ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT Chile has a great road heritage in bridges, so it is necessary for the Road Administration to have a Management System for the maintenance of bridges, being at the level of developed countries, considering high risk condition due to earthquake and scouring process.
Although there have been some regional initiatives in this area, in the vast majority of cases maintenance plans are considered based on professional experience, evaluating the performance of the bridges either through the Department of Bridges or Regional Road Directions. These plans mainly consider the maintenance of traditional bridges (made of concrete - steel beams, concrete slab, concrete pillars, pillars and direct or deep foundations).
For that reason, following the “European Quality specifications for roadway bridges, standardization at a European level (BridgeSpec)”, the Chilean technical team has started developing a proposal of new performance indicators and quality control procedures for the Life-Cycle management of bridges, in order to improve the current management programs, considering the importance of carrying out a diagnosis of their bridges and to implement, at the national level, a suitable management maintenance system of road bridges. This paper presents a state of the art of the performance indicators, goals and quality control procedures applied via several start-up inspections in Chile, highlighting the advantage of this implementation in the structure lifecycle . The results provide a verification of the use of this performance indicators and quality control procedure under the framework of the Chilean Maintenance Program that will be applied in the national code of maintenance: Manual de Carreteras (Highway Manual).
