Digitally Enabling the Design for Manufacture, Assembly and Maintenance of Bridges

Bridges are largely designed as bespoke solutions with the majority of the work being carried out on site and in the case of improvements to and replacement of existing bridges involves disruption through lane closures and detours. The objective of the project is to develop an integrated digital delivery process for bridges and bridge parts. It will address the whole lifecycle of bridges from identification and rationalisation of needs to manufacture, assembly, operation, maintenance and decommissioning.  The output will be an interoperable set of digital tools, data schema and virtual prototyping processes that lead to the automated manufacture of a set of standardised, validated parts and sub-assemblies at a controlled price, configured virtually and in reality that are capable of meeting the requirements of the most common bridge types.