Procedures for the assessment of highway structures

Bridges, earth retaining walls and buried structures make up a substantial proportion of the fixed assets of the land based transportation infrastructure within Europe. Little work has been done on the development of documents covering the assessment of highway structures compared to the design of new structures. This paper describes an approach to assessment developed through working groups 4 and 5 of the European COST (Co-Operation in Science and Technology) Action 345, ‘Procedures required for assessing highway structures’. This Action was supported by the European Commission and involved experts from 16 European countries. The ICE Trust fund has supported a study of a road bridge in Vienna to demonstrate the applicability and potential benefits of the approach developed through COST 345. The approach is similar to that used in the UK in that there are five levels of assessment of increasing complexity and reliability, but there are a number of differences. This paper describes the approach developed through COST 345 with a view of opening the debate on the need for a code of practice for assessment that facilitates the use of site-specific loading.