BBCI Frijwijk

Johan Brouwers – Structural Project Manager at BBCI Frijwijk

BBCI Frijwijk is an expert in structural- and geotechnical inspections for building- and infrastructure-related projects. They are specialized in monitoring the surroundings during construction works and bring out their advice in order to minimize potential damages and disturbances. For this, they use a broad range of monitoring techniques, such as noise measurements, vibration measurements and total stations.

An eye for quality

Johan Brouwers works for BBCI Frijwijk as a Structural Project Manager and is a certified Register Expert. This makes him the ideal first point of contact for the customer during the complete project, from set-up to after-care. Amongst others, Johan works on the more complex plans and consulting, the project supervision and managing the monitoring personnel. Next to this, he is keeping track of the latest technological advancements in the monitoring sector, in order to find the right partners and to expand BBCI’s offering when relevant. It is his personal goal to alleviate his customers as much as possible in the monitoring process, thereby minimizing damages and disturbances in the construction environment. This customer focus is reflected in his eye for budget, quality and his customer’s interests, often making him an integral part of the external project team.

“Sometimes a client calls me, asking if we could start monitoring tomorrow”

Environmental damages due to construction works can easily cost thousands to tens of thousands of euros.

Unknown baseline situation before works

Deformation measurements are an important aspect in environmental monitoring. BBCI offers this service in the form of levelling, total stations and GPS and uses these techniques to timely detect potential deviations with respect to the starting situation. However, there is one pitfall here. The importance of monitoring is regularly overlooked during project planning, despite the large stakes in terms of risk management and handling potential claims from the environment. This is why BBCI is often contacted relatively late in the process, leaving unclarity about the baseline situation before the start of the construction works. “Sometimes a client calls me, asking if we could start monitoring tomorrow”, Johan says about this. “In those cases, they are in a hurry, because the construction is about to start.” This makes it quite challenging to separate effects related to the works from deformations that were already ongoing around the location. Considering costs for environmental damages can easily go in to the thousands of euros (cosmetic damages) up to several tens of thousands of euros (structural damages), this is a big blind spot. A historical measurement archive could solve this problem, but they did not have this at their disposal before.

“With Sensar data, I can put my conventional deformation monitoring measurements into perspective.”

Levelling measurements performed by BBCI Frijwijk on a building in the vicinity of the Mauritskade in Amsterdam.

Mapping project risks with InSAR

This is why BBCI Frijwijk got into touch with Sensar. Because of the availability of historical data, if necessary even back to 1992, our InSAR measurements provide this so wanted archive. “With Sensar data, I can put my conventional deformation monitoring measurements into perspective”, Johan says. One of the projects that BBCI and Sensar collaborated on was the Mauritskade in Amsterdam. On this location, an old building was renovated and redecorated into a hotel. During these works, it was important that there were no significant disturbances to the densely populated environment, containing objects such as quays, bridges, hotels and a museum. Thanks to our data, BBCI’s client received instant insight into the risks for the project surroundings, without having to wait a year for the results of a conventional monitoring campaign. Because of this, there were no delays in starting the project and they had a clear view on the boundary conditions for minimizing the project’s impact on its environment. Furthermore, the InSAR dataset enabled having a broad view; due to the size of the satellite images, it is easy to monitor all objects in a radius of hundreds of meters around the project location in a cost-efficient way.

InSAR measurements on and around the building that was being renovated.

Construction without delay

Due to the collaboration with Sensar, BBCI can now offer its customers a new measurement technique. This allows them to have a better local environmental risk assessment and at the same time to start the construction works without any delays. And on top of that, the price is lower than for a conventional monitoring campaign! Due to the high detail level of the InSAR measurements, the client can often save on large and complex monitoring campaigns, only measuring locally where needed. This also saves in costs for (real-time) monitoring and potential damage claims. But even better, it prevents inconveniences for the local residents and entrepreneurs. And this all contributes to Johan’s mission to alleviate his customers and the surroundings as much as possible!