The papers shows the main works developed in Spain for the construction of a Bridge Management System (BMS) to manage the vehicle permits over the bridges of the socalled Strategic Spanish Highway Network, i.e., the most important National highways. This network is owned by the National Government. The different construction times and particularities of the bridge sites results in a large number of different bridge types both in longitudinal (simple supported beam, continuous beam, frame, arch, etc.) and cross-sectional (precast I beams or spread box beams, concrete slabs, box-girder, etc.) configurations. Most of the bridges are quite new and very well documented, but also a huge number of older bridges are present whose data (design drawings, material strength, etc.) is not available. The work is summarized in a Bridge Management System (BMS) installed on a PC computer that in a quick and automatic way performs the structural analysis of the bridges crossed by a defined special permit and compares the results with the maximum allowable actions over the bridge. The final result is the authorization or no authorization. In the paper are discussed the theoretical background used, the design philosophy and the implementation of such a system in Spain. The criteria and methodology may be extrapolated to similar cases in other countries. After some time in operation, the software developed has been shown as a useful tool to assist in the decision-making process for the bridge engineers of the Road Directorate in Spain.

Peer Reviewed