Infrastructure Maintenance

With over 25-years experience in the inspection, testing maintenance and repair of all forms of infrastructure, our team can advise on a wide range of problems, ranging from routine point of sale advice, to failure investigations, and from low cost maintenance works, to full-scale repairs to live motorway bridges.

Our specialisation in Infrastructure Maintenance began in the late 1970s, assisting the Highways Agency with one of its most important engineering challenges - keeping the deterioration of the elevated M5 & M6 motorways through Birmingham safely under control and the road open. This project led to the formation of a centre of excellence for the maintenance of infrastructure, based in the Birmingham Temple Street Office. From here, we have tackled the widest variety of projects, both in the UK and around the world. The team is leading the way in delivering business advantage through innovation for clients, maintaining their property and structures portfolio to the latest industry standards.

Tackling a major maintenance project requires investigation, testing, specification and supervision skills, based on sound knowledge of materials performance. This ensures the correct choice is made of the most cost-efficient techniques, products and systems.

Our pedigree has developed from our understanding of why materials fail, from the effects of de-icing salts on reinforced concrete, to bacteria that attack steel in seawater. Of necessity, we carry a high proportion of materials specialists, including concrete, steel and paint technologists. Consequently, we advise not only on maintenance and repair issues, but also on the most suitable materials to be used at the construction stage.

We also specialise in the design and specification of non-invasive repair techniques for concrete structures, including electrochemical repairs (e.g. impressed current cathodic protection) and structural asset management systems. Consequently, our technical staff are constantly in demand to write the guidance that industry follows: examples include British Standards, ICE, IStructE, Highways Agency and DETR.

Our primary skills split into three technology areas:

Materials and Repair

An in-depth understanding of materials and the performance of repair systems is the essential component of our capability to advise not only on maintenance and repair issues, but also on the most suitable materials to be used at the construction stage.

Our centre of excellence for materials and repair systems is based in Birmingham. From here, we have tackled the widest variety of projects, funded by private and public sector clients, both in the UK and around the world. The team is leading the way in delivering business advantage through innovation for clients, maintaining their property and structures portfolio to the latest industry standards.

Increasingly, clients are requiring durability audits to be carried out on new build works. This has been more common in the Far East, where our materials specialists have been assisting sister companies in Singapore (Mass Rapid Transit extension), Vietnam (My Tuan Bridge) and Hong Kong (KCR extension for the MTR). However, in recent years clients in Europe have also been requiring durability assessment reports (Copenhagen Metro).

A key area of interest is in the inspection and maintenance of car parks. Being heavily involved in the new ICE and IStructE guides on car parks, we have established an internal communications group to share knowledge, experience and resources to meet the needs of owners and operators. In this way, our clients will benefit from a coordinated approach to the variety of challenges and solutions that are inherent in car parking provision.

Our services include:

• Durability & materials advice
• Construction-stage troubleshooting
• Inspection and testing
• Strengthening schemes
• Maintenance strategy
• Repair materials & protective systems
• Scheme design, specification and supervision
• Technical report writing

Structures Asset Management and Technology Applications

The basis of decisions in asset management relies wholly on the data management capability, provided through flexible data capture and manipulation expertise of modern applications technology. We have developed a wide range of bespoke management solutions that are tuned to clients' requirements, which maximise asset utilisation and minimise downtime and costs. The development and application of management decision support tools for, amongst others, the Highways Agency and Network Rail, are carried out by the Structures Asset Management team, incorporating an IT Applications Group (TAG).

All structures deteriorate with time. Recognising this, we have taken a leading role in developing techniques for objectively quantifying deterioration with time, based on calibrations on actual structures. We offer the complete deterioration modelling service. Allied to deterioration modelling, is whole life costing. With growing public focus on whole life cost and sustainable development, as expressed in recent government policy, we have been assisting clients such as the UK Highways Agency to incorporate these principles into standard procedures for bridge design and maintenance through the application of whole life costing techniques.

To complete the picture, we also specialise in structural reliability analysis, which is fast becoming an established technique for the assessment and development of repair and maintenance strategies for deteriorating structures. At the forefront of this work is our reliability team, using materials technology and advanced methods of probability analysis to assess engineering structures.

Structure owners also need assurance that their facility provides a safe and secure environment for users. For the roads network, the Highways Agency achieves this objective through regular documented planned inspections. For a multitude of other structures, little or no planned inspection work has been carried out. However, with recent developments in the field of car park inspection and maintenance, increasingly owners of structures are going to be required to manage actively their assets.

Asset management systems can form the basis of a "Life-care Plan" of the type proposed by the ICE for multi-storey car parks. These systems can identify when routine maintenance or structural inspections are required, log that the inspections have been carried out and provide a data repository for previous and current inspection reports to allow deterioration to be monitored.

Our services in this area include:

• Deterioration modelling
• Whole life costing
• Risk, reliability and vulnerability analysis
• Asset Management tools and systems
• Data collection, transfer and manipulation
• Knowledge-based management solutions
• Databases, GIS, bespoke solutions
• In-house technical applications

Network Structures Maintenance

With nearly 25-years experience in the maintenance of the Midland Links Viaducts, our Network Structures Maintenance teams can call on a broad background of knowledge to manage the deterioration of highway bridges in the UK and overseas. Our current projects include supporting the roads networks on Area 5 (M25), comprising over 1800 structures, and Area 9 (M5/M6/M42 and the Midland Links Viaducts), delivered through our supply-chain relationships.

With our bridge-specific expertise, we also undertake special inspections in cases where unexpected failure of bridges has been shown to be more likely, such as those constructed using post-tensioning techniques. Bridges range from sites throughout the UK, to the first inspection of this type of bridge in the Irish Republic. Also in the Irish Republic, we undertake bridge inspections to provide inventory gathering and principal inspection data on over 300 structures. The data will be used to populate EIRSPAN, the National Roads Authority's new bridge management system.

Our services include:

• On-site maintenance and management
• Repair contract preparation
• Works supervision
• Off-site design packages

For more information on our experience and capabilities please contact Steve McKay.