;

• Establishing a risk-based object management regime (OBR) for dikes, dams, and dunes;

• Designing a “performance management model” for the Main Waterway Network;

• Developing the integrated assessment and design toolkit (BOI) for the “reliability of closure” of movable structures;

• Preparing numerous RAMS, Life Cycle Costing (LCC), and (object-level) risk analyses, as well as performance-driven maintenance plans (P-IHPs) using RCMCost;

• Conducting thousands of maintenance inspections, assessments, measurements, and 3D scans;

• Carrying out an in-depth evaluation of 20 years of probabilistic asset management for the six major storm surge barriers (Eastern Scheldt Barrier, Haringvliet Locks, Maeslant Barrier, Hartel Barrier, Hollandsche IJssel Barrier, and Ramspol Barrier), including recommendations for future management and maintenance.

Rijkswaterstaat is one of the few infrastructure managers capable of demonstrably and quantitatively steering the performance, risks, and costs of its assets. As a result, Rijkswaterstaat is internationally recognised as a frontrunner in risk-based and data-driven asset management.