Monitoring environmental influences (actively)

Extreme care must be taken with construction and infrastructure projects that are carried out in the vicinity of adjacent buildings or other objects. To prevent damage, monitoring of the environmental impact is crucial. Independent inspection and survey firm Van Monsjou & Partners has been monitoring environmental influences for 25 years and uses a completely unique method. An interview with Sander van Monsjou.

After twelve years of working as a damage expert in the construction and infra industry, Van Monsjou started his own independent inspection and survey company in 1997. "We are now 25 years down the road and work daily with 15 motivated colleagues on a wide variety of projects. Central to this is the monitoring of the environment and the specific mapping of the quality and sensitivity of buildings and objects. The existing state/position is recorded in advance to then actively monitor for noise, vibrations, groundwater, cracking, misalignment, etc. during the execution of a project."

Active monitoring

Many of our competitors leave the monitoring to equipment, automatically sending alarms to the contractor/operator, Van Monsjou continues. "That works, of course, but we prefer active monitoring. Our experience is that attention often wanes after a dozen or so empty alarms. In contrast, we pick up the alarms ourselves, do an initial check and then selectively raise the alarm. This means that building contractors are not harassed for every 'triviality' and respond more alertly to serious reports."

From dike reinforcement to quay wall repairs

Van Monsjou & Partners is broadly oriented but in recent years has been much active in inner-city sewer replacement projects, dike strengthening projects and quay repair operations, among others. "For example, we have been providing monitoring of environmental influences associated with the large-scale dike reinforcement task for Alliantie Markermeerdijken since 2016. A dynamic and extensive project, also in a beautiful environment," says Van Monsjou. "We are also involved in the City of Amsterdam's pilot for the innovative rehabilitation of 200 kilometers of quay walls. Three combinations have been selected, each of which will test its own method for low-vibration replacement of a quay section. For the pilot on Lijnbaansgracht, we are monitoring the environmental impact on vibration, noise and height measurements."

Because we are broadly skilled in all monitoring work, our clients have only one point of contact for inspection and monitoring work on construction and infrastructure projects, Van Monsjou summarizes. "Because of our flat organizational structure, we are able to respond quickly to unexpected situations. At the Markermeer dikes, for example, we are regularly called upon on an ad hoc basis to perform a measurement or place a vibration meter. That too is what we mean by active monitoring."