Austroads: Transport Research and Trends

Austroads has completed its update of Section 3: Inspection, Testing, Monitoring and Reporting of the Guide to Bridge Technology Part 7: Maintenance and Management of Existing Bridges.

The project involved 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.

The project team undertook an assessment of Australian and New Zealand jurisdictions, as well as some international organisations. The 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 levels 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 are 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.

Key updates to the Guide include:

• Condition rating vs defect mapping, allowing flexibility to adopt positions between the two processes.
• Standardisation of bridge and culvert definition.
• A ‘Rosetta stone’ of bridge componentisation, describing the nuances of the different jurisdictions.
• Standardisation of component rating descriptors.
• Reaffirming and refining inspection levels and inspection frequencies.
• Audit, quality control and inspector training.

The webinar will be presented by Andy Ng and Paul Cannons.