Would you like to contribute to crafting and developing better contracts for road maintenance? Are you passionate about high-end technological design? Then, this Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) programme may be for you. The PDEng is a 2-year post Master Degree technological designers programme. This programme contains an educational part and a project. For the project, you work at Rijkswaterstaat responsible for managing the Dutch highway network. The educational programme will have an in-depth character with ample attention for professional development and is partly tailored to the design project. Together with Rijkswaterstaat, you will develop a high-level and creative solution for the given problem.

THE CHALLENGE

Rijkswaterstaat contracts out the maintenance of the highway network by using different contract types. Due to variations in duration, payment mechanism and scope these contract types set different incentives for contractors to maintain highways. Compared to the maintenance planning of Rijkswaterstaat, contractors may apply activities earlier or later, or to an extent that is not in line with the planning. Although Rijkswaterstaat possesses comprehensive data about planned and executed highway maintenance, the challenge is to reveal the influence of the contract type on maintenance outcome and cost from the available data.

The aim of this design project is to:

“Develop a data analytic approach to improve the understanding of the effectiveness and efficiency of maintenance contracts for highways”

The expected outcome of the approach to be developed is:

• Detecting possible deviations between maintenance planning and maintenance execution
• Comparing actual and planned maintenance costs
• Relating cost and planning data to contract types for maintenance
• Predicting the lifetime of highway sections as a result of contracting
• Adjusting predictions based on new maintenance and contract data

In the course program you get a customised education package consisting of, among others, courses in decision-support system design, systems engineering & design, machine learning, operations research, statistics, and asset management.

We are searching for the best MSc graduated with a strong affinity with design and multidisciplinary assignments. Besides, you have the ambition and talent to accelerate in finding solutions / crafting designs for complex civil technological issues with a multidisciplinary character. Important professional skills are Dutch and English language skills, communication and interpersonal skills, teamwork, initiative and self-reflection. Prior knowledge in data analytics, highway maintenance and/or maintenance contracting are useful for you to successfully complete the project.

INFORMATION AND APPLICATION

If you have any further questions about this vacancy of the PDEng programme in Civil Engineering, please contact Andreas Hartmann at a.hartmann@utwente.nl or telephone: 053 489 2084. General information about PDEng programmes you can find at www.utwente.nl/pdeng/ or www.utwente.nl/pdeng/en/

Please send your application, with a curriculum vitae, a list with grades of courses attended, references and, if applicable, a list of publications you may have done, through the button below, before February 28, 2019. You can upload a maximum of 3 documents.

We offer you a contract for 24 months with a salary of € 1913 per month. During these two years you follow a tailor made post-master design programme with a combination of education (50%) and working on a design project (50%) for which you are partly located at the headquarter of Rijkswaterstaat in Utrecht. Additionally, the UT provides excellent facilities for professional and personal development, a holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus. On successfully completing the programme, you will receive a certified and recognised degree. You will be entitled to use the academic degree PDEng and will be registered as a Technological Designer in the Dutch register kept by the Royal Institution of Engineers in the Netherlands (KIVI).

The University of Twente. We stand for life sciences and technology. High tech and human touch. Education and research that matter. New technology which leads change, innovation and progress in society. The University of Twente is the only campus university of the Netherlands; divided over five faculties we provide more than fifty educational programmes. We have a strong focus on personal development and talented researchers are given scope for carrying out groundbreaking research.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability status. Because of our diversity values we do particularly support women to apply.

The Faculty of Engineering Technology (ET) is one of the five faculties of the University of Twente. ET combines Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Industrial Design Engineering. Our faculty has approximately 1800 bachelor and master students, 400 employees and 150 PhD candidates. The departments of the faculty cooperatively conduct the educational programmes and participate in interdisciplinary research projects, programmes and the research institutes: Mesa+ Institute, TechMed Centra and Digital Society Institute.