Oral Presentation Ninth International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering 2025

Economical End of Life Indicator in network management (#236)

Jaap Bakker 1 , Rob Treiture 1 , D J Molenaar 1
  1. Rijkswaterstaat, Utrecht, UTRECHT, Netherlands

The Economic End of Life Indicator (EELI) determines the ratio between the present value of maintaining infrastructure versus direct replacement. This number gives a first indication of reaching the economic end of life. It can be calculated on-the-fly, based on an up-to-date maintenance plan and a statistical forecast of a theoretical replacement year and average replacement costs. This paper deals with the use of this indicator at Rijkswaterstaat.

 

Rijkswaterstaat is an government agency within the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. The agency is the Asset Manager for the national road network, the national waterways network and national water system.

An important task for the asset manager is maintaining the assets in required performance levels throughout the life time. But at some point in time it is no longer effective to maintain existing infrastructure. A renewal decision is needed within Asset Management. However, cost of renewal are high compared to maintenance, therefore a good long term prognosis is needed. A renewal-moment is also a good time to make functional adjustments to the network. This requires a good view on the technical, economic and functional state of the assets. Three questions need to be answered for an individual object:

  • Is it still profitable to maintain?
  • Is it still technically possible to maintain?
  • Is conservation still the right option, given its functional state?

By unambiguously defining these 3 parameters for all objects in a network, good trade-offs can be made between:

  • Maintaining an existing object;
  • A renewal of an existing object;
  • A functional upgrade or downgrading of an existing object;
  • A functional upgrade or downgrading of an integral section of a network.

 

The EELI makes it possible to unambiguously and easily visualize the economic end-of-life for existing objects based on one number. If this number is greater than 1, then 1 to 1 replacement is economically more advantageous than continuing to maintain it. Because the EELI can be shown on a GIS map, a good insight is created of places in the network where multiple objects are simultaneously approaching the end of their economic life. By showing functional bottlenecks and technical bottlenecks in other GIS layers, integrated decision-making is better supported.

Rijkswaterstaat is on the experimental stage of implementation of the EELI for structures. EELI values for all constructions are generated and presented on the fly, based on available maintenance plans.

  1. Bakker, J. D., Roebers, H., & Koops, J. 2016. Economic End of Life Indicator (EELI). Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering IALCCE 2016. Delft, the Netherlands.
  2. Hertogh M.J.C.M. & Bakker, J.D., 2016. Life Cycle Management to increase social value at renovation and replacement. Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Life Cycle Civil Engineering IALCCE 2016. Delft, the Nether lands.