Southern Concrete Repair Afternoon on the theme of AI

On March 27, the Southern Concrete Repair Afternoon will take place in the Paterskerk in Eindhoven. This afternoon is again organized by the Concrete Maintenance Platform (BOP), a network in which five organizations representing the entire chain of concrete maintenance and repair work together. They have come together to offer the best in the field of concrete repair and to benefit the market. Under the slogan 'Never demolish again', in March they will look at what role Artificial Intelligence, AI, can play in this. Anthony van den Hondel, chairman of the BOP, looks ahead to this exciting topic. The world is full of data. Buildings and works of art with all their sensors and measuring instruments are also becoming more and more talking constructions. Who is going to process all that data?

Van den Hondel has expressed his views on the need for concrete maintenance many times in this magazine. "We need to get rid of premature demolition of structures," he believes. "There used to be plenty of developers for whom it was more economically advantageous to demolish a building for new construction. However, that throwaway culture is no longer sustainable. In particular, the environmental impact of demolition and new construction weighs too heavily; it is essential to continue using and maintaining existing buildings and infrastructure for as long as possible. "Never demolish again" should not be taken literally. Sometimes replacement new construction is inevitable, but for too long and too quickly we have prioritized the demolition option."

Opportunity

To give hands and feet to the enormous maintenance task facing the Netherlands anyway, AI can play a significant role, Van den Hondel believes. "AI is above all a tool, not a substitute for professional knowledge. There are people within the concrete maintenance industry who doubt the role of AI, for example because they are worried about possible job losses. To them I say that this is exactly why we do need to talk about AI. You don't lose your job to AI, but to a person who does use AI. The use of AI is an opportunity to improve processes and ease work, as in assisting in repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Think of writing reports and analyzing images."

Image processing

A great example, according to Van den Hondel, is the use of AI to process photos of concrete structures. "In daily work, often hundreds of photos are taken of a project. It is a challenge to efficiently process all those photos and link them to the right data. In the future, I expect AI to help capture, organize, access and inventory these images by, for example, automatically recording where and when they were taken and integrating them into a digital timeline of the building's condition. As an expert, the concrete maintenance engineer can make sense of this and translate it into options and strategies to advise the manager." 

Structural health monitoring

In addition, Van den Hondel sees a future for AI in structural health monitoring. "Sensors already generate masses of data about corrosion, vibrations or loads on structures, for example. We cannot process this, but computers and AI can recognize patterns in this that are difficult for human perception to detect. AI can help us turn data into valuable insights. With this structural health monitoring, you can identify trends, make predictions about the condition of a building or infrastructure and indicate where maintenance is needed, often even before there is visible damage. This will accelerate the move to preventive maintenance, preventing damage before it occurs, rather than waiting until the problem becomes visible and then intervening."

Van den Hondel also expects a significant role for AI in improving business processes. "In construction, a lot of meetings are held. Automatically generating meeting reports and action lists saves a lot of time and prevents differences in interpretation." He is convinced that AI can transform the concrete maintenance industry. Not by replacing people, but by supporting them in their work. "AI is too important to ignore, but we should use it wisely and see it primarily as a tool. At the Southern Concrete Repair Afternoon, we can discuss this. In any case, I expect a very inspiring afternoon, where we can exchange ideas with peers about the future of concrete maintenance."