The questions of what kind of individuals university education should cultivate, how to cultivate them, and for whom they are being trained are pressing issues that require immediate solutions. Implementing ideological and political education is a fundamental way to address these challenges. Integrating political education into professional courses is just as important as imparting knowledge, fostering interest, transmitting values, and shaping students’ character and spirit. The excavation of ideological and political elements in bridge engineering courses should comprehensively consider the dependent subject of ideological and political elements, the source of cases, the depth of excavation, the trade-offs between courses, the commonality and multifaceted nature of ideological and political elements, as well as the two ways of ideological and political elements integration. Ideological and political elements should be integrated into all stages of classroom lectures, course assignments, final examinations, course design, discipline competitions, school-enterprise cooperation, etc., so as to achieve the effect of educating people in the whole process.