Proposed Australian rail bridge management framework

A large number of Australian rail bridges were constructed over 80 years ago and have become costly to maintain. Infrastructure managers are under pressure to maintain bridge structures to a specified performance level with less maintenance funding and fewer resources. Currently, some rail operators maintain bridges through asset management systems which are simplistic and only address immediate operational issues. This is despite the fact that a life cycle cost analysis is essential to strategically maintain bridge assets over their operational life. A new Bridge Management System (BMS) which consists of a life cycle cost analysis and ranking model is proposed in this paper. The proposed model can provide solutions at the element, bridge and network levels. A brief background is provided on Australian rail bridge history along with an overview of their current condition. The applications and limitations of current maintenance systems are then explained. Finally, the proposed maintenance cycle with its components are discussed. Scope for future work is identified and discussed in the conclusion section of this paper.