“Monitoring quay walls and buildings in the centre of Amsterdam is quite a challenge,” says Marijn Bogers, Project Manager at Iv-Infra. “The quaysides are always crammed with cars, bicycles and people, so we often have to be creative with our measurements. People regularly walk through the sightlines of the measuring device and certainly when it’s busy by the canal, someone must always be present by the device. Because quaysides are usually full of parked cars, we often place the measuring device on a tripod between cars and bicycles or we use low prisms to take measurements under obstructions. And what about the houseboats located along the quay? These also require us, for example, to place extra points between them in order to help us arrive at a reliable measurement.” Marijn explains how often measurements have to be taken to ensure proper monitoring: “At most of the quays, we take a zero measurement and repeat the measurement three more times, approximately every four months. With the quay walls that are in bad condition, we measure once a month and repeat a further eleven times. A single high-risk quay is measured weekly for one year, which means we are continuously taking measurements with two to three people. In terms of size, a project such as monitoring quay walls is huge. It’s an immense challenge because no two quays are the same and you must continuously consider the very best solutions. Each quay experiences different conditions and the load also varies at different times.”