Sweco is co-creating innovative solutions with our clients to build sustainable societies for the long-term. In the Netherlands, the municipality of Amsterdam is working in partnership with Sweco to develop innovative engineering solutions and encourage biodiversity in the historic city centre.

The municipality of Amsterdam owns more than 600 kilometres of quay walls, 205 kilometres of which are foundations. In the historic city centre, many of Amsterdam’s canals and quays date from the 1600s. They are still important to the city, and today there are some 2,500 houseboats also moored along the quays. The quay walls are used intensively and are in urgent need of repair.

An innovative partnership

The partnership Kade 2.020 consists of the contractors Koninklijke Oosterhof Holman and CMD Civiele werken and construction consultancy Strackee, and Sweco. This alliance collaborates with the municipality of Amsterdam. Additionally, Kade2.020 is the contractor for the municipality of Amsterdam.

The partnership was formed to find innovative solutions to renovate the Amsterdam quay walls faster, more sustainably, and with less disruption for the city’s citizens. Sweco consultants are providing know-how in hydraulic engineering, soil research, foundation techniques, mobility and neighbourhood participation as well as innovation process and collaboration/ co-creation within complex/process management.

An Kade 2.020 innovation called the EZ-Flow has been designated by the municipality of Amsterdam as one of the most promising innovations for the complex quay wall renovation and selected for further development. Featuring Z-shaped quay walls; instead of traditional L-shaped quay walls, EZ Flow facilitates ease of quay wall renovation from the water, with minimal work from the quay.

“Work on many kilometres of quay in the busy centre of Amsterdam will cause inconvenience. With our innovation we limit the number of nuisance sources and the duration of the nuisance as much as possible,” says Stephan Laaper, project leader, Sweco, Netherlands.

“The road and sidewalk remain accessible to traffic, houseboats may need to be moved for less time, the supply of material takes place over the water and no construction pit is required, so that the risk of settlement in the subsoil and damage to buildings is negligible,” Stephan Laaper continues.

Multifunctional innovation designed for biodiversity

There is also an investigation underway to determine if the quay walls can be provided with multifunctional recesses. Instead of a bare concrete box, this innovation would mean that despite submerging the wall underwater where no one sees it, the quay wall could create added value for the city.

The compartments could include sensors to monitor water quality, and other recesses could be used to build nature-friendly environments.

Amsterdam’s municipal ecologists have offered insight on how the recesses could offer a pioneering benefit to biodiversity: if built in one continuous ecological construction, fish can move more safely, hide, nest or spawn. The recesses can also offer shelter for smaller fish from birds of prey, larger fish and tour boats. Vegetation can also easily form on the quay wall transforming it from a bare concrete box into an ecological structure.

In the first period of the collaboration, solutions will be further devised and tested and applied in a number of pilot projects during 2021.