Proposed New Quality Control Plan Procedure for Road Bridges

Abstract

In order to speed up the formulation of the guidelines for implementation of the performance-based bridge assessment a COST Action TU 1406 was established. The action gathered experts for the scientific field and practitioners that worked together for four years from 2014 to 2019. One of the main outputs of this Cost Action was the development of the procedure for the Quality Control Plan (QCP) for the road bridges. The starting point for development were results obtained by three working groups (WGs) obtained from a wide-ranging and exhaustive work. The result of the WG1 was a list of applicable Performance Indicators (PI), while WG2 gave clear instructions on Performance Goals (PG). WG3 used these results as the basis for the quality control plan proposal. Incorporating all this information was done by WG4 and a new procedure was developed for the implementation of developed guidelines, done by WG5, for the preparation of the QCP. The idea was to produce a unique method that would be applicable to different types of bridges (frame, girder, arch, and truss) at the European level regardless of the specific formulations of the QCP in each country. This paper will show the basic steps of the new procedure and its specific features. This is a qualitative procedure based on expert judgment. In order to move to a quantitative approach much work needs to be done.