Building bridges to better insight

To inspect and maintain civil infrastructure in a more technologically advanced way, Sund & Bælt sought a technology partner with global expertise and comprehensive capabilities. The company chose IBM, and together they formed a collaboration to create what became the IBM® Maximo® for Civil Infrastructure solution. Now, Sund & Bælt is using the Maximo software to monitor and manage its critical infrastructures.

The new solution includes the IBM Maximo Application Suite, with technology that helps Sund & Bælt inspect infrastructures, access insights with mobile devices on location and use AI technology to carefully and efficiently analyze data about the conditions of bridges, tunnels and other infrastructure elements.

With the new solution, Sund & Bælt gathers data from drone photographs to monitor status without dangerous and time-consuming human inspections. The solution consolidates this data with maintenance records, design documents and 3D models to help identify cracks, rust, corrosion, displacement and stress.

“Now we know the traffic load, repetitions, how it is actually swinging — and through that, we can calculate the lifetime and look at the most critical areas,” Jørgensen says. “We are developing digital twins, and we can make calculations to answer, ‘If traffic load is changing, how will that affect our bridge?’”

Accelerated work order management and contract management functions help the company respond to the latest data. With improved defect management, asset management and decision-making capabilities, the company can make faster and better decisions if emergencies develop — but it can also plan ahead.

“We use 3D models to optimize the maintenance work,” Jørgensen says. “We can prepare for the work before we actually send 50 – 100 people down there into a tunnel that is five miles long. We have very narrow windows for closure, and we have to be efficient in those windows.”