How to Manage Your Information: The Case of a 23-Kilometre Dike Project

In the Netherlands there are 9 million people living in an area subject to flooding. Through the Flood Protection Programme, Rijkswaterstaat (The Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management) and regional water authorities are reinforcing the large primary dikes to protect the Netherlands against flooding. Since 2015 the Netherlands has decided to apply even stricter standards for dike safety. As a result more than 1,100 km of dikes will require maintenance by 2028. One of these projects is the maintenance and reconstruction of 23 km dike between Gorinchem and Waardenburg. This project is an Alliance between one district water authority, 3 contractors, and one advising engineering consultancy. This last year the Alliance has been working on alternative studies. In April this year the detailed designing phase will start. One of the main targets of the contract is to digitally handover the project in one day. With so many partners and that many phases it is a huge challenge to hit this target. So, as early as possible in this project the Alliance is already managing all of our information digitally. Starting with gaining insight in the information/data that our stakeholders/administrators want to receive at the end of the project. This way focus is adopted on the right data from the start. When maintaining this focus throughout the whole project complete and accurate data is ensured at the moment of handing the project to the client. The other challenge with such a large project, is the collection of large amounts of information by the team in many different systems with many different phases. The information manager is currently looking for the best options to connect different sources of information to make sure there is one source of truth. During an infrastructure building project, there is no perfect system to hold all the information that is collected. By making sure most of the building information is connected to each other, systems are being used in the best way possible. For example, GIS information (where the resident lives) is connected to Relatics (who is this resident, what do we know) and to the document management system (what did we agreed on logged in an appointment card). In the presentation, I will explain the different struggles we are facing in the project Alliance, such as the different business cultures together. I will explain how we are making the best of managing the information and show examples of what steps we have taken, as