Bridge Inspection, Maintenance, and Management Practices in Canada

ABSTRACT The crumbling state of bridge Infrastructure in the developed countries, such as the United States and Canada, has been recently making news headline stories, and drawing both public and official attention to the matter's criticality. Given the limited budget at hand, the state/provincial and federal transportation agencies are facing a steep challenge to upkeep their bridge inventories at safe conditions and/or acceptable service levels. This has created auxiliary needs for more efficient allocation of bridge maintenance funds, which urged transportation agencies to sponsor the development of Bridge Management Systems (BMS) since the early 1990's. Since then, the practice has gone through ample evolution, and had to benefit from incidents and accumulated experience. In an effort to form an understanding and update the knowledge about the contemporary state of the practice, this paper presents a survey of the current trends in bridge inspection, maintenance and management across Canada. Although most of the findings show similarities in the applied data collection and information management methods, differences were recorded in data interpretation, and intervention/ maintenance strategies. The paper provides insights of the latest trends in bridge management and preservation, which is ultimately believed to form a basis for educated future bridge management decisions. ABSTRACT The crumbling state of bridge Infrastructure in the developed countries, such as the United States and Canada, has been recently making news headline stories, and drawing both public and official attention to the matter's criticality. Given the limited budget at hand, the state/provincial and federal transportation agencies are facing a steep challenge to upkeep their bridge inventories at safe conditions and/or acceptable service levels. This has created auxiliary needs for more efficient allocation of bridge maintenance funds, which urged transportation agencies to sponsor the development of Bridge Management Systems (BMS) since the early 1990's. Since then, the practice has gone through ample evolution, and had to benefit from incidents and accumulated experience. In an effort to form an understanding and update the knowledge about the contemporary state of the practice, this paper presents a survey of the current trends in bridge inspection, maintenance and management across Canada. Although most of the findings show similarities in the applied data collection and information management methods, differences were recorded in data interpretation, and intervention/ maintenance strategies. The paper provides insights of the latest trends in bridge management and preservation, which is ultimately believed to form a basis for educated future bridge management decisions