Consulting Projects
In the following, we provide you with an overview of a selection of national and international consulting projects in the field of infrastructure asset management, which we have carried out or are still working on for our clients.
KUBA
KUBA is a software that we have been grooming for the Federal Road Office in Switzerland for over 25 years. We continue to service the road operator and consult in both organisational as well as technical questions.
Support for ASTRA maintenance management
In various projects, we support the branches of the Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) in the maintenance management of their engineering structures and tunnels. These projects cover various areas of maintenance management, from the collection and maintenance of inventory, inspection and maintenance data, management of the engineering offices that inspect the engineering structures and determine the necessary maintenance measures, to the optimisation of the maintenance management processes and their support through the engineering structures database KUBA.
Training and technical support for inspections
We regularly conduct training courses for the inspectors of the engineering structures of the national road network. On behalf of various branches of FEDRO, we also accompany the inspections, answer the inspectors’ technical questions and support the branches in evaluating the inspection results.
Maintenance planning and determination of financial requirements Dreispitzareal Basel
In several projects since 2014, we have supported the private infrastructure operator of the Dreispitz area in Basel in maintenance planning and determining the long-term financial requirements for the area’s infrastructure facilities (road, rail, lighting, drainage).
Support for strategic project generation ASTRA
We support several branches of the Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) in strategic project generation. In this process, for example, proposed measures for the engineering structures over 25 years are determined based on simulations and taking into account the measures from the inspections as well as measures that have already been defined. The measures for the engineering structures are coordinated with the measures of the other areas with the aim of determining optimal cross-sectoral measures.
Conservation planning to determine proposed measures, condition development and financial requirements
Supporting cantons and cities such as Basel, Strasbourg, Basel-Landschaft, Ticino, Aargau, Vaud, Uri in conservation planning to determine proposed measures, status development and financial requirements. In addition to support in conservation planning, applications for framework credits are also drafted, among other things.
Specialist support for maintenance management in the development of the Road Strategy 2019 in the canton of Uri
We advise the canton of Uri in the field of infrastructure as specialist support for maintenance management. For the development of a new Strategy Road 2019, we have, among other things, used the canton of Uri with a jointly developed integral approach within the framework of our analysis tool infFaros, which is in use in the modular asset management system of the canton of Uri. In addition, we advise the canton in the field of further development and in the areas of new technologies for the monitoring activities of bridges and roads.
Pilot project BIM-4-UR to support the canton of Uri within the framework of the digitalisation strategy
We are supporting the canton of Uri as part of its digitalisation strategy with a pilot project BIM-4-UR. The aim of this project is to demonstrate the benefits of BIM in the field of business processes of the road infrastructure operator on a real road section with roadway and engineering objects. The results of this pilot project are to form the basis for a more efficient design of the management processes in the field of road infrastructure. Furthermore, the locally based companies should also benefit from the results to develop further as part of Uri’s economy in the field of digitalisation and also benefit by increasing the efficiency of the planning and execution processes in cooperation with the canton.
Detection of retaining walls using 3D point clouds of road surveys
In cooperation with the cantons of Bern, Graubünden and Valais, a risk-based maintenance management for retaining walls is currently being developed. This focuses not only on the structure itself, but also on existing hazards associated with the structure. An essential basis for this is the existing inventory of retaining walls throughout the network, so that sound risk-based decisions can be made for the monitoring and maintenance planning process as part of this approach. For an efficient completion of the retaining wall inventory, existing 3D point clouds are used by the road survey to determine relevant inventory data of retaining walls with the help of an algorithm developed within the scope of this project and to store them in a structured way in the artificial structure database.
Risk-based maintenance management for retaining walls
Retaining walls are among the critical objects which, in the event of their failure, can have a significant impact on the road user in terms of safety and availability, as well as on the scope of measures to restore the road infrastructure, especially in mountainous regions. For this reason, retaining walls must not be neglected in the context of monitoring and maintenance planning of road infrastructure, in order to be able to intervene in the decision-making process in a timely manner and as economically as possible. The aim is to develop an integral and risk-based decision model. In this model, different risk factors in the area of road infrastructure are to be linked and used within the framework of simulations of the effects of measure options on the one hand for maintenance and on the other hand for natural hazard prevention to determine long-term effects and costs.
This will allow investment decisions to be based on sound decision-making principles. This includes not only operator costs but also user costs as well as costs to the general public. An integral risk-based decision model makes it possible to determine the impacts and residual risks of measure options not only in the area of maintenance, but also in the area of expansion and natural hazard prevention, and thus to make decisions transparently and according to uniform rules.
Detailed network Berlin
In this project for the Senate for Environment, Transport and Climate Protection in Berlin, we analysed the specification requirements for their digital infrastructure enabling improved asset management as well as bicycle routing.
Reliability analysis of roller weirs
A preliminary study is being conducted to assess the extent to which a database-based evaluation of weir closures of the roller weir design type is possible. For this purpose, a procedure is developed to determine the reliability on the basis of a simplified static system using two roller weirs as examples. This static system is based on the most important dimensions, which can be extracted with little effort even from rudimentary plan sketches. The reliability is assessed on the basis of reliability theory, taking into account the uncertainties as scatter.