Condition Assessment of In-Service Bridges
Presented By: Keith Ramsey, PE & Anthony Koloze, PE - Strinteg Corporation
Abstract:
Every year thousands of bridges receive safety inspections to ensure that they are a safe part of the transportation system. The Federal Highway Administration oversees the inspection program and delegate the responsibility to carry out inspections to the states. Why was the program started and what is required? What information is collected and reported? What can we learn from the information that is gathered during the inspection process? This presentation will attempt to provide insight to these questions.
It is also important that we learn from inspection results which bridge details are effective for in-service conditions and will lead to a full structure service life. These lessons are important for designers when looking to improve details for new bridges. We will cover several regularly seen problematic details and their effect on in-service bridges.
Access for most inspections is usually relatively simple and only requires visual access from the ground, but some areas and inspections require a more hands-on approach. Situations like these can be very challenging and require unique skill sets to gain the necessary access. This presentation will cover a couple of case studies of unique bridge access situations to successfully conduct a thorough bridge inspection.
Bio:
Keith Ramsey, PE
Education: B.S. Civil Engineering, University of Texas-Austin, 1984
Key Qualifications: Keith serves as a senior bridge inspection and evaluation technical resource for Strinteg. Prior to joining Strinteg, Keith was employed for 31 years at the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), with the last 10 years directing bridge construction and maintenance, inspection, and geotechnical operations for the Bridge Division. Prior to that, Keith held the position of State Bridge Inspection Engineer overseeing TxDOT’s federally mandated Bridge Inspection Program and ensuring TxDOT was in compliance with National Bridge Inspection Standards.
Anthony Koloze, PE
Education: B.S. Civil Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, 2007
Key Qualifications: Anthony has spent the last 13 years dedicated exclusively to the maintenance of existing bridges throughout the United States. He has performed thousands of inspections, hundreds of load ratings and refined analyses, and is engineer-of-record for several complex bridge rehabilitation projects. Structure types have included high level steel girder, steel truss, cable-stayed, and concrete segmental box girder structures; and bridges requiring rope access and industrial climbing techniques. His rehabilitation and complex analysis efforts have been centered around three-dimensional finite element modeling to determine causes and repair schemes for complex problems found at bridges, primarily related to fatigue cracks. Anthony is a professional engineer in 10 states and is certified through the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians.
