ABSTRACT
The issue of scheduled bridge maintenance is nowadays actual, above all due to the tragic events occurred in Italy and in the world in recently. Our team has been working from more than 30 years on management, maintenance, safety, rehabilitation and reinforcement of masonry, reinforced concrete and steel bridges. Thanks to the carried out work and developed know-how, we have developed a management system and a software web platform that is now widely used by Italian Authorities and Agencies to manage and monitor over 1,200 bridges of various structural types. Bridges maintenance must be activated simultaneously with their coming into operation and implemented according to a plan of checks and surveillance carried out by qualified and competent technicians. The control must be performed based on an in-depth analysis of the conditions of the structure which, based on the criticalities detected, requires a specific supervisory frequency in order to assess the evolution of critical issues. The specific procedure developed by the working group includes the following steps: census of structural assets managed by the Agency; inspection and structural diagnosis with indication of the Operation Level and the corrective actions necessary to restore safety against the criticalities detected; design of urgent safety measures to guarantee service continuity; periodic supervision with established intervals, as per the assessment of the Operation Level. The control procedure can be best described by reporting some of the most significant experiences on the application of control, management and monitoring of bridges and explaining the results obtained. Some cases of critical bridges with operating level close to the out of service and secured with re-solution of local criticalities and installation of active and passive devices are then exposed. These structures have been kept safely in operation, pending the completion and approval of the general recovery and reinforcement project.
