Managing concrete bridges: Methods for reducing costs and user inconveniences

The paper presents experiences from modern bridge maintenance management, which has been forced to develop new and cost-efficient approaches in order to cope with the increase in overall deterioration of the aging bridge stock, the growing requirements to accessibility and the decreasing budgets. These approaches are focused on cost reductions, but must as well lead to a reduction of the user inconveniences (traffic delays, noise, dust) and to a reduction of the environmental impact.

These approaches can be based on an assessment of the structures safety, which incorporates the inaccuracies in the condition assessments, the models and the predictions in the strategies and the cost estimations. This may lead to increased inspection frequencies, detailed simulations, monitoring and testing to be used as alternatives to extensive repairs, rehabilitations or strengthening.

The approaches will in other situations often postpone or reduce the repair and rehabilitation activities required in critical parts of the structure. The paper will present some cases, where these approaches have been used on existing concrete bridges and explain how these experiences can be applied on other types of structures as a way of evaluating the different options (monitoring, repair, rehabilitation, upgrading or replacement) and thus reduce the overall costs.