Bridge management is the means by which a bridge stock is cared for from concepti on to the end of its useful

life. Unfortunately many politicians and bridge authoritie s throughout the world whilst acknowledging the need for regular inspection and maintenance d uring the service life of their bridges, failed to appreciate the need for forward pla nning at the conception and design stages to ensure that sound principles were applied which would maximize their long term durability. Very often they preferred neglect, euphemisti cally called deferred maintenance which is only postponement of the inevitable (Petroski 1995). Consequently the present generation of bridge engineers has inherited a l egacy of badly deteriorating bridges which now have to be repaired, strengthened, replace d, propped or have a weight restriction posted on them. We should be very grateful to such men as New York Senator Moynihan who, since the late 1980s has been ceaselessly campaigning to save the Hell Gate Bridge, built in 1918, and which had not been given a coat of paint since the 1930s (Petroski 1995). A sum of US $55 million has sin ce been appropriated from government to repair and repaint it. Many of the worlds long st eel bridges tend to impose tolls in order to pay for maintenance and with luck and s ome foresight the annual revenue can exceed the basic maintenance costs and be inves ted in new equipment; upgrading or, indeed, education and charity. A countrywide random survey of 200 concrete highway bridges in the UK for the Department of Transport in 1989 (Wallbank 1989) suggested that many of these str uctures have deteriorated at a faster rate than originally expected, and that the design life of 120 years will not be realized. Badly conceived structural form, awkward details, the proliferation of joints in multispan bridges, poor construction, failure to understand the potential damage that can be caused in reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges from chloride contamina tion during winter salting, wind blown salt water, water itself, and lastly the unexp ected rise in the volume and density of traffic. All these things have resulted in many ser iously weakened bridges and increased the level of fatal accident risk. The present situation has resulted in a flurry of research around the world and many exciting developments are taking place that will ensure, at least, that the next generation of bridges will not deteriorate at an alarming rate, and will at least be strong enough to support the projected levels of road traffic using our roads in the next 3040 yea rs. In practice Bridge Management is necessary to coordinate and implement the tasks associated with the care of our bridges, such as: collection of inventory data regular inspection assessment of condition and strength

repair, strengthening or replacement prioritizing allocation of funds safety The mechanism by which the coordination and implementation is achieved is the Br idge Management System (BMS) with the specific aims of assisting bridge managers and managing agencies: To have a clear picture of all the bridges being managed and to prioritize them in terms of importance relative to the overall road and rail traffic infrastructure. To understand the maintenance needs of a particular bridge and by considering a number of intervention strategies to optimize the costbenefit ratio. To initiate and control the chosen maintenance action. To assess the value of the bridges on a periodic basis by the inclusion of perfo rmance indicators.