ABSTRACT
The road authorities are bound to provide desired quality of service (QoS) to road users, or in more concrete terms fast, safe, comfortable and affordable travel. To this end, timely maintenance interventions are sometimes required and the purpose of the quality control plans is to specify circumstances under which the interventions should be triggered in order to ensure the desired QoS. Major road owners in Europe, albeit under different names, include parts of quality control plans. The brief overview of the documents pertinent to bridge quality control revealed a large disparity in Europe with regard to the required QoS and its evaluation. The aim of the COST Action 1406 “Quality specifications for roadway bridges, standardization at a European level (BridgeSpec)” is to bring together, both researchers and practitioners in order to accelerate the establishment of a European guideline on this subject.
Within the Action the Working Group 3 “Establishment of a QC plan” (WG3) aims to compile the performance goals and indicators elaborated in the WG1 and WG2 into the consistent set of criteria to plan maintenance actions. In this paper the conceptual framework that will guide the work of theWG3 is described.
Based on ISO 9000, 2005 the bridge quality can be defined as “degree to which the bridge performance fulfills the performance goals”. Given that the road bridges serve primarily their users by providing them a fast and safe crossing over the otherwise hardly superable obstacle, one should derive performance goals from their desires and expectations. However, the users’ expectations are more than often in conflict with the general public and abutter demands as well as with the owner’s funding capability. These conflicting desires and demands are mostly resolved by the government bodies and the professional associations, which define performance goals and publish them in standards, guidelines, manuals, best practices etc.
The performance goals are expressed in terms of performance indicators. Some performance indicators can be directly measured, but most of them depend on further, more technical performance indicators, which are obtained through visual examination, non-destructive testing or a permanent monitoring systems. The top level performance indicators are the one that can be used in performance goals that themselves directly relate to users’ expectations and general public demands. The challenge is to derive these top level performance indicators from the lower level observable/measurable performance indicators or even findings e.g. damages and material properties.
The survey on performance indicators is performed by the WG1 and its result will be a basis for the survey on quality control documents across Europe, which is scheduled for 2016. The results of the survey will be analyzed against the presented conceptual framework. The focus of the analysis will be set on the quality control procedures and tools for different kinds of damaging processes, for which the WG3 will provide recommendations integrate them in the final report.
This article is based upon work from COST Action TU-1406, Quality specifications for roadway bridges, standardization at a European level (BridgeSpec), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).
