Tunnel troubles in Brussels

Due to falling concrete rubble, the Pacheco and Leopold II tunnels were temporarily closed, and the Stéphanie tunnel will remain closed for at least one year. In addition, maintenance work is necessary for the Montgomery, Georges-Henri, Trône, Tervuren and Reyers tunnels.

The causes of this problem? Water infiltration due to pollution and chemical reactions, added to a poor quality of concrete. These (maintenance) problems have been known for years, but unfortunately could not be solved, partly because of a lack of staff and engineers for inspections. By their own admission, the competent officials sounded the alarm, but were not listened to by the politicians. Budgets were probably allocated in priority to public transport and cycle paths.

The consequences? Fingers were pointed at those responsible, but above all a bill amounting to more than a billion euros to repair these tunnels. A special commission was recently set up to clarify the issue, but the first conclusions show that the costs, the impact on traffic and the visibility of the maintenance work were obstacles to a thorough preventive maintenance of the capital's tunnels.

Mice?

The information that the archives including the tunnel plans were eaten by mice was just an image used by Christian Debuysscher (former director of Brussels Mobility) to explain that the lack of means triggered the use of unusual resources. Unfortunately, the image was relayed in the world press without the press subsequently relaying the Belgian absurdity of these remarks.

In reality, the documents were stored as early as 1990 in a room in Meiser, not officially intended for that purpose, and not among the vermin housed in the pillars of a bridge. In 2013, they were (finally) almost all moved to an archive room under the North Station. Under this media coverage, our government is no exception and there are thousands of stories from abroad about documents and archives not being stored properly.

And what about in your company?

The (maintenance) industry can also learn from this tunnel saga. For example, about the importance of construction files or updated technical documentation, and even about the importance of writing complete reports following maintenance interventions. The availability of such a source of information is crucial in order to decide fairly and efficiently on the conduct of (future) maintenance interventions.

Is it certain that the technical records of our companies are "solid" and that the industry automatically does better than the authorities or the government? I don't think so! Doesn't it often happen that it is considered "too expensive" to migrate the old data when acquiring a brand new EAM or CMMS system? The old tool is then kept alive for a while, but is soon considered unused or useless and ends up in the wardrobe or worse...

In addition, technical documentation often suffers from rapid ageing. In a survey of 300 maintenance technicians, it was found that in a quarter of cases, due to lack of time, technical documentation was not updated after a maintenance intervention.

And what about in your company? Are you also (somewhat) familiar with the mouse problem?

Wim Vancauwenberghe
Director BEMAS
wvc@bemas.org