Renovate with maximum availability

We see that a renovation or upgrade of an object in the infrastructure is increasingly being approached from an asset management approach. And that is positive," says Roel de Backer, Division Director Industry & Infra of ICT Group. "Renovating has a different complexity; You always strive for maximum availability of the critical assets. For example, in the upgrade of the Hubertus tunnel, we are ensuring that the operation and control are delivered free of residual points before the tunnel is closed for nine months at the end of July 2025." ICT Group has previously carried out a similar exercise for the Maasdelta tunnel and the Holland tunnel on the A24 Blankenburg connection.

Operational excellence

According to Roel, water authorities have been working on standardization of operating and control systems for some time. "A good example of this is the standardisation of the control of sixteen water treatment plants and almost a hundred sewage pumping stations of the Vallei & Veluwe Water Authority. We have replaced all separate environments with one new application that, in terms of look and feel, looks and feels much more like a multidisciplinary dashboard than a complicated operational system. We rolled that out across all plants. The effect of this is huge," says Roel. "The system is much more manageable and easier to operate by the operator. Together, this ensures higher operational availability." Standardization in the field of automation is also an emerging trend in the energy market. "With a view to the energy transition, there is still a huge task there."

Cooperation in the chain

Due to technological progress, you also see a shift in functions between cases that you solve in civil engineering, ICT technology and electrical engineering, Roel notes. "If we look a little further ahead, we see that cars are getting smarter and smarter and may be connected to smart traffic control systems in the future. At ICT Group, we are involved in the development of smarter cars. These will communicate more with each other, but also with systems along the road. Cooperation with all partners in the chain is necessary to achieve our social ambitions."

Preventive maintenance

"In addition, we see that preventive maintenance is getting much more hands-on, whereby we can anticipate much better based on data from an installation," says Roel. "Information technology is used to monitor objects in terms of availability and performance. In addition to the knowledge of automation and digitization, the expertise of our sister company INNOCY, a consultancy company in the field of Life Cycle Management, comes in handy here." Of course, cybersecurity is also a hot topic and the legislation in this area is constantly changing. ICT Group has further expanded its knowledge in this area, partly through the acquisition of TriOpSys, a specialist in the field of data management and cybersecurity of IT systems. "We will discuss this in detail at InfraTech 2025."

ICT Group believes it is important to bring the market together and likes to invest in knowledge sharing. The annual ICT Group Water Congress is a good example of this and has become a household name in the sector. The 2024 edition was all about resilient water systems with plenty of attention for automating and digitizing the water domain. "We are going to organize a similar knowledge event in 2025 in the field of Industry 5.0," says Roel. "Because we really need each other to meet the challenges in the infrastructure sector in the coming years."