Towards sustainable and circular maintenance strategies for (existing) civil construction objects

Towards sustainable and circular maintenance strategies for (existing) civil construction objects: Developing a tool to stimulate the integration of sustainability and circularity via collaboration throughout the maintenance stage in the Dutch context

Baldew, Menouschka (TU Delft Civil Engineering & Geosciences)

Schraven, D.F.J. (graduation committee)
Teigiserová, D.A. (mentor)
Yang, Y. (graduation committee)
Schat, H.J (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Civil Engineering | Construction Management and Engineering

2023-01-30

On a general level, the Dutch government wants to have a fully circular economy by 2050 by reducing the use of primary materials and carbon dioxide emissions. As the consideration and integration of concepts such as sustainability and circular economy are becoming increasingly popular in the civil engineering sector, it might be time to re-consider certain activities.

From both scientific and practical points of view, it is concluded that currently a great deal of research is focused on stimulating concepts such as sustainability and circular economy in the “early stages” of the lifecycle such as procurement, design, and construction stages. However, the aforementioned concepts are not yet elaborately researched in stages after construction, such as the maintenance stage. However, in the Dutch context, there are hundreds of existing civil engineering assets, that need to be maintained daily. As the Dutch government has certain goals, it is important to see how maintenance strategies for existing civil engineering assets can be affected in the case when sustainability and circular economy are considered.

This research aims to explore the integration of concepts such as sustainability and circular economy within the maintenance stage of existing civil engineering assets. As a result of this research, a tool is developed in Microsoft Excel. This tool referred to as “Maintaining sustainably and circularly in a collaborative way” can be used by actors involved in the maintenance stage. It is possible to apply the tool in the following two phases, namely (1) the pre-contractual phase and (2) the execution phase for maintenance works. With the help of indicators, the actors involved can (re)consider aspects such as the (current) maintenance strategies, and the requirements for maintenance contracts. The tool can help to overcome certain identified barriers such as knowledge gaps on sustainability and circular economy within the maintenance stage, and diffused collaboration among parties involved in a certain process.
For this research, two important constraints to mention are:
(a) The developed tool is currently only applicable for sluices and bascule bridges (in Dutch: beweegbare bruggen), and
(b) the focus of this research is solely on performance-based contracts for maintenance works.

As an approach to conducting the research, the “Double Diamond Methodology” is applied. This is a design-thinking research approach. In the first part of the diamond, literature is reviewed and semi-structured interviews are conducted. The results of the literature review and the interviews led to the requirements that should be used as a basis for developing the tool. In the second part of the diamond, the tool was developed and tested via validation sessions.

Sustainability
Circular economy (CE)
Maintenance
Collaboration
tool development
Barriers and enablers
Indicators
Double Diamond method
performance-based maintenance contracts

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:d6ae9194-a118-43fd-b725-5d438bf9a475

Student theses

master thesis

© 2023 Menouschka Baldew