Implementation of Steel Bridge Protection Policy

Abstract

Many Departments of Transportation (DOTs) have made tremendous efforts for managing their civil infrastructure systems effectively and to meet public demands for their performance and safety. The introduction of warranties help many DOTs keep their construction with better quality by shifting post-construction responsibilities to contractors. Warranties are applied to numerous items according to each DOT’s needs, and this research focuses on steel bridge painting protection policy for Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT). This research represents the development of an implementable warranty clause for protecting steel bridge painting and the image processing technique for the objective and quantitative painting quality assessment. In the warranty clause development, extensive literature review was performed and many currently used steel bridge painting warranties were analyzed and compared. It was found that eleven items consist of the core issues for successful bridge painting warranty projects. The eleven elements are warranty period, defects definition, inspection schedule, repair procedure and progress schedule for correction work, season of work, liability insurance, traffic control, supplementary performance bond, supplementary lien bond, surety company, and work permit. These elements are used to framework INDOT’s warranty clause for protecting its steel bridge painting. In addition, this report proposes the various image processing techniques that can recognize the rust on the steel bridge surfaces. The computerized techniques are constructed for unbiased rust recognition and percentage determination in terms of distance, angles, brightness, and cleanness. The report explains the theoretical background and the application procedures and examples. Random sampling plan and stepwise applications are also proposed.