Design, rate, inventory, inspect, and manage

BrDR Spotlight – Ohio Department of Transportation

June 26, 2024

It’s probably an easy guess for most bridge engineers when asked which state has the most bridges to maintain. Texas takes the lead with over 56,000 bridges according to the 2023 National Bridge Inventory (NBI). But not as many would guess that Ohio would come in second with roughly 27,000 NBI bridges. Ohio is a heavy user of the AASHTOWare BrR software both at the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) level and at the local county and city levels and for that, we welcome them as our ‘Spotlight’ agency for this newsletter.

To better understand their process, we talked with Amjad Waheed, PE the Bridge Management and Rating Engineer for the ODOT Office of Structural Engineering. In addition to his duties at ODOT, Amjad has long been a proponent of AASHTOWare BrDR and is a former AASHTOWare BrDR Task Force member. Below are some highlights of our conversation.

What encouragement can you provide to other agencies who are looking to use AASHTOWare for their daily permitting processes?

ODOT has been involved in the development of AASHTOWare BrDR (originally Viritis/Opis) from the very beginning. Placing all our bridge data into a database for preservation and long-term use was very appealing. Other software products at the time were not upgrading their technology and joint development seemed to be a smart way to share the development with other states. The recent modernization of the software was a big step in the right direction. The number of ODOT bridges that can be accurately modeled in BrR is about 94%. The modernized software provides a user interface that allows for the easy update of those bridge models.

“The number of ODOT bridges that can accurately modeled in BrR is about 94%. The modernized software provides a user interface that allows for the easy update of those bridge models.” – Amjad Waheed, PE, ODOT

What is the breakdown of your roughly 27,000 bridges between ODOT and your counties and how does BrR help in both cases?

ODOT is responsible for roughly 11,000 of the 27,000 bridges with the counties and other local entities responsible for the remainder. To facilitate the use of BrR at the county level, the software is made available to the counties on each release with ODOT helping counties acquiring licenses through local programs. ODOT has provided BrR training for county personnel and the BrDR Jira support board is also available for county use. Many of the county staff have become seasoned users of the software.

Ohio laws also define structures of lengths 10 feet to 20 feet as bridges, which adds roughly 18,000 non-NBI bridges which raises the total number of rated ODOT bridges to roughly 45,000. In total, ODOT is responsible for maintaining about 11,000 NBI and 3,000 non-NBI bridges. Of those 14,000 bridges, ODOT currently has about 9,200 modeled in BrR with about 3,000 bridges that will be load rated or will have rating models updated over the next 2 years.

What are your concerns about the future of permitting and how does AASHTOWare BrR help you to address those concerns?

In 2020, the number of permits processed by ODOT was 291,700. By the 2023 fiscal year, the number of processed permits had jumped to 341,129, an increase of 17%. Load rating permits can require the load rating of anywhere from a dozen to hundreds of bridges per permit. It is anticipated that this number of permits will continue to rise but ODOT is confident that they can meet the demand as they will have many bridges modeled in BrR. The introduction of the Load Rating Tool (LRT) into BrR has greatly helped the processing time of those permits for ODOT. The LRT permits the precomputation of critical data ahead of time so that a bridge analysis can be performed in a small fraction of the time required for a typical analysis. This processing speed is critical for this huge volume of permit issuance.

Growth of permits per fiscal year

In addition to the large number of permits being processed, another concern is the increase in axle loads, axle gauge and Gross Vehicular Weight (GVW) for some of those permits. Increasing GVW (many over 1,000,000 pounds) often requires a special analysis for structures.

BrR can help with the processing of these non-standard gage vehicles.

You have been a long-time user and contributor to the software’s success, what are some positive aspects of using the software over the years that you would like to point out to others?

ProMiles has provided very good support for the AASHTOWare software. The response time of ProMiles for my support requests is so prompt that it sometimes feels like they are sitting there waiting for my calls! I cannot thank them enough for the timely support over the years! We also appreciate the addition of the LRT as it allows ODOT to meet the growing demand of our permit processing. Allowing the counties to utilize the software has increased their efficiency in reporting back NBI data to us which can be provided to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in a timely manner.

The AASHTOWare development team would like to thank ODOT and Amjad for their continued use and support of the AASHTOWare software. Joint development works best when all agencies contribute to the effort and share the information!

 

[1] Data take from the FHWA Infobridge website https://infobridge.fhwa.dot.gov/Data”