[00:11] Safety of Concrete Structures
Roel van Gils: Welcome to another new episode of Beton & Staalbouw. We drive over them every day—on the road. We walk underneath them. We live in buildings with balconies, cantilevers, and structures designed decades ago. And most of the time, we don’t even think about it, because concrete, steel, and bridges just feel inherently safe. But what happens if a structural engineer tells you: “This structure isn’t demonstrably safe”? Who takes action then? And perhaps even more importantly: what happens if a facility manager then says, “But there are many more structures that aren’t safe”? Which one has the highest priority? That creates a unique situation. Because the problem exists, the risk has been identified, but sometimes nothing happens anyway. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Joining me at the table today is Anthony van den Hondel from CPS. Welcome, Anthony.
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes, thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Roel van Gils: Please introduce yourself briefly.
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes, my name is Anthony van den Hondel. I’m a true engineer. I love solving problems and making changes. It’s just part of who I am. I love puzzles—the more technical subjects, the technical side of things. When I graduated, there wasn’t really anything available in my field—I’m a materials engineer, specializing in corrosion—because it wasn’t a great year for the economy. So I ended up following in my brother’s footsteps into concrete maintenance. So my world revolves around concrete maintenance. You could say it’s a niche within a niche within a niche. It’s not even construction per se; it’s just a part of it. And on top of that, cathodic protection, because that’s very closely related to my area of expertise. When I first graduated from school in the early “90s, this was just starting to take off, and my boss said to me, ”Wim Brink, I’ve got something for you. You’re going to work in cathodic protection—it’s going to be a big deal.” Well, now we’re nearly 40 years down the road—let’s say 30 years—and I do nothing but cathodic protection on concrete. And I have to explain it everywhere I go, because nobody understands it.
[02:08] What is cathodic protection?
Roel van Gils: That’s actually my next question. Maybe you could explain the methodology briefly. What exactly does it entail when it comes to concrete?
Anthony van den Hondel: You just mentioned it in your introduction: it’s everywhere. We see concrete everywhere. In fact, 75 percent of the built environment consists of concrete, often hidden behind other layers. But the core we walk on is often that man-made stone. And it lasts forever—it’s perfect. You don’t have to do anything to it; it requires absolutely no maintenance. Well, we’ve started to realize that. It began to sink in a bit in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s, the first initiatives got underway to take concrete repair and maintenance to a higher level. And a little later, we realized: yeah, that’s a problem, because we’ve repaired that concrete, and now it’s breaking down again. Well, that’s where cathodic protection comes into play. So what turned out to be the problem? The steel inside that concrete rusts, and that pressure from the inside causes the concrete to break down. It starts to crack, rust spots appear, and then it falls apart. This is commonly referred to as “concrete rot,” but there’s actually nothing wrong with the concrete itself. It might not be of the best quality, but the concrete itself doesn’t rot. It’s the steel that’s rusting. Cathodic protection is a technique that comes from other industries—such as underground gas pipelines, ships, or sheet pile walls. What we do with cathodic protection is run a small current through the structure to stop the corrosion process. So someone asked, “Hey, can’t we do that with concrete, too?” The rest is history, as you say. We now have cathodic protection systems on concrete where needed—especially when the steel is rusting badly and we can’t really solve the problem any other way.
Anthony van den Hondel: But you only do that once a defect has occurred? Yes, you’d think so. That’s certainly our Dutch mindset. Funnily enough, cathodic protection projects are currently being implemented in the Netherlands. So a KB system is already being embedded in the concrete while it’s still being poured, to ensure a longer service life. So if you say: after 30 or 40 years, the trouble starts. There was an Italian professor, about 30 years ago, who said: “You have to start earlier, because then you can use a relatively lightweight and inexpensive system to significantly delay the moment when problems arise—maybe even prevent them altogether.” So yes, we’re doing some cathodic protection in the Netherlands these days, but it’s still a bit of a novelty. It’s in its infancy. I always say: if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. So there really has to be a reason, a justification. Then you implement a measure, and you also want to see some kind of return on investment. If I spend money on that, what will it yield for me in the future? The bottom line has to be positive. We’re Dutch enough to say: if it doesn’t pay off, I’m not going to do it.
[04:52] When a structure is not demonstrably safe
Roel van Gils: Maybe we can make this a little more specific. For example: a structural engineer notices that a beam on a viaduct is defective. What happens next in practice?
Anthony van den Hondel: That depends a little bit on the administrator and the situation. But generally speaking, that’s when we face a challenge. Because we don’t encounter this very often, organizations often don’t know exactly how to handle it. And then we run into the question: Is this really an emergency? Is this going to crash tomorrow, yes or no? Should I just take it offline for a bit? But if someone asks about a console like that, a balcony like that: how often does that actually crash in the Netherlands? Then a consultant at the table says, “Well, that actually almost never happens.” Well, that’s great, then we won’t do anything about it—we’d rather have new bathrooms anyway. That’s literally a conversation I’ve been part of. Then you think: guys, I don’t know what this is all about. But because we have this false sense of security—because things go right so often, and actually almost never go wrong—we say: “Yeah, the structural engineer says that beam isn’t up to code, but it’s been there for 40 years.”.
Anthony van den Hondel: A man who works at TNO made an interesting comment about that. He does a lot of forensic investigations—his name is Huibert Borsje. He said, “What struck me during my forensic investigations of all those collapsed structures…”
Roel van Gils: Had all of that been identified beforehand?
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes, he says, “It was still there the day before.” And that’s true, of course. The problem is: you don’t see anything happening to it. But we’ve made concrete this way: first of all, it’s very good, very durable, very strong. It can withstand a lot. But we’ve designed it so that if something goes wrong, it will give a warning. We don’t want it to collapse all at once. So what counts as a warning? A warning is: I see cracks. It doesn’t look right. This is strange. It never does this. Those are the warnings. At that point, you have to take action. A structural engineer will run the numbers and say, “Yes, on paper, it doesn’t add up. I don’t understand how it hasn’t collapsed yet.” But it’s still standing. Still, we have to do something about it. The property manager’s options: sometimes someone will say, “We’re going to reinforce it.” Or, “We’ll tear it down and build a new one.” Or, “We’re going to repair it.” We’re going to do something about it. Of course, there are also building managers who face problems. It doesn’t fit the budget, or it’s simply not feasible in the schedule. And then the question arises: what should we do now? How much longer can we put this off? How much longer can we delay this?
Roel van Gils: Yes, that's an interesting discussion.
Anthony van den Hondel: Yeah, I get it.
[07:20] Aging Infrastructure
Roel van Gils: And you just mentioned buildings as an example, but isn't the infrastructure in pretty bad shape as well?
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes, it’s obviously a hot topic right now. Take the Merwede Bridge, for example—that’s a steel bridge. I’m more on the concrete side, of course. But what we’re going to see—and we’ll be seeing this more often—is that due to increased loads and, at the same time, the deterioration of the structure, what we want to do with that structure is no longer feasible. It can no longer handle what we want to do with it now. And then you have two options. You could invest a lot of money in maintenance, replacement, and new construction, you might say. But that would take about ten years. That’s a long lead time. The second thing you can do is put up a sign on the shoulder: “Heavy trucks must take a detour.” That does help, because trucks place the heaviest load on the infrastructure.
Anthony van den Hondel: You can remove the Merwede Bridge, but if you look at the north-south connections, there are a few more critical ones. What if you removed them all? Then you’d have to take a detour through Germany. Then we’d have a problem. That’s not an option. So we really need to sit down together and think: what’s the minimum level of availability we need? When it comes to infrastructure, it’s about road usage—for freight traffic, for example. And that’s what we need to focus on. That requires asset managers to adopt a different way of thinking. When I first graduated from school, it was very simple. Anything that was broken got fixed. So you’d go outside, see what was broken, and then write up a nice report about it. All ten spots you saw were repaired. Then we shifted to a functional approach: it’s broken, but is that really such a big deal? You could just leave it as is. If you take that too far, you end up with a situation like in Belgium, where things look really bad, or what we have in Germany, where you drive past thirty construction sites because they’re catching up on overdue maintenance. That [unintelligible] line of thinking: “Is it really necessary?” We’ve definitely reached the limits of that approach. And now we’re at an awkward point where, at the same time, a great deal needs to be done.
Roel van Gils: Will we end up in a situation like the one in Germany?
Anthony van den Hondel: In the Netherlands, we started the construction boom a little earlier. That had something to do with World War II. But that construction boom also causes problems sooner. And the country is incredibly large, so you can see right away: a construction site like that is ten kilometers long. And every little bridge and viaduct you come across—they’re working on all of them at the same time. That’s a model we’re likely heading toward in the Netherlands as well, for safety reasons. So if you close off a section of road—shut down the A12 for a month. A lot of disruption, a lot of impact. But by the end of that month, we’ll be done. And people can do their jobs safely. Maybe that’s something we’ll start seeing more often in the Netherlands, too. But we do have a backlog of maintenance. And if you read the newspapers, billions are being thrown around. We might come back to that later. But we need to start making choices, and we also need to take action. Because we’ve lived in a world where concrete was still new, requiring relatively little attention and care, but which has since accumulated quite a bit of overdue maintenance. We can’t do it all at once, but we do need to get started.
[10:35] How much longer can maintenance be postponed?
Roel van Gils: Because how much longer can we afford this? Just putting things off, putting them off, putting them off.
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes, I don’t have a crystal ball either. That’s the tricky part. I do, however, have a very good understanding of the current state of concrete infrastructure in the Netherlands, because I’ve been doing this for a very long time and have personally visited almost every location at least once. We don’t have much time left. So what we’re really going to see—and of course this is already a political debate—is: where do we draw the line? But what we’re really going to see is that we’ll increasingly be pushing the limits of what’s still acceptable. We wait until things go wrong before we do anything about it. And that, of course, always gives a bit of a “close the barn door after the horse has bolted” feeling. We really need to turn that around and get ahead of the curve. We’re smart enough, we know enough, and we can steer the course with what we do in the Netherlands.
Roel van Gils: Yes, because in our preliminary discussion you drew a rather stark comparison with Genoa—the collapse of the Morandi Bridge there. That incident shows what can happen when structural problems converge. Are we just waiting for something like that to happen here too?
Anthony van den Hondel: People don’t realize this happens quite often. If you look at Europe, every year a bridge or a viaduct collapses there. Every year. But strangely enough, things almost always turn out okay. So that’s a bit odd. What happened in Germany—was it last year or the year before? That happened at night. During the day, the tram runs over it.
Roel van Gils: In Dresden.
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes. A building collapsed—fortunately, there were no deaths or injuries. Italy was, of course, very tragic, because people did lose their lives there. But we simply have a problem in that we see things coming, yet we can’t act immediately. And in Spain, for example, something like that [unintelligible] also fell from a span like that. It had just been closed the week before for maintenance. So by the time we get started, it might be just a little too late—or sometimes just right, right on time. It could easily happen, because there are plenty of structures about which we have our doubts and wonder: what’s the deal here? What’s the situation? In the past, we designed and built in a certain way that, looking back now, we’d say: with the knowledge we have today, we wouldn’t do it that way anymore, because it’s very vulnerable or very critical. So then you’re faced with the question: what do you do about it? We’re not going to shut everything down—that’s not possible. But what are we actually going to do about it, in what order, and when?
[13:09] Management and Responsibility
Roel van Gils: From a statistical perspective, should we change the way we manage things now?
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes. The problem is: it’s very easy to talk from a distance and tell people what to do. We always say: the best helmsmen are on shore. That’s certainly true in this case as well. It’s very easy to sit at this table and say that others aren’t doing a good job. Everyone is working with good intentions, but the challenge is quite daunting. We just have to be honest about that. The same goes for the management side. Imagine working for a municipality and being told, as an afterthought, “Oh, by the way, we also have 400 structures—little bridges and so on.” From a small wooden bridge somewhere in a park to a large concrete structure on a major thoroughfare. Are you just supposed to handle that on the side? Then you think: I’ve always been in charge of public spaces and landscaping, and now I’m suddenly being given this on top of it. So you have to realize that a lot of managers are faced with this: we’re doing more and more with fewer and fewer people. As a result, the workload increases. You lose track of the big picture, and then you’re faced with the question: “What am I supposed to do with this?” Well, let’s think about it. What did we do twenty years ago? Then let’s do that now. But twenty years ago, that concrete was still relatively new; there weren’t as many issues back then. And now it requires more maintenance. So you reach the point where you have to figure it out on your own, even while you’re busy. I’m not being negative about that. I just think that we have the knowledge available here in the Netherlands. It’s just that we’re not connecting with each other enough yet.
[14:47] Sharing Knowledge
Roel van Gils: So what's the solution?
Anthony van den Hondel: We should still meet more often and exchange more knowledge. I’m a firm believer in knowledge exchange and knowledge sharing. So if an administrator has to do it all on their own… Imagine being the person who suddenly gets a completely new topic on their desk. And someone yells at them, “You know what you need to do?” That’s me. “You need to handle cathodic protection.” I don’t even know what you’re talking about. That makes sense, because you’ve got a hundred other topics under your purview. But if we can share that kind of knowledge with each other, then you’ll hear from a colleague in another city or at another housing authority: “I did it this way or that way.” And then I asked that firm to assess the situation. I was very pleased with the results.” Oh, well, that’s interesting. I’m going to do that, too. So I’m a big believer in knowledge sharing. And that’s where the media and things like this—a podcast, for example—come in. We need to find ways to connect with one another and share the knowledge and experience we have.”.
[15:45] From Regulations to Performance Requirements
Roel van Gils: “This is what I want, this is the result I want—good luck with that.” Do you think that’s really a positive development?
Anthony van den Hondel: I understand where that comes from. We used to have a different world—and you really have to go back a long way in time to find it. So in the old world I started out in, things were very clearly specified. If you looked at a request for proposal and someone wanted something done, they’d say: I want A, I want B, I want C, I want three instances of D, and then you have to wrap it up with E. So it was very clearly specified exactly what you had to do. And at the end of the day: you’d either done it or you hadn’t. Later on, it became: “We actually just want it to be neat again.” Well, then define “neat” and figure out for yourself what you need to do. In and of itself, that’s a logical step—moving from a very formulaic situation to a desired end result. But there are also some snags involved. We’re now at a point where virtually no one in the chain has much experience with what actually needs to be done out there.
Anthony van den Hondel: [Inaudible] business administration, but you’re now in charge of technical management matters. And you approach that from a very business administration perspective. That makes sense, since that’s your background. And then you think: why is this process going so slowly? Why am I now being confronted with: we’ve already started, and now we’re suddenly finding this out? Couldn’t we have seen this coming beforehand? The answer to that is, of course: yes. But someone coming in from the outside thinks: how is it possible that we don’t know this? [Inaudible] has been removed, and then it turns out that what’s underneath isn’t in such good shape. Those kinds of surprises aren’t new to us in the concrete industry—we’re used to them. But if you’re coming from outside the concrete industry, you think: if I ask for new siding, I’ll get new siding, right? That can’t be that hard, can it? You know how big that building is, don’t you? Yeah, with concrete, it’s a different story. It all looked fine from a distance. And now that we’ve stripped off the paint, it turns out to be a bit different after all. It’s not quite up to par.
[17:48] Condition-based maintenance
Roel van Gils: Anyway, there's no way to prevent that.
Anthony van den Hondel: That’s still the case. What you can do about it—and this is something I try to emphasize in my conversations with the people around me—is that maintenance is very often viewed as something that just happens to you. And I always compare that to maintenance theory. They call that failure-based maintenance: your tire goes flat, so you have to get it repaired. But you could also call it usage-based maintenance. I’ll base it on usage. If I’ve driven 20,000 kilometers, then I’ll replace my tires. Or I could say: I’ll do it based on condition. I’ll just stick a tread depth gauge in there, and if it drops below two millimeters, then it’s time for new tires. So those are very different approaches. And the same applies to concrete. Strangely enough, we do this all the time: when something breaks, we do something about it. Then it just happens to us. We didn’t see it coming. But concrete lends itself very well to condition-based maintenance. So take a good look at your concrete.
Roel van Gils: Keep monitoring.
Anthony van den Hondel: But also measuring things. Monitoring—even better. Look, if you ask someone right now, “What does he look like?” you’ll get a photo. And you can also ask right now, “What does he look like?” And I’d like a video. I want to see over time how a structure develops, or whether it deteriorates, or whether it declines. And then you can say: I want to be warned in time, so that I still have five years to plan. So that we can then do something about it. That’s possible. Technically, we can do that. We don’t think about concrete maintenance that way, because relatively little concrete actually fails. We’re talking about this as if it were a huge problem. But of course, 80 or 90 percent of the concrete requires no action, and nothing ever fails in it. So with most concrete, we have zero problems. But it’s precisely those small amounts that do cause us problems—and those are serious.
[19:34] The Social Impact of Maintenance
Roel van Gils: We really need to do something about that, and of course it’s also essential for society. Especially when it comes to infrastructure.
Anthony van den Hondel: Absolutely. It will be the very bridge that opens up your business. If it closes, you’ll really have a logistics problem on your hands. We’re talking about infrastructure now because it’s so obvious. But the same applies if you own an apartment complex. You’re part of a homeowners’ association. You’ve just moved in—let’s say to a coastal town like Zandvoort or Noordwijk, right by the sea. That lovely sea air is actually very bad for concrete. The salt in the seawater eventually ends up in your concrete. Now fast-forward that scenario 30 or 40 years. All those concrete complexes that have been standing there for a long time—all those apartment buildings—face the same challenge, the same problem, without any additional protection.
Anthony van den Hondel: So there you are, part of the homeowners“ association. You bought that house, thinking, ”It looked nice.“ And two years later, someone says at the meeting, ”Guys, we need to put more money into the fund. We don’t have enough funds to carry out our maintenance, and an expensive round of repairs is coming up.” That’s very concrete; it really hits close to home for people. But everyone has their own challenges. Even the person who manages parking garages. They charge eight euros an hour, and then someone says, “We’re going to close it down for six weeks. We’re going to do some thorough maintenance.” Then they think: Are you completely out of your mind? Just look at the loss of revenue that would cause.
Roel van Gils: So basically, you're saying: you need to set aside some money for future maintenance.
Anthony van den Hondel: Maintenance, too—you have to set aside money for it. And you have to plan ahead. Setting that money aside is also a good idea. Let’s say we have 100 billion in concrete assets. And if you have 1 percent maintenance costs per year, that’s one billion. Do you need that in the first year? No, not at all. That doesn’t come due until year [inaudible].
Roel van Gils: But then you've built it up.
Anthony van den Hondel: Then you’d be 45 billion behind if you had to start saving from scratch. And 100 billion does sound like a lot. But we have hundreds of billions worth of concrete buildings and structures in the Netherlands. They are our national assets. They are our prosperity in stone.
[21:51] When Cathodic Protection Is Appropriate
Roel van Gils: And let’s make the connection to cathodic protection for a moment. In the examples you just mentioned—on the coast, in infrastructure.
Anthony van den Hondel: Without getting too deep into the details—because I realize not everyone enjoys that as much as I do—but look: there are some instances of concrete damage that aren’t actually as bad as they seem. In those cases, the rebar was positioned a bit close to the surface. That’s localized; it’s just a small spot. There are types of concrete damage that aren’t so minor after all, because it’s actually everywhere. And the cause in those cases is, for example, chloride. There are really only two true causes. Either the steel is near the surface, so that acid from the air reaches it and it starts to rust, or it’s chloride. And the problem with chloride is: you see damage in one spot, you repair it, but it’s also present right next to it.
Anthony van den Hondel: What happens then is what they call patching, polarity reversal, or the Ringanode effect. There are all sorts of technical terms for it. What happens is that, no matter how hard you try to do a neat repair, three to five years later you’re back in the same spot because it broke right next to the repair. And then it takes that old repair with it.
Roel van Gils: Okay, so that just makes the problem even bigger.
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes. If you go back to a homeowners’ association like that. You’re in Zandvoort, you’re part of that homeowners’ association. Then you’ll notice two things. The first time it needed repairs, the second time… So there were eight years in between. Then it was down to seven years. Then just five years. And now, after only three years, it’s already starting to look worn out. And the second thing you’ll notice: back then, it cost so many euros.
Roel van Gils: It's getting more and more…
Anthony van den Hondel: But it's not just inflation. Things are actually getting worse.
Roel van Gils: The problem is bigger than that.
Anthony van den Hondel: The problem has gotten worse. So it’s getting more and more expensive, and it’s happening faster and faster. That’s usually the moment when people ask, “Is what we’re doing actually effective?” The answer is no. You’re just patching things up. You really need to stop that corrosion process. You could say: replace everything and cut off the balconies. We want new balconies. That’s an option, too. There’s certainly a case to be made for it. Nice new balconies. But you can also refurbish them. In that case, you have to make sure the corrosion stops. Otherwise, you’ll be back in the same situation in five years. And that’s pretty much the world where cathodic protection has found its place.
Anthony van den Hondel: Cathodic protection really only makes sense if it’s on the coast, or if cars with road salt on their tires drive over it, or if it’s a swimming pool, or if it’s an industrial site. Funnily enough, that covers pretty much the entire Netherlands. And that’s not entirely by chance. The Netherlands is truly a leader in cathodic protection, along with Scandinavia, for example. England is also doing very well in this area. The original idea came from the United States in the 1970s. But there are certain countries that have really embraced it because it solved a very concrete problem they were facing. Simply put, they’re coastal countries.
Roel van Gils: Yes.
Anthony van den Hondel: Unfortunately, we do have quite a bit of winter here, so you have to spread a lot of salt. It’s not uncommon for us to spread 100 million [unintelligible] of road salt on the roads. That salt ends up everywhere, including on our concrete, with all the consequences that entails.
[24:56] An aging workforce and loss of expertise
Roel van Gils: Great examples. You also briefly mentioned the knowledge issue just now. So the biggest problem isn’t just money, but also knowledge, an aging population, and so on. What are you seeing on the maintenance side of the market?
Anthony van den Hondel: Of course, companies are having trouble recruiting new people and maintaining a high level of expertise. What you see is that we built up a huge lead worldwide in the 1980s. In the Netherlands, we were at the forefront of concrete maintenance and in how we approached it. We’re still reaping the benefits of that today.
Roel van Gils: Is that also because of our geographic location?
Anthony van den Hondel: I haven’t the faintest idea. But my sense is that, back then, educational institutions and universities were also investing heavily in theoretical research into the mechanisms of damage. What exactly goes wrong in that concrete? And thinking about: how are we going to solve that? We’ve really made enormous strides in that area. We’ve truly been at the forefront globally. Many international standards that were published ten or twenty years later drew heavily on the knowledge we developed. But we’ve kind of stagnated a bit. So the story you learned, so to speak, in the 1980s and 1990s is still the same story. That’s not a bad thing in itself, because that knowledge hasn’t changed. But the people who developed, embraced, and brought that knowledge to market back then are now all getting older, reaching retirement age, and gradually leaving the workforce.
Anthony van den Hondel: So sometimes I look around and think: in ten years, all those old stalwarts will be gone. And then I look the other way and wonder: who’s entering the market now? And it’s disappointing. It’s simply because maintenance isn’t sexy. New construction is already a problem, but with new construction, at least you can still cut a ribbon. We have a new swimming pool; we have a new city hall. Then people see: it’s new. When people come to your house and you say, “Look, my new kitchen,” it looks good. And you say, “I have a Kwaaitaal floor underneath with a lot of concrete damage, but we’ve repaired it well.” That’s all well and good, but nobody sees that.
Roel van Gils: No, not tangible.
Anthony van den Hondel: You’re spending money, but you don’t see any results. You’d rather have gone on vacation. It’s kind of the same with maintenance. It’s not that appealing in and of itself. And then you tell the younger generation: it’s hard work sometimes. You have to be at the construction site by 7:30 a.m. And if it’s raining or cold, you’re still out there. Then people think: “I could do that,” but they also need people in a completely different field. And then I’m sitting behind a desk. I can just start at 8:30 a.m., and I can also work half-days. So that’s kind of the problem. There’s a shortage right now. It’s just a fact. And the professions considered more demanding—which are indeed sometimes physically demanding—and the more challenging subjects, which are technical in nature, are sometimes seen as less attractive. Those fields are having a hard time recruiting new people.
Anthony van den Hondel: So that naturally leads to a bit of a brain drain. Not everyone who leaves is replaced with someone of equal caliber. Someone with 40 years of experience leaves, and someone with zero experience might come in. That person still has to learn the ropes—which makes sense. We’re really trying to work together to make that market more attractive, but right now it’s like swimming against the current. Everyone is struggling.
[28:11] Specialized Knowledge and Quality Assurance
Roel van Gils: And if that knowledge disappears, who will still keep an eye on the big picture, the whole picture?
Anthony van den Hondel: That’s another issue, of course. The problem is that we need a certain level of quality assurance, a certain level of oversight. Are we still doing this right? Is this actually a good idea, yes or no? And that responsibility is falling on an increasingly small group of people. In and of itself, that’s not a bad thing, because we still have each other—we’re still here. There’s still a market. We’re talking about a few hundred companies in the Netherlands that are very active in virtually nothing but concrete maintenance. So there really are a lot of companies that still possess that expertise. But demand is increasing, and the number of people who know what needs to be done is decreasing.
Roel van Gils: Do you need specialized knowledge for every type of structure?
Anthony van den Hondel: You can see that there are different kinds of specialists. You just mentioned the structural engineer. There are people who are very good at calculating the structural integrity of a construction: how strong is it? There are also specialists who are very knowledgeable about damage mechanisms. That’s where I come from myself. They’re good at assessing damage. But you also need experts who, for example, know a great deal about the materials you use. Repair mortars have advanced so much, and the materials are so good these days, that we can generally manage things pretty well on our own. But you still need those kinds of specialists, too.
Anthony van den Hondel: New types of specialists have emerged that I used to think didn’t even exist. For example: now, when you do something that impacts users, you get an environmental manager. Their job is to manage the environment there. Good grief. But that’s becoming increasingly important, because the Netherlands has become so overcrowded. If you close a parking garage, it affects the entire downtown area. How do we deal with that? How do we communicate that? You do indeed run into safety issues. It makes sense that those issues exist and that we’re paying attention to them. But these days, of course, we’re also looking at: what is the impact of our actions on CO₂, nitrogen, and surface water? “That’s just how we’ve always done it.” We don’t want that anymore. Things have to change.
Anthony van den Hondel: Here’s a very simple and very strange example: back in the day, you could actually get quite a bit of leeway to do your job. If we look at infrastructure again, for example, a rail closure. That means you have to do your work at night from 1:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. What kind of workday is that? We have a location, we have an hour of work. Literally one hour of work. But it’s a somewhat tricky location where traffic control measures are a bit challenging. It’s the weekend, in the middle of the night. But that section of track isn’t lit, so extra lighting has to be set up to ensure safety. Then you’re talking about 10,000 euros in measures just to have one person do something for one hour. That’s really just one example. Then you start to wonder: how is this getting a little out of hand? It’s also getting out of hand in terms of costs—what else we’ll have to do. And I do agree, because safety is, of course, not up for debate. But then we run into situations where we say: maybe we should just concentrate everything. A section of track, a stretch of the highway—just close it off for three weeks. And everything has to get done in those three weeks. Because otherwise, it’s just not feasible anymore.
Anthony van den Hondel: Those are all things that change. And that means we can’t make the best use of the limited capacity we have. It makes you less efficient. If you work two hours at night, it costs you—so to speak—two days. Because the next day, you’re in bed catching up on sleep. You could be using that capacity, but it actually costs you two days. Things like that really work against each other.
[32:09] AI as a Support Tool
Roel van Gils: We’re mainly talking about the implementation side right now—and, of course, the preparation on the clients’ end. Do you see AI as an opportunity in that regard?
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes, absolutely.
Roel van Gils: Okay, can you explain that?
Anthony van den Hondel: I think AI is going to help us as a society in a huge way, across the board. I’m not afraid of AI at all. “AI is going to take our jobs.” That’s not going to happen at all. It’s going to help us do the things we need to do. I’m mainly on the knowledge side. I’m going to notice AI a lot, because I do a lot of work at my desk with text, numbers, and drawings on a computer. AI can be a huge help with that.
Anthony van den Hondel: What’s becoming of a bit of a problem is that the workers who actually do the work—who are, after all, the most important part of it—aren’t going to get much help from AI. I think it will still be quite a while before we have a robot that can assist with a specific task, such as concrete repair or paving. They can, however, help with the surrounding processes—like recording and documenting, which, of course, isn’t exactly a hobby for a lot of people. But these days, it’s almost become a paper tiger. If you have to do something outside—like tightening that one screw—you still have to fill out six forms. AI will, of course, be a huge help there. Because that will really be a piece of cake, since the process is very well defined and technology can support you.
Anthony van den Hondel: But also on the engineering side—that is, consulting firms and knowledge-intensive tasks—such as drawing up plans, evaluating plans, creating schedules, and making sure things don’t have unintended consequences we hadn’t anticipated. So I have very high expectations for AI. But there’s one thing it won’t solve: we need people on-site who will actually carry out that maintenance. And of course, I see a problem there as well. It’s not my problem because I’m not a contractor.
Roel van Gils: Indirectly, yes.
Anthony van den Hondel: But it has to be realistic. We have a huge need for that. And where is that army of people—men and women—who are out there saying, “I take pride in my work. I’m going to make sure this stretch of highway is in good shape again, safe, and ready to last another 30 years”?”
Roel van Gils: Why don't you put out a call?.
Anthony van den Hondel: Here’s my appeal: just make that market attractive.
Roel van Gils: But what does that take?
Anthony van den Hondel: Part of that has to do with employment terms and working conditions. For example, by offering more to the people who actually do the work. That will undoubtedly lead to a slight increase in costs. So, of course, the managers will start to notice that as well. The same work will become more expensive; otherwise, we simply won’t be able to motivate people to do it anymore.
[34:55] Using AI to Prioritize Maintenance
Roel van Gils: Let's go back to AI for a moment. Can it also help with prioritizing objects? Because that's a challenge right now, too.
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes. TNO is currently running a program focused on infrastructure, but we’ll likely expand it to include residential construction as well, since that sector faces the same challenges and problems. You have a hundred apartment buildings. Which one do you start with? Which one is the most important right now? You have a hundred bridge structures, and a piece of concrete falls from one of them onto the Rijksweg. Now what? Panic. Maybe there’s another bridge structure that’s even worse. How do you decide? TNO is currently running a program to develop a tool—which also involves assessment, databases, some AI, and data processing—to determine: when looking at such a large area, can we easily identify the key issues that require attention? Because then you make it easier for that person. These are the five issues you need to look at first. So it’s not: “I have a hundred.” No, there are five. That’s already a twenty-fold difference, of course. And of course, AI can make a mistake there, but one thing we know for sure: [inaudible].
Anthony van den Hondel: So I have very high expectations for AI in that regard. There are a few other things we’ll see with AI. Why would I climb into an aerial work platform to see what it looks like? I’ll send up a drone. It’ll record a video. A drone captures really great footage. But that’s just visual data. Can’t AI process that data? And then point out: here are the problem areas. This is what you need to look at. I don’t believe that this will make people redundant.
Anthony van den Hondel: What I always keep in mind is when AI was just starting to analyze X-rays. Back then, the AI systems weren’t as good as the radiologists. The AI systems were just under 90 percent, and the radiologists were just above that. So that’s roughly—off the top of my head, so this might be off—87 to 93. But the radiologist guided by AI, or the radiologist using AI, went from 93 to 97 percent. What are you missing? What do you see? What are the false positives? The radiologist was able to do their job better.
Anthony van den Hondel: And that’s exactly what I see happening in the construction industry. It’s not as if we’re going to turn to AI right away and say, “Take a look at the building—what do you think?” But AI in the hands of that inspector, that consultant who’s then asked, “What’s the condition of my building?” They’ll say, “I took a look at it, and I used some tools to do that. And that’s not just a camera, but also a bit of AI. And this is what we found.” I believe in that very strongly. I see it in my daily practice, too. Those tools are becoming more and more convenient and better. And it’s not about letting go of responsibility—it’s not like I’m not doing anything anymore. When I create something, my signature is on it. My name is on it. So I can’t say, “Yeah, that was Claude or that was ChatGPT.” Nobody cares about that. I’m responsible. So that means: I’m always the one who creates and reviews the final product. But in that whole processing…
Roel van Gils: Can it provide much relief?
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes. In our last conversation, I mentioned how happy I am with Word’s autocorrect. I was as happy as a kid when I saw those red wiggly lines under words that had typos. I’ve always struggled a bit with spelling. So you’re typing away, and every now and then something strange pops up, and I’d get a heads-up: take another look at that word—something’s not quite right. I really liked that. And I see the same thing happening with AI now. AI might say, “You’ve written a conclusion here in your report, but it comes out of nowhere.” Yeah, you’re right about that. Then I’ll have to say something about it in Chapter Three, otherwise that conclusion won’t make any sense. AI doesn’t make things up yet. No, it doesn’t need to at all. And maybe that’s just about all it can do, but it’s a remarkably good tool that I have very high hopes for.
Anthony van den Hondel: But there are limits. There’s only so much you can do in a day, and with AI, that amount keeps growing and growing. And then you hit the limit where you think: that’s it, I can’t handle any more as a person. That brings you right back to capacity. And the [unintelligible] capacity.
[39:17] Maintenance as an Opportunity Rather Than a Burden
Roel van Gils: Here we go again. Well, we’ve gone through a lot of different aspects. I think that, if we summarize everything, we actually have three problems. We have infrastructure—the built environment—that’s aging and showing signs of wear and tear. We have fewer people with technical expertise—or at least, that expertise is dwindling. We have organizations where responsibilities are divided in increasingly complex ways. Again, a loss of expertise—you name it. But at the same time, we have billions worth of future maintenance work ahead of us. If you could change one thing tomorrow about how the Netherlands handles maintenance, what would it be?
Anthony van den Hondel: That’s a great question. That’s exactly what we’re facing. In my ideal world, we wouldn’t view maintenance as a burden or a problem, but as an opportunity. I believe we’re incredibly privileged in the Netherlands, because we truly have a beautiful country with excellent infrastructure and stunning buildings. We have a place to live. Sure, we’d like to have more housing. But what we have here in the Netherlands is truly something you won’t find just anywhere else on this planet. It’s under enormous pressure, and in principle, it’s not sustainable—but thanks to maintenance, it is.
Anthony van den Hondel: If that were the prevailing sentiment in society, I would very much like to change it: thanks to maintenance, we can continue to live this way. Thanks to maintenance, the next generation will also enjoy that privileged position—the ability to simply live in a beautiful country where everything runs smoothly and where we have everything we need. If that were to change, maintenance would no longer be seen as a necessary evil, but as an opportunity to preserve this way of life.
Roel van Gils: To be maintained.
Anthony van den Hondel: If that perspective were to shift from seeing it as a problem to seeing it as “this is the solution for our future,” then we’d have far fewer debates, and decisions would be made a bit more easily. And then we’d get more done.
Roel van Gils: Because right now, the prevailing attitude is: things have been going well for years, so they’ll probably continue to go well in the coming years.
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes. And it’s really seen as a nuisance, as something that disrupts the process. “We don’t have a budget for that; I’ll have to put in extra effort again.” In ten, twenty, or thirty years, we’ll still be able to do everything we do now. And if we hadn’t had that, it would have been very simple. Then we’d have to rebuild everything we’ve built over the past 50 years all over again. Well, good luck with that. Because we don’t have the people, the materials, or the money.
Roel van Gils: Because, ultimately, maintenance is perhaps most successful when no one—or almost no one—notices that it’s happening.
Anthony van den Hondel: Yes. In an ideal world, of course, we’d organize everything so that it just happens. Maintenance is a hassle because it bothers me. So you have to start thinking: if we’re going to do this now, it has to be done right. Because then we won’t bother you again for the next twenty years. And we’re actually able to do that these days. We can implement real measures and then say: now you’re set for another twenty years. That’s also something that needs to change in people’s perception. But my greatest wish wouldn’t be that we suddenly have an unlimited budget—because that’s impossible. You have to make choices. But my greatest wish would be for our perspective on maintenance to change—from “it’s a hassle” to “it’s actually an opportunity.” Because that’s how we can actually make it happen.
Roel van Gils: Thank you, Anthony, for these insights.
Anthony van den Hondel: Thank you, too.
Roel van Gils: Those are some great examples. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in.
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