European standardization of quality specifications for roadway bridges: an overview

Abstract

In Europe, there is a large disparity from country to country regarding the way performance indicators are quantified and goals specified. The main objective of COST Action TU-1406 is to establish quality specifications for roadway bridges that could be accepted on a European basis. The application of these common specifications will be highly dependent on the changes in philosophy and operational methods (inspection, testing,…) that the new specifications will require in the future as a result of their implementation. Therefore, to reduce to a minimum the possible reluctance of highway managing Agencies to change the actual performance indicators and the methods to obtain them and also to take advantage of the existing background and knowledge and the data-bases available after a lot of years of use, it is mandatory that the new homogenized quality specifications proposed as result of the Action, are more or less based on the actual practice. As a consequence, before any proposal is made, it is of interest to get an overview of the existing performance indicators and performance goals used in different countries and by different highway agencies, owners and operators all over Europe as well as the quality specifications for roadway bridges. To this end, a survey was developed within the COST action to gather the existing state-of-the art in Europe. This paper shows the methods used to gather the information, the expected input and the main conclusions.