System for Evaluating Bridge Construction Plans

At present, there are no tools available for objectively evaluating the effectiveness of a bridge construction plan (BCP). As a result, bridge designers predominantly evaluate BCPs by considering only the short-term economics (i.e., construction costs). Other significant issues for project success, like safety, accessibility, and impact on local community, are evaluated based on subjective judgments, not on systematic analysis. A BCP, as defined by this research, has a direct impact on the surrounding neighborhood and on overall project performance. Hence, it is desirable to optimize a BCP through rigorous evaluations during the design phase. A model developed for such evaluations would need to perform the following specific tasks: (1) define the exact construction concerns anticipated within project execution (the definition of BCP-specific objectives other than the traditional objectives of cost and schedules); and (2) provide a means for evaluating a BCP against a multitude of objectives (given that such objectives have been defined in the previous step). Thus, the fundamental hypothesis of thls research is that a beneficial BCP evaluation tool can be developed for use in the design phase. Of course, thls suggests that there are a set of evaluation criteria that are common to all bridge construction projects that can be used as a base for BCP evaluation, and that the data available during the design phase are sufficient for performing the evaluation. This report, then, describes the development of a mechanism (model) for evaluating the effectiveness of bridge construction plans during the design phase.