1 INRODUCTION

If you ask me what I do, I would reply, "I work on

bridges. I practice bridge engineering. I am a prac-
titioner. Bridge Engineering covers many activities
such as Planning, Designing, Constructing, Main-
taining, and, finally, the Demolishing of Bridges.
I've done some designing, some construction, and
some maintenance-engineering; I also have done
some teaching, researching, serving on committees,
and writing papers. I have been very fortunate to
have worked in various capacities on many major
long-span bridge projects such as the Golden Gate
and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridges, the
Bridge of the Americas, the Lake Maracaibo Bridge,
the new Cooper River Bridge, and, during the past
few years, on several large bridge projects in China.
I began my 50 year plus career with the State of
California Bridge Department (now called Caltrans)
on the design and construction of six major Toll
Bridges, that included the 1300-foot cable-stayed
Southern Crossing of San Francisco Bay that, unfor-
tunately, was never constructed.
I remember clearly that fortuitous day that I was
assigned to the position of Chief Maintenance Engi-
neer for all nine of the State owned Toll Bridges. I
thought I was being side-tracked into a do-nothing
position with no challenging work.
Was I ever wrong about this 'do nothing posi-
tion! I never experienced a dull moment in the five
years that I worked in maintenance! Trucks collided
with structural members; vehicles caught on fire,
damaging the bridge structure; ships collided with
piers and fenders; an over-height barge crane struck
and buckled a major compression-member of a can-
tilever-truss; bearings and pinned joints froze up;
expansion joints wore out and needed replacement
under traffic! Of course, all these issues were in ad-
dition to the required day-to-day cleaning, painting,
and inspection of all of the nine structures to keep
them in first-class condition, as was required by the
toll bond covenants backing the construction of
these Toll Bridges.
I had all the maintenance money needed to per-
form these many functions, and I inherited a won-
derfully trained team of maintenance workers and a
small staff of registered engineers that were kept
busy inspecting the bridges; designing repairs for
damaged members and maintenance access-
facilities; keeping the electrical systems fully func-
tional; and responding to emergencies that always
occur from time to time.
During my tenure in maintenance of these major
bridges, Professor T. Y. Lin, who taught several of
my classes while I was at Berkeley, offered me a po-
sition with his firm, T. Y. Lin International, which
was and is a major consulting firm practicing bridge
engineering in the Western Hemisphere and in Asia.
In 2004, I retired from T.Y. Lin International and
started my own Bridge Consulting Engineering Of-
fice. I now consult on major bridges in China with
Dr. Man-Chun Tang and on the new Self-Anchored
Suspension span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay
Bridge.
Based upon this long career in bridge engineer-
ing, I have some thoughts that I would like to share
with you about the maintenance and the safety of
bridges.
Bridge maintenance and saIety: a practitioner`s view
C. Seim
Consulting Bridge Engineer, El Cerrito, California, USA

ABSTRACT: Maintenance engineering must be practical. Safety is always paramount in the maintenance
operations of a bridge. OHSA provides rules for the health and safety of maintenance personnel, and is one
of the most important bills ever passed by Congress. Today`s bridge code is recognizing the need for designs
that use durable materials that are long-lasting and can reduce maintenance demands. Bridge owners and
maintenance engineers must ensure that maintenance money is eIIectively utilized Ior 'good maintenance.
Let the bridge show you where it needs maintenance.
Bridge Maintenance, Safety, Management and Life-Cycle Optimization Frangopol, Sause & Kusko (eds)
2010 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-87786-2
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2 MAINTENANCE MUST BE PRACTICAL
Scientists and mathematicians say '`it must be beau-
tiIul but maintenance engineers say 'it must be
practical Maintenance engineers must be practical
because they are responsible for drawing out the last
bit of service life that a bridge has to offer. What
they do to preserve and extend the life of the bridge
must work and work well!
Without regular, professional maintenance engi-
neering, the factor of safety built into the structure
could be greatly reduced, the bridge posted for a
load limit, and it might look unsafe to drive or walk
across. Most importantly, if the bridge were to be
taken out of service, the highway system would lose
an important investment of public money.
In emergency situations, maintenance engineers
must act quickly, decisively, and wisely to protect
the safety of the traveling public. Usually there is
no time to look at textbooks, and, if there were time,
there are few textbooks on the subject that will solve
the immediate problem.
A good example of this occurred during the Sep-
tember 2009 'repair oI a Iractured eyebar on the
San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The installation
was not actually a repair, but was a partial-
strengthening of the cracked eyebar: the strengthen-
ing failed seven weeks after its installation. The
bridge was closed for six days to all traffic while a
second temporary, but improved, strengthening sys-
tem was again installed. The permanent repair was
then installed in December 2009 over eight days by
working at night with partial deck closures.
3 MAINTENANCE AND SAFETY
Safety is always paramount in the maintenance op-
erations of a bridge. Good maintenance includes the
safe management of facilities such as traffic, road-
way, aviation, and navigation lighting; keeping deck
drains open; repair of expansion joints that spring
loose; as well hundreds of other items. 'SaIety al-
so covers the safe management of accesses for main-
tenance personnel such as ladders, cat walks, and
their personal gear such as coveralls, gloves, respira-
tors, body harnesses and lanyards.
Today there are a number of personnel hoists for
above-deck and below-deck access that aid in the
safe placement of maintenance workers at the point
of work. However, these facilities come at the price
of one or two lane closures and the redirecting of
traffic.
These personnel hoists are also used in the impor-
tant function of inspecting all elements of the bridge
for close-up inspection. These hoists do have their
limitations, and sometimes inspectors need to climb
steel, install temporary rigging, or use mountain-
climbing equipment to get to all the inspection
points. Whichever methods are used, 'SaIety First
is the primary mandate for inspecting a bridge.
Additionally, OHSA compliance for the health
and safety of maintenance personnel was one of the
most important directives for health and safety ever
passed by Congress. OHSA has saved many lives
and prevented many injuries over time. Although
OHSA rules may be costly to implement and to self-
enforce, and thus have drawn some criticism; this is
money well spent. All maintenance operations per-
formed on a bridge must conform to the require-
ments of OSHA, wherever possible. Sometimes, on
existing bridges, OHSA rules cannot be fully im-
plemented; in such cases the maintenance engineer
must do whatever measures he/she can to increase
worker safety, such as padding a header above a
sub-standard height opening or posting signs warn-
ing of low clearances.
4 THE CHANGING MAINTENANCE SCENE
From time to time new materials are introduced to
improve the maintenance of bridges. About 1975,
some states and communities started to impose vola-
tility limits on paint and solvents used in bridge
maintenance; sandblasting was curtailed, and full
containment of removed material was required to
avoid sweeping it into bays or rivers. The limit on
paint volatility was an opportunity which resulted in
improved paints Ior structural steel. Today`s paint
systems have three times the life that they had when
I started in maintenance with the traditional red lead
paint system.
High-Performance Steel and Concrete require
less material for construction, should last longer, re-
ducing the cost of maintenance. Protective coatings
for steel reinforcing bars in concrete decks and in
splash-zone of concrete piers also extend the service
lives of these areas.
Today`s bridge codes are recognizing the need
for designs that use durable materials that are long-
lasting and that can reduce maintenance demands.
A new buzz word, 'Sustainable- Design is being
used to denote the use of these improved materials.
Bridge Diagnostic-Systems are being developed
that make detection of bridge elements with struc-
tural problems easier to find, record, and maintain.
Bridge Management Systems are also being devel-
oped that make routine and special maintenance eas-
ier to track.
Bridge Security is a new, developing technology
for protecting important bridges that will require tri-
al installations on bridges to determine how they
may affect bridge-maintenance functions.
These few examples show that Bridge Mainten-
ance can indeed be a changing, exciting profession!
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5 THE ROLES OF THE BRIDGE OWNER
All bridges that have been built and all the bridges to
be built in the future will have owners. What should
be the role of the owners of bridges in regard to
maintenance and safety operations? Perhaps, for a
new bridge, their role would be to conceive of a
beautiful bridge, thoughtfully designed, well con-
structed, and safely maintained. For existing
bridges, the owners are limited to safely maintaining
their bridges to obtain the built-in service life.
The design and construction of a bridge requires
money up front, whereas good maintenance func-
tions require money after the bridge has been built;
sometimes that money, unfortunately, can be slow in
coming, or worse yet, be cut-off. The owner must
appreciate that good maintenance will prolong the
life of the bridge, will provide safe passage for the
public, and will require reserves of money that must
be appropriated as needed.
6 THE ROLES OF THE BRIDGE DESIGNER
Good maintenance starts with good design. If the
bridge designer does a worthy job of designing the
structure and a thorough job of selecting proper ma-
terials; providing maintenance access when possible;
and providing enough clear space for inspecting,
cleaning, painting, and replacing,--good mainten-
ance should follow.
A bridge designer has many difficult roles to fill:
he/she needs to satisfy a large number of require-
ments, such as those contained in a four-inch thick
design code: choosing the proper structural type,
span lengths, and foundation types; selecting the ma-
terials, bearings, and expansion joints; and writing
specifications and estimating costs. Thus a designer
may become too busy to think about the future
maintenance of the bridge.
However, I believe the appropriate time to think
about installing facilities for maintenance operations
is during the design phase. These facilities will low-
er the life-cycle cost of the bridge; but only if the
bridge designer is motivated to provide maintenance
access and space on the bridge plans, and if the
bridge owner will provide a little bit more money
now to save more money in the future.
7 ROLES OF THE MAINTENANCE ENGINEER
The roles of the maintenance engineer are too nu-
merous to mention here; suffice to say that the major
roles of the maintenance engineer are: maintaining
the safety of personnel, the safety of the travelling
public, and the safety of the structures. These roles
demand, among many other requirements, know-
ledge of structures and materials; some knowledge
of construction practice, repair methods, and of ar-
resting corrosion; familiarity with OHSA, safety de-
vices and access equipment; ability to communicate
with and to motivating personnel; and the ability to
talk pleasantly to people who are heatedly complain-
ing about pot holes in the bridge deck.
Where can bridge owners find good maintenance
engineers? They usually are made the hard way
from working on the maintenance of bridges, and if
lucky, under the mentorship of a seasoned mainten-
ance engineer. We never see advertising: 'Enroll
now, get your degree in bridge maintenance engi-
neering, and make a Iortune!
In my case, I was appointed, kicking and scream-
ing, into the maintenance engineering function.
Luckily I inherited a good staff that were well
trained and knew what they were doing before I
came; they educated me very quickly as to what I
was to do and how I could best help them to do their
job!
However, other maintenance engineers may not
be so lucky, and they may have to start almost from
scratch in educating themselves and in training their
own personnel; or worst, they have small staffs, little
or no maintenance money, and must keep their
bridges open with bailing wire and sheer determina-
tion.
Fortunately, this Association sponsors confe-
rences, such as this one, that promotes and advances
the art, practice, and development of Bridge Main-
tenance and Safety.
8 WHAT IS 'GOOD MAINTENANCE?
I think that politicians do not always understand why
money must be spent on Maintenance. They may
think: 'You built the bridge, it is carrying traIIic,
and now you want to fix it. Didn't you do your work
right the Iirst time? When money is short, main-
tenance is usually the first item cut; politicians refer
to this process by the euphemism 'deIerred main-
tenance.
Although it is Iair Ior the politicians to ask: 'Is
our money being well spent or, 'can this money be
spent more effectively? It is up to bridge owners to
provide, and to maintenance engineers to ensure,
that maintenance money is effectively utilized for
good and necessary maintenance.
Since the advent of the LRFD bridge design spe-
cifications, we have seen the probabilistic basis of
this new approach to bridge design from publica-
tions displaying two bell-shaped curves, superim-
posed on a diagram, with the curve on the left
representing the loads L (dead, truck, wind, others),
and with the curve on the right representing the re-
sistances R (of the bridge elements). A simplified
interpretation of this diagram is that the distance be-
tween the peaks of the two curves is a measure of
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safety called Reliability Index. The acceptable value
of the Reliability Index used for the design of
bridges, is set by a specification-writing committee
and is based upon their judgment and experience,
and by comparison to the performances of existing
bridges.
In the practical world, Politicians control L by
their votes on legal-load weights for highways,
hopefully guided by the advice of bridge engineers.
However, politicians are constantly being lobbied to
increase legal-load weights, which they often vote to
do.
The resistance, R, of each of the myriad of bridge
elements that make up a bridge, is controlled by the
bridge designer, using the current, thick bridge de-
sign specifications and his/her knowledge and expe-
rience. After the bridge is constructed and opened to
service, the resistance, R, is partially controlled-- in
one way of looking at it-- by the bridge maintenance
engineer, ensuring that the service life designed into
the structure will be obtained through 'good main-
tenance.
The measure oI 'good maintenance (and good
design) is that the bridge will safely serve society,
without reduction in load capacity, to the end of its
design life.
9 SERVICE LIFE OF A BRIDGE
What is the lifetime of a bridge, or better yet, what is
the service liIe oI a bridge? 'Service liIe is the bet-
ter description because it implies that the bridge will
safely carry the loads, without reduction, for which
it was designed, over its specified lifetime. An old
bridge can live on after its service life has passed but
it may require rehabilitation or extensive reconstruc-
tion.
At the beginning of my career, most bridges were
designed for a life time of 50 years. We used slide-
rules and the now-obsolete 'allowable stress design`
(ASD); the bridge design specifications were only
about inches thick, and life was much simpler!
That 50-year service life was increased, a couple of
decades ago, to 75 years when the LFD method of
design was developed. I have recently worked on
oversight of the design and the construction of the
Cooper River cable-stayed bridge which has a speci-
fied service life of 100 years. I am presently work-
ing in the same capacity on the bridge from Hong
Kong to Macau, which has a specified life of 125
years.
There is certainly a trend toward increasing the
design service-life of our bridges in the United
States: a hundred year life has been suggested. At
what point does a longer specified service life of the
bridge trigger an increase in the Reliability Index or
load factors, or in a reduction in fatigue stress? Do
we know enough about the tertiary effects of aging
on our materials? More importantly, what effects
will longer service lives have on the maintenance
and safety functions of our bridges?
Rivets have been around for about two centuries;
though not used very often now; reinforced concrete
began to be used in bridges a little over a century
ago; prestressed concrete and welded steel girders
have been used for a little over a half-century. Elas-
tomeric and pot bearings and modular expansion
joints have less than a half-century of use in bridges;
high performance concrete and steel have an even
shorter history of bridge-use--about a decade; yet
even shorter is the use of advanced composites,
which utilize plastic resins and fiber reinforcement.
If the century, or the century and a quarter of
bridge service life is successfully to be achieved,
perhaps we need a comprehensive test program for
traditional materials being used for longer-life appli-
cations as well as for the new materials being used
for longer life in traditional applications.
A disastrous example of not performing sufficient
development and testing of new materials and new
structural forms was the introduction of orthotropic
steel decks to the United States, about forty years
ago. The first-draft design specifications for ortho-
tropic steel decks were based on strength-design, ra-
ther than on serviceability-design. In some of the
early installations of this deck-type the steel began
to fatigue-crack in high stress areas and had to be
repaired in the field.
An even worse example was the choice of wear-
ing surface material placed on the steel deck to pro-
vide skid resistance, a smooth ride, and to protect
the steel deck from corroding. Asphalt, or modified
asphalt was used with very little laboratory testing to
prove its durability. All of the original asphalt-
based materials failed in just a few years and now
need to be replaced every decade or so.
Maintenance engineers had to stand by helplessly
because these failures were beyond their control to
manage or prevent; all they could do was watch,
patch, and repair. However, there are now several
installations of orthotropic decks and wearing sur-
faces that are nearing, or have achieved, a 30 to 40
year service life. These successful installations are
typified by the use of engineered and laboratory-
tested materials, as all of our materials should be,
before being used on bridges.
10 PRIMARY, SECONDARY, AND TERTIARY
EFFECTS
One of the jobs of the bridge designer is to deter-
mine the effects of the primary stresses generated by
loads and structural action, and to use appropriate
materials in the proper amount, to provide the neces-
sary resistance to meet the load demands. There are
now programs that have the ability to analyze sec-
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ondary stresses, non-linear and inelastic structural
actions, and even dynamic load-time-histories appli-
cations.
However, we still lack the ability to analyze for
tertiary effects of time, loading, and the environment
on material used in our bridges. For example, the
breakdown of paint films under the aging effects of
weather, oxygen, and moisture; the migration of
chloride ions through concrete, that, when reaching
the level of the steel reinforcing bars, starts corro-
sion; and the fatigue-effects of out-of-plane bending
of steel plates. To be sure, specialists can do these
things, but usually not typical bridge designers. We
try to cover these adverse effects whenever they are
discovered by code requirements that are based upon
experience. However, tertiary effects are the very
effects that the bridge maintenance engineer must
inspect, monitor, and control, so as to provide a long
service life for the bridge.
Although, at the time of this writing, no testing
results have been published on the eyebars of the
San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, I believe the
cause of the crack in the troubled eyebar will be
found to be a tertiary effect that could not be calcu-
lated nor found by inspecting at the time that the
bridge was designed, nor could the cause be found
with today`s technology.
These tertiary effects showed up very vividly in
my experience on the Golden Gate Bridge, back in
the 1970s. The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and
Transportation District (The District) is a completely
separate organization from the California Depart-
ment of Transportation, (Caltrans), for whom I
worked at that time.
The District had employed a consultant to eva-
luate the concrete deck; the consultant reported that
the deck reinforcing bars were fatiguing under wheel
loads and would begin fatigue-fracturing within a
few years. The concrete deck could not be replaced
under traffic. Therefore a new lower deck in the
plane of the lower truss chords would need to be
constructed, traffic diverted to the new lower deck,
the upper concrete deck removed, and a new deck
cast in place, all under full traffic. Obviously this
would be a tremendously expensive and traffic-
disrupting plan. The District asked Caltrans for a
second opinion and I drew the assignment.
I read the report stating that corrosion had oc-
curred between and on the top flanges of the longi-
tudinal steel stringers, lifting the concrete slab free
of its support from the flanges of the stringers. The
deck was now spanning over one or two longitudinal
stringers, and the extra-long spans were producing
higher fatigue stresses under truck wheel loading.
I noted that the report used a beam analogy in-
stead of a plate or arch analogy. I requested that the
Caltrans Transportation Laboratory in Sacramento
place strain gauges on a few of the reinforcing bars
and monitor stresses during the morning commute.
The strain gauge showed that the maximum stress
recording was about 2000 psi. Even with an impact
factor of 100 percent, this low stress would not be
significant in terms of fatiguing the rebars.
However, our inspection did find that reinforcing
bars near the soffit of the deck appeared to be cor-
roding. We then performed half-cell readings on the
deck and took two-inch diameter cores through the 6
1/2 inch thick deck, sliced the cores, and analyzed
the slices for Chloride ions. The analysis showed
quite clearly that the chloride content in the lower
third of concrete in the deck was above the threshold
content that sustains steel reinforcing bar corrosion.
The deck was corroding, not fatiguing.
The chloride was being deposited on the soffit of
the deck from the salt laden fogs that continually roll
through the Golden Gate. The Golden Gate Bridge
needed a new steel deck that could be constructed
under traffic. The new steel orthotropic deck was
opened in 1985 and is still performing well but
that is another story.
Both the corrosion of the top flange of the strin-
gers and the intrusion of the Chloride ions were all
tertiary effects that could not be calculated or pre-
dicted by the designers at that time. We can do this
today, but with the exception of the cable-stayed
Cooper River Bridge, we just don`t do it. The con-
ditions on the Golden Gate Bridge were made worse
by the chief engineer stipulating that sandblasting
was not to be used to clean the steel for paint appli-
cation, as each blasting cycle removes some steel,
and during the multi-century life of the structure,
would remove too much of the steel sections.
The irony of this requirement is that the bridge
has lost more steel section from corrosion than it ev-
er would have from sandblasting. I remember many
years ago talking to the paint superintendent of the
San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, who was very
critical of the maintenance of the Golden Gate
Bridge. He told me sandblasting was not allowed on
that bridge, and as a result many rivets have lost
their heads from corrosion, and that the lacing bars
are sharp enough to shave by. I thought he was ex-
aggerating, but when I was inspecting the deck, I did
see rivets without heads, and lacing bars sharp as a
razor.
But this will never happen again on the Golden
Gate Bridge. The corroded rivets were replaced
with high strength bolts and new lacing bars were
installed. About 1970, and over a twenty-year pe-
riod, the maintenance crews blasted off the old red
lead paint, applied an inorganic zinc primer, and
protected the primer with an overcoat of durable
paint. The Bridge has not lost steel section since. It
is now a model bridge for showing what good main-
tenance should be.

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11 THE BRIDGE WILL SHOW YOU
The most important function for the maintenance
and safety operations of a bridge is inspection, either
by eye or by instruments. If you look, the bridge will
show you where it needs maintenance help.
During the most famous bridge collapse of all-
time, the Qubec Bridge, under construction in
1906, was deflecting abnormally and some of the
iron workers walked off the job. The now infamous
I 35W truss bridge had bucked gusset plates before
it collapsed in 2007. Several of the lifting cables of
the old Dumbarton Bridge lift-span in San Francisco
Bay were vibrating excessively and had to be re-
placed in 1975. The cable stays of the Luling
Bridge, near New Orleans, were galloping abnor-
mally and developing cracks in the plastic tubing
and in the cement grout; the stays are now being re-
placed. And so on, as there are literally thousands of
examples; however the most important observation
is 'what your bridge is telling you, iI you look.
Of course there are distress items that are hidden
from view. The flaw in the eyebar of the Silver
Bridge across the Ohio River that failed and precipi-
tated the total collapse of the suspension bridge in
1969 was a tertiary effect hidden from view.
But there are now ongoing efforts to develop de-
tection instrumentation, data acquisition recorders,
and transmission methods to find hidden distressed
areas the tertiary effects but these effects are still
what the bridge is telling you, but 'looking' in a dif-
ferent and more effective way.
We all can look forward to the development of
new technologies, and to the improvements of the
ongoing technologies, which will assist us with in-
spection, maintenance, and safety work on our
bridges.
12 SUMMING UP
I have had a wonderful career in bridge engineering;
but my stint in bridge maintenance stands out as the
high-light. I use that experience all the time in my
current bridge consulting work, when I ask myself,
'How can THAT be maintained? I mentor younger
engineers to acquaint them with, and to think about
the maintenance functions of a bridge: Remember,
iI you can`t access THAT for inspection and main-
tenance, THAT will not last as long as it should!
I have not listed any references, as these are my
thoughts alone, based on my own experiences.

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