The biggest maintenance challenge ever: the role of fibres

Rijkswaterstaat itself calls it the biggest maintenance challenge in its history. Many bridges, tunnels, locks and roads from the 1950s and 1960s have reached the end of their service life, while the pressure on that same infrastructure only keeps increasing. For clients, contractors and road authorities who must deliver on this challenge with limited budgets and manpower, every measure that extends service life or speeds up maintenance is worth investigating. Fibre reinforcement is one of them.

The scale of the problem

Rijkswaterstaat's Multi-year overview of the renewal challenge for bridges, tunnels and locks 2026-2030 shows that pressure on infrastructure is increasing due to more intensive and heavier traffic, while a changing climate demands infrastructure that is better able to withstand extreme heat, drought and heavy rainfall. In addition, geopolitical tensions call for more resilient roads and bridges. Much maintenance has been postponed in recent years due to a lack of funding and a shortage of qualified professionals.

This finding is confirmed by research from the Economic Institute for Construction (EIB), carried out on behalf of the Logistics Alliance: Dutch infrastructure suffers from a structural shortage of resources, growing backlogs and increasing pressure on important freight corridors. Renovation and expansion continue to lag behind growing demand, while available government funds are not always deployed in time due to delays and implementation problems.

Practice shows what this means: at the Lankhorst junction near Meppel, Rijkswaterstaat had to carry out emergency works on the viaducts in early 2026 after concrete had crumbled and fallen onto the A28. The government has since announced a prioritisation framework in which maintaining existing infrastructure takes priority over new construction.

Why extending service life is now a top priority

In a challenge where maintenance is prioritised over new construction, and where funding and skilled workers are scarce, every measure that (a) extends the service life of existing assets or (b) allows new work or repair work to proceed faster and with fewer labour hours becomes directly relevant. Fibre reinforcement of asphalt and concrete scores on both points.

Longer service life of the road surface. Research into fibre reinforced asphalt (the European FIBRA project) shows that commercial fibre producers claim a service life extension of the road surface of at least 50%, with an extension of the service life of the asphalt layer itself of up to 200%, depending on fibre type and application. At a time when maintenance is being structurally postponed due to a lack of funds, every extra year a road surface lasts is a direct gain.

Fewer labour hours per project. A shortage of qualified professionals is one of the explicitly cited causes of the backlog. Fibre reinforcement is added during the mixing process — in contrast to traditional reinforcement (mesh, bars), where installation is a separate, labour-intensive operation. That saves hours on site, precisely where the scarcity is greatest.

Less susceptible to the failure mechanism now causing problems. In several recent incidents, such as at the Lankhorst junction, corrosion of steel reinforcement plays a role in the crumbling of concrete. Synthetic fibres such as aramid and polypropylene are not corrosive, which removes part of this risk in applications where fibre reinforcement can (partially) take over the role of traditional reinforcement. (See also our article on corrosion of reinforcement steel.)

What does this mean for your project?

For asphalt and concrete projects within the maintenance challenge of national government, provinces and municipalities, there are concrete points of leverage:

• For major road maintenance: replace PMB or reinforcement mesh with fibre reinforcement in replacement projects (such as the many maintenance projects already under way this summer), directly extending the service life of the new surface layer.

• For repair and renovation of concrete structures: consider fibre reinforcement for non-primary structural elements such as wear layers, foundations, industrial floors and top layers, where it replaces the labour-intensive placement of reinforcement mesh.

• For execution capacity bottlenecks: fibre reinforced mixtures require no modification of existing production and processing equipment, meaning they can be deployed quickly without extra training or new machinery.

In conclusion

The biggest maintenance challenge ever does not call for a single miracle solution, but for a combination of measures that together extend service life, save labour hours and ease the pressure on scarce resources. Fibre reinforcement of asphalt and concrete is one of the few measures that can already achieve this today.