Long-Term Bridge Performance Program

Session Summary: Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Long-Term Bridge Performance Program Transportation Research Board (TRB) 88^th Annual Meeting (January 15, 2009)

A workshop was held at the TRB 88^th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, to provide the bridge engineering community with an overview of the Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) program activities since April 2008. More than 350 individuals representing FHWA, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, academia, industry, and other government agencies participated in this workshop.

The half-day session began with welcoming remarks by Gary Henderson director of the Office of Infrastructure Research and Development at FHWA's Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center, on the significance of the flagship program and its importance in addressing the needs of stakeholders and achieving FHWA's strategic goals. The welcome was followed by the first presentation of the day led by Hamid Ghasemi, the LTBP program manager, who highlighted the program's activities and presented key issues related to: 1) performance measures and categories; 2) the concepts of systems and top-down heuristic approaches; and 3) introductions of the oversight committee members.

Subsequently, Ali Maher, the principal investigator of the LTBP program contract, and his team, presented indepth information on the following activities:

• Defining and measuring bridge performance
• Developing a roadmap for the first 5 years
• Prioritizing data and selecting bridges
• Launching a pilot study and the first pilot bridge
• Developing an instrumentation plan and nondestructive evaluation tools
• Developing a data infrastructure

There also were two roundtable discussions related to LTBP program issues, priority data, the bridge sampling plan, and stakeholder participation. The workshop's participants had opportunities to ask questions, and provide comments and recommendations.

Access presentations and summary of workshop by visiting www.tfhrc.gov/ltbp/pubs.htm.