Prevent damage to heat pipes

Eneco Warmte’s heating network supplies 160,000 households and companies in the regions of Rotterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague with sustainable heat. Heat that is released during the waste incineration process of Waste Treatment Rijnmond is used as district heating. To transport that heat, boiling water flows through pipes with a thickness of up to 80 cm. Eneco wants to do everything possible to prevent these pipes from being damaged during excavation work. That’s why they asked Geodan to develop a system that can assess where the risk of excavation damage is greatest and that can also suggest fixed work processes to oversee excavation work.

Excavation contractors are legally obliged to announce excavation work with so-called Klic reports. Every year, 15,000 such reports are published about activities in the vicinity of Eneco Warmte's pipelines. Geodan devised an algorithm that automatically determines which of these activities carries the greatest risk of excavation damage. To this end, our system multiplies the chance of excavation damage by the possible effect of this damage. Other relevant factors are the type of work as well as the diameter, age, and material of the pipe in question.

Thanks to the Klic inspection application, Eneco Warmte employees can see which reports have a high risk profile at a glance. Moreover, depending on the established risk profile, they will receive an overview of the process steps that they must then go through. Actions taken, such as contact with the excavation contractor, are recorded in the system. This clarifies what co-workers have already done and immediately creates a legal file for any claims. On top of that, the system provides insight into the division of labor, so that tasks can be distributed much more efficiently. In short: improvement on all fronts.