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For decades, the InfraTech Innovation Award has been an important platform for showcasing groundbreaking innovations in the infrastructure sector. The 2025 edition not only promises to continue the tradition of technological progress, but also places an even stronger emphasis on sustainability. Here is an overview of the format, categorization and the specific entries that stand a chance of being recognized at the award ceremony in January 2025.
InfraTech, the leading and largest trade show for the infrastructure sector, has been known for stimulating innovation since its inception. This year, the focus of the Innovation Award 2025 is to promote and reward innovative ideas in the broadest sense of infrastructure. This includes waterways, rail, IT infrastructure, and smart city initiatives. The emphasis is on addressing today's climate, energy, circular economy and sustainability challenges.
Participants can submit their entries until Sept. 30, 2024, and must include a poster, video and an explanation. The jury, composed of representatives of infrastructure managers, industry associations and knowledge institutions, is chaired by Arno Visser, chairman of Bouwend Nederland. The jury will judge the entries on impact, originality, added value and maturity.
Important dates and conditions
The deadline for submitting entries is Sept. 30, 2024. Nominees will present their entries to the full jury in Rotterdam Ahoy in December. The final winners will be announced during InfraTech on January 15, 2025 in Rotterdam Ahoy. The Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management will present the awards and visit the innovations on the exhibition floor.... Each category has three nominees, with the winners receiving an InfraTech Promotion Package worth €2,000.
Like previous editions, the InfraTech Innovation Award has three categories: Product Innovation, Process Innovation, and Sustainable Cooperation. This year, additional emphasis is being placed on sustainability within each category.
1. Product innovation: This category includes entries where existing products have been improved or entirely new products have been developed. Innovations that contribute to climate goals, such as circular solutions or reduction of CO2 emissions, receive extra attention from the judges.
2. Process innovation: Innovative production, realization or logistics processes are assessed in this category. The jury is looking for processes that are sustainable and contribute to accelerating circular construction or climate adaptation, for example.
3. Sustainable Cooperation: This category focuses on partnerships that are long-lasting and future-proof. The collaboration must contribute to sustainable goals, such as a circular infrastructure sector by 2030.
The InfraTech Innovation Awards 2025 once again promise to provide a platform for innovations that not only bring technological progress, but also promote a sustainable future. With a strong focus on climate and circular economy, the winners of this edition will not only improve the infrastructure sector, but also make a significant contribution to its future.
InfraTech invites all innovators and pioneers to participate in this competition and show their contribution to the progress and improvement of the infrastructure sector. Besides a nice award and an InfraTech Promotion Package worth € 2,000, the winner of each category will also receive a two-page editorial in the first edition of GWW-Bouwmat of 2025. This will also keep you
'top of mind' after the fair. As in 2023, GWW-Bouwmat is the media partner of InfraTech. The upcoming editions will provide extensive previews of the event, with the icing on the cake being a major exhibition special in the final edition of 2024.
The 2023 edition already showed the importance and impact of the InfraTech Innovation Awards. Winners such as construction company Max Bögl, Antea Group and a partnership from Gelderland showed how innovations can transform the infrastructure sector for good.
Max Bögl won in the Product Innovation category with a modular viaduct that can be built faster, cheaper and easy to maintain.
Antea Group won the award for Process Innovation with their AI-driven design tooling for foundation design, which saves both time and resources.
Gelderland-based Sustainable Fuel Chain, winner of the Sustainable Collaboration category, realized a local fuel chain that converts biogas into zero-impact fuel for regional construction projects.
With the introduction of concrete deck slabs that are placed loose on the girders, Max Bögl revolutionized the field two years ago. The modular viaducts can be installed in an instant and, if necessary, removed again just as quickly. The key to this success lies in the extreme dimensional accuracy during production.
In Germany, Max Bögl's modular bridges, with lengths of up to 40 meters and available in two widths, have now been approved for installation over highways. Three of these bridges have already been installed in recent years, including one at Emmerich, just across the border from Arnhem. Several more have been realized in recent years, with a construction time of only three months per bridge. Those projects were not only innovative, but also cost-competitive. The popularity of the system is growing, even in the Netherlands.
One of the most striking features of the system is the extreme dimensional accuracy with which the components are produced. The deck plates are laid loose on the steel-concrete girders and there is no asphalt layer over them. The plates are ground with such precision that they are accurate to within one-tenth of a millimeter, which is unprecedented in civil engineering, where tolerances of centimeters are usually used.
At the abutments, the deck plates are fixed, both in span direction and laterally, so that all elements remain firmly in place and the deck can absorb the forces of braking vehicles. Traffic travels directly over the concrete, which has been mechanically roughened at the factory for adequate grip. Thanks to the precision in the transition from slab to slab, drivers do not notice the seam, ensuring a smooth ride.
The sophisticated grinding technology used by Max Bögl was originally developed for the production of concrete segments for wind turbine towers. These segments are assembled into rings and then stacked to form a tower. External prestressing ensures that the tower functions as a single unit. It begins, however, with the extremely precise production of the segments, which are ground to a tolerance of one-tenth of a millimeter after demoulding.
Max Bögl is uniquely qualified to develop these complex and sophisticated techniques. The 94-year-old family business, now led by the third generation, invests with a long time horizon and develops innovative solutions in-house. With its own steel and concrete plants, and an engineering firm in the group, Max Bögl controls the entire construction chain, making them independent of external parties.
Max Bögl's modular viaducts offer a future-proof solution for infrastructure projects, with advantages such as short construction times, cost savings and sustainability. With the continued expansion of the system in Germany and growing interest in the Netherlands, the future for this innovative approach seems promising.
Even before the definitive emergence of AI, Antea Group developed a groundbreaking innovation that is fundamentally changing the way infrastructure projects are designed. Using artificial intelligence and genetic algorithms, the company is introducing "genetic design," a technique that offers significant benefits to the infrastructure sector. This innovation not only promises to improve the speed and accuracy of designs, but also contributes to sustainability by minimizing resource consumption and CO2 emissions.
Genetic design is an advanced method that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and genetic algorithms to optimize infrastructure designs. This technique allows Antea Group to generate and evaluate thousands of variants of a design within a day. The algorithm then selects the most efficient and sustainable options, taking into account factors such as material use and environmental impact.
According to Antea Group, this approach revolutionizes engineering. Where a structural engineer would need weeks of calculations, the algorithm can achieve the same in a few hours. This not only speeds up the design process, but also creates leaner, more sustainable designs that use fewer resources and thus have a lower carbon footprint.
The benefits of genetic design are significant. With the ability to quickly and efficiently generate and analyze numerous design options, infrastructure projects can be completed faster with less waste of resources. This is particularly relevant at a time when the infrastructure sector is facing challenges such as capacity issues and the need to respond quickly to climate change and other environmental issues.
Antea Group has already demonstrated successful applications of genetic design. One example is the optimization of foundation designs under tunnel tours. By adding AI to parametric design, the company can calculate thousands of variants within one day, resulting in the most optimal design with minimal CO2 emissions and reduced resource consumption. This efficient use of scarce available knowledge in infra is crucial for the future of our society.
Antea Group's approach demonstrates that sustainability and efficiency can go hand in hand. By using advanced technologies, projects can be realized not only faster and cheaper, but also with a smaller impact on the environment. This makes genetic design not only a technological breakthrough, but also an important step toward a more sustainable future.
With genetic designs, Antea Group is setting the tone for the future of infrastructure engineering. The technology provides an answer to the growing demand for efficient, sustainable solutions in a rapidly changing world. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, the infrastructure sector can not only meet today's demands, but also be prepared for tomorrow's challenges.
Infratech 2025: Room for development
With more than 20,000 visitors, over 500 exhibitors and more than 200 knowledge sessions, InfraTech is the most important meeting place for professionals from the infrastructure sector every two years. During those four days in January, Rotterdam Ahoy is the meeting place for clients and contractors. The event complex in the city on the Maas will then be populated not only by contractors and engineers, but also by decision-makers and administrators from Rijkswaterstaat (the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management), all twelve provinces, the water boards and a great many municipalities. InfraTech 2025 will take place from 14 to 17 January in Rotterdam Ahoy.
Water Board Vallei and Veluwe and Gashouders joined forces a few years ago in the Sustainable Fuel Chain. This collaborative project provided biogas to GMB's regional construction projects and was already achieving significant environmental gains.
The Sustainable Fuel Chain was a partnership between Water Board Vallei and Veluwe, Gashouders and construction company GMB. The project revolved around setting up a filling station for biogas produced from excess biogas from the sewage treatment plant (RWZI) in Renkum. This biogas was used as fuel for construction machinery and vehicles, significantly reducing CO2 emissions and other harmful emissions.
The project covered the entire chain, from production to end-use. Gashouders directed the chain and ensured that excess biogas was not flared, but instead captured and converted into a zero-impact fuel. This fuel was then delivered to GMB construction projects in the region, realizing the first local fuel chain from the RWZI in Renkum to a construction site in the area.
The Sustainable Fuel Chain used advanced technologies to convert and store biogas. Buse Gas B.V. developed containers for biogas storage, while Royal Van Twist provided a gas engine for a hybrid generator that ran on locally produced biogas. This infrastructure ensured that biogas delivery was efficient and reliable, which was crucial to the success of the project.
The result was a significant reduction in harmful emissions. Because the biogas came from a renewable source and was produced and used locally, emissions of CO2, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter were reduced at both the WWTP and the construction site. This contributed to cleaner air and a better environment in the region.
An important aspect of the Sustainable Fuel Chain was the collaboration with the University of Arnhem and Nijmegen (HAN). The HAN conducted research on the positive environmental impact of the chain, evaluating the effectiveness and sustainability of the technologies used. This research was essential to quantify and communicate the benefits of the project to a wider audience.
In addition, collaboration with an educational institution such as HAN provided opportunities for students and researchers to gain practical experience with sustainable technologies and contribute to innovative projects. This strengthened the link between academic knowledge and practical applications, which was crucial for the further development of sustainable solutions.
The future looks bright for the Sustainable Fuel Chain. With plans to expand capacity and further optimize technology, the project can serve as a model for other regions and sectors. By sharing the success of this collaboration, the parties involved hope to inspire other organizations to set up similar sustainable initiatives.
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