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TRB Annual Meeting

Optimizing Municipal Structures Inspections

The majority of Ontario’s municipal bridges and culverts built in the 1950s and 1960s are quickly approaching the end of their design life. Without the necessary funding, the declining condition of these assets can result in structures with compromised safety and increased maintenance and rehabilitation costs. Municipalities of all sizes are affected by this underinvestment and are required to do more with less to address a $19.1B deficit [1]. In 1985, Ontario emerged as a leader in bridge safety with the introduction of the Ontario Structure Inspection Manual (OSIM), which standardized detailed visual inspections for all structures over three (3) meters in length. The creation of O.Reg. 104/97 Standards for Bridges that states the structural integrity, safety and condition of every bridge shall be determined through the performance of at least one (1) inspection every second calendar year under the direction of a professional engineer and in accordance with OSIM. The paper focuses on advancements in international best practices and decades of insight and knowledge gained through evaluating thousands of structures that can be used to optimize the OSIM process. Key opportunities for improvement include the following: • Changing the OSIM cycle time inspection frequency based on the structure's configuration, age and condition. • How the structures are evaluated from cycle to cycle, limiting bias based on a priori knowledge gained from previous inspections. • Optimizing inspection frequency to focus on elements that have the greatest impact on the Bridge Condition Index (BCI) and overall bridge safety. • Identifying the factors that give greater insight into the structure's performance and safety. • Flagging bridge configurations and elements with known inherent vulnerabilities not necessarily connected to the bridge or element condition. • Modernizing the methods of recording field data to better facilitate data maintenance and post inspection analysis. • Opportunities for improvement identified in the Ontario Auditor General’s 2021 report. If adopted in a future OSIM edition, this effort would reform the way OSIM inspections are carried out, reestablish Ontario as a leader in the sector, and provide greater detail and clarity on the condition and safety of structures. This would allow for better asset management planning and safety improvements, saving millions of dollars.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Features: Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 7p
  • Monograph Title: 2024 TAC Conference and Exhibition - Technology & Transformation

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01941987
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: Transportation Association of Canada (TAC)
  • Files: ITRD, TAC
  • Created Date: Jan 8 2025 1:52PM