October 19, 2025

Maintenance management of existing bridges: a brief comparison of some Western world strategies

Key Points

The comparison revealed significant differences in maintenance management practices for bridges across the Western world, especially post-catastrophes.
Italy's guidelines for existing bridge assessment have notable areas for improvement based on insights gained from other nations' strategies.
Complex management of existing bridges is hindered by multiple authorities, complicating maintenance activities across different regions.
The survey of bridge management practices indicates that proactive measures can be implemented to enhance structural safety and longevity.

Abstract

Many countries of the Western world have made significant investments in infrastructure development in the ’60s-’70s and before. The management of the existing bridges is complex and requires very articulated and dynamic activities, made even more complicated by the large number of authorities dealing with this issue. After some catastrophic collapses, these activities have been systematically launched in some countries, even if significant delays are recorded in others. A task group of the IABSE Italian Group (IABSE-IT) has been activated to analyze the Italian guidelines for the assessment of the existing bridges and suggest potential improvements. To this aim, a survey of guidelines used in other countries for the management of existing bridge stock has been carried out. In this paper, the several approaches identified through the survey are preliminarily discussed and compared with the Italian one.

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