ABSTRACT
The Swedish Transport Administration manages approximately 17,000 road bridges and 4,000 railway bridges. The Swedish Transport Administration’s Bridge and Tunnel Management System (BMS) provides support throughout the process from assessment to priority action list. All bridges are inspected at least every six years. The inspections are performed according to a special methodology and the bridge inspector assesses both the physical and functional state of a bridge. At maintenance planning for a bridge, the total measures needed for a bridge are described to ensure expected functionality at the lowest life cycle cost. Several alternative maintenance strategies are established and the BMS provides support in finding the strategy that provides the lowest social costs in order to maintain the functional standard. When available grants are ready, the BMS can present a list of what measures are proposed to be implemented in the coming years, usually 3-4 years. This prioritized list is then used in the continued work of defining the action list and for procurement to take place cost-effectively.The rapid technological development opens up opportunities for new innovative ways of managing bridges. Drones can be used to inspect bridges and BIM can be used to store the data from building, maintaining and inspections of bridges. BIM is used when new bridges are built but because of the high demands on persistent formats to store data for the whole life span of a bridge the model files currently can´t be used as a record of the asset. Instead the BIM models are transferred to 2D drawings that can be stored in a way that can be guaranteed to last during the bridge’s life time. The paper will describe how the Swedish Transport Administration currently are working with these subjects in research projects and standardization.
