Understanding what you really want from level 3 bridge inspections and bridge load capacity assessments by Neal Lake

Abstract

With the ever increasing drive for productivity gains through better heavy vehicle access to the road freight network, many local road asset owners are being requested to assess bridge capacity to take increased loads and address ‘the last mile’ requirements for effective heavy vehicle access routes. This request is within an environment where both the funding to maintain such infrastructure is very low, as is the funding to assess the infrastructure. Many structures have condition issues, coupled with significant backlogs in typical maintenance, rehabilitation and renewal programs. The environment created from this situation leads to a very difficult asset management challenge and many agencies are not equipped to deal with this challenge due to significant resource and experience constraints. Increasingly, RFQs are being issued by road asset owners that are not consistent with the actual objectives of the agency. They are also far too extensive for the actual budgets set for such work and often the outcomes will not provide the correct technical information to enable effective decision making. This creates a situation where if a consultant/contractor tries to be fully compliant with the actual scope, their bid price will not be competitive. The teams that bid and win need to find a way to dodge the actual scope trying to contractually navigate to sensible outcomes that still meet agency objectives. This situation is less than ideal, creating uncertainty across the board, making it difficult to achieve sensible outcomes that can be competitively bid upon. This paper addresses many of these issues and sets a framework for the procurement of such services, particularly focusing on understanding the objectives of the work and developing a sensible approach to achieve the required outcomes