ABSTRACT
In France the management and the rehabilitation of bridge stocks are concepts that were really taken into account in public policies only after the seventies. Indeed despite an institutionalization of French bridges maintenance in 1716 with the establishment of the “Ponts et Chaussées” corps, the bridge maintenance was progressively neglected after the Second World War to the advantage of building policies. The aim was then to build rather than to rehabilate. But lacks of service levels due to the increase of traffic, the collapse of deteriorated bridges like these of the bridge of Elme in 1977, or these of the bridge of Tours in 1978 led to the awareness of the importance to assess bridge stocks. This is how was written the “InstructionTechnique pour la Surveillance des Ouvrages d’Art” on the nineteenth of October in 1979 which was a rationalization of the maintenance actions and that is still used nowadays.
