Bridges

Austroads is currently updating Section 3: Inspection, Testing, Monitoring and Reporting of the Guide to Bridge Technology Part 7: Maintenance and Management of Existing Bridges. The project involves taking a fresh look at the inspection process to provide a flexible framework from which users of the Guide can develop and improve their own inspection processes. An assessment was undertaken of Australia and New Zealand jurisdictions, and limited international organisations. This assessment included reviewing the processes and practices and the uses of inspection data collected at each inspection level. This was followed up with a workshop with each individual jurisdiction. Practices varied across the jurisdictions from basic to advanced in terms of programming, data collection, and inspection processes.

Similar observations were also made of the international practices assessed. The current practices were also assessed against the existing documentation to quantify gaps within the existing documentation. With the current range of complexities in systems, data requirements and processes, coupled with the intention of some jurisdictions to change existing practices, it was concluded that a flexible approach is needed within the revised inspection framework to enable varying jurisdictional needs to be accommodated. The fundamentals such as defining inspection types, components and component numbering will be documented as a single approach, whilst for other sections, a risk-based framework will be adopted to allow flexibility, such as in assigning inspection timings. This paper will expand on the drivers for bridge inspection harmonisation and the identification of opportunities for harmonisation across Australia and New Zealand. The paper will detail the recommendations for bridge inspection harmonisation that will be taken into the Guide to Bridge Technology as well as discuss the areas where taking an independent approach may be justified and considerations for implementing this.