What type of inspections should be conducted on bridges?
There are basically three types of inspections that can be conducted on bridges. The way the inspection should be carried out and its frequency will depend on the type of inspection, as indicated in the following table.
In the table above, the inspection frequency ranges are just recommendations based on discussions generated among several experts from different countries during meetings of the working group that developed the publication.
Under no circumstances should they be considered mandatory. The authorities of the country concerned should always be consulted in this regard to find out if there are any national regulations or recommendations.
However, following these recommendations will enable early detection of minor problems that can probably be corrected in a relatively simple and inexpensive manner.
The longer the time between inspections, the more likely it is that those small problems will remain undetected and progress until the integrity and/or safety of the structure is compromised, and it will often have a much higher cost and be more difficult to execute the repairs.
It should be noted that large structures must be inspected in appropriate lots. These lots should be established by specialist engineers considering the size and complexity of the bridge so that they determine the critical points of the structure and compound a representative sample of it.
Anyhow, despite having individual reports and results for each lot, which might lead to the establishment of some measures, it must be kept in mind that each of those lots belongs to a greater whole (the complete structure), so once all the data from all the lots have been compiled, results must also be interpreted together.
Besides, regarding the inspection of the bridges, another thing to take into account is that to perform these tasks optimally and in the simplest possible way, it is essential to have considered the inspection phase in the project and to have designed the bridge to enable such inspections.
Otherwise, performing these inspections can become a very complicated task, even to the point of having to undertake additional works on the bridge to allow access to certain areas to be inspected, with the consequent loss of time and money.
