Arch Bridge Quality Control Plans

Abstract

The importance of infrastructure for economic development of countries and, it opens up the economy to grander, and bigger opportunities. Maintenance should be well-thought-out and be regarded as vital part any infrastructure development in a country. The main goal of infrastructure maintenance is life sustainability of major assets. The right planning of maintenance is necessary for right moment of investment, as its premature or late implementation will lead to unnecessary costs and it may compromise the asset’s economic life duration. Different management systems developed across Europe leading to different choices and recommendations regarding maintenance actions. In order to overcome this issue a COST Action TU 1406 has proposed a guideline for standardization and development of quality control plans for roadway bridges. As in all management systems the starting points is collection of available data, defining element identification and grouping, recognition of vulnerable zones, damage processes and failure modes. On the basis of the identified damage processes identification and evaluation of performance indicators (PIs) is conducted, followed by the selection and identification of key performance indicators (KPIs), taking into account owners’ demands, and finally creating Quality Control Plans (QCP) scenarios and comparing them by spider diagrams. The recommended procedure is applied on an arch concrete bridge in Czech Republic.