University of Twente Student Theses
Beschikbaarheid bij weginfrastructuur projecten : een onderzoek naar de status-quo rondom beschikbaarheid bij weginfrastructuur projecten
Stegeman, Iwan (2016) Beschikbaarheid bij weginfrastructuur projecten : een onderzoek naar de status-quo rondom beschikbaarheid bij weginfrastructuur projecten.
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| Abstract: | Witteveen+Bos is an engineering firm that supports Rijkswaterstaat in improving the accessibility and mobility in the Netherlands. With regard to large road infrastructure projects in the Netherlands, it is particularly involved in environmental assessments and the design and planning procedures. The current political and social movement to a smaller government causes severe reduction of budget and capacity for the actual construction and maintenance of the road infrastructure network (Economisch Instituut voor de Bouw, 2012). As a result, the role of Rijkswaterstaat is shifting more and more towards directing the projects. The responsibility of the actual construction and maintenance shifts towards the market parties (Rijkswaterstaat, 2009-a). To ensure that the design of the contractor matches the expectations and goals, Rijkswaterstaat sets performance requirements for the road infrastructure that has to be designed and build. These are the so called RAMS-requirements which stands for the requirements on Reliability, Availabilty, Maintainability and Safety. For example, Rijkswaterstaat can set the requirement that the road infrastructure must be available for at least 95% of the time. More often, Witteveen+Bos needs to substantiate to Rijkswaterstaat how their design fulfils these performance requirements. Witteveen+Bos states that especially the requirements on availability raise many questions. A preliminary research of experts from Witteveen+Bos and Rijkswaterstaat shows that availability is a grey area where uncertainty prevails about 1) the definitions, 2) the establishment of the demanded availability percentage and 3) the impact of design choices on the percentage. For example, there appears to be no method to establish the availability percentage, the percentage is set based on the experience of the high-level managers of Rijkswaterstaat. Moreover, the communication between the involved parties in a road infrastructure project appears to cause frustrations on the involvement and responsibilities with regard to availability. Parties may feel that they bear the brunt of the decisions made by their predecessor. With the growing demand by the Rijkswaterstaat districts to a substantiation of the design on how to fulfil de availability percentage, the need to fully understand availability is big. To ensure that Witteveen+Bos is able to better cope with availability (and its substantiation) in future projects, there is a need to identify both the current and the desired situation with regard to dealing with availability. Thus it can be established how Witteveen+Bos can contribute to cover the difference between the two. The research question therefore is: “Which improvements can be made by Witteveen+Bos in dealing with availability by covering the difference between the current and the desired situation?” |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | ET: Engineering Technology |
| Subject: | 56 civil engineering |
| Programme: | Construction Management and Engineering MSc (60337) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/69374 |
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