Preventative Maintenance, as a way to substantially extend the service life of highway bridges continues to be a growing trend in the U.S. and around the world. A wide range of studies over the years have reached a similar conclusion; that budgeting for & performing preventative maintenance on concrete bridge decks significantly extends their service life. The extremely high cost of replacing damaged & decaying bridges (in terms of both money and disruption), has the entities responsible for managing these bridges focusing more & more on economical, long-term ways to extend the service life of these important assets.

Unfortunately, over the years there has not been much agreement on how to best approach this critical infrastructure issue. The growing annual use of deicers on highways & bridges (salt, brines, magnesium chloride, etc.) and their destructive effects on unprotected concrete just highlights the need for increased protection of bridge decks across the country. In addition, to the corrosive effect those chemicals have on the steel reinforcement embedded in the concrete decks, there are other factors accelerating the decay of the concrete as well, such as alkali-silica reaction (ASR), freeze-thaw conditions (in the cold-weather states), and carbonation.

From a concrete waterproofing & protection standpoint, the highway bridge market in the United States is a complex and complicated industry segment. The design, maintenance & repair of highway bridges in the U.S. has evolved over time into a very diverse and fractured place for manufacturing companies to operate in. Each state’s Department of Transportation (D.O.T.) has developed and follows its own guidance and regulations regarding the design/construction of new bridges, as well as the maintenance & repair of existing bridges located on the state & interstate highways, they’re responsible for.

Each state also has lower tier of government entities (counties, cities, villages, etc.) that are tasked with managing & budgeting for the design/construction of new bridges, as well as the ongoing maintenance/repairs of the bridges located on the roads & highways that they are responsible. In many states, those lower tier entities rely heavily on the guidance of that state’s Department of Transportation regarding how they manage the construction & maintenance of their bridges. However, that is not always the case. Lastly, there are also tollways with bridges in many of the states that are owned & operated by a separate entity all together.

Adding to the complexity of the situation is the wide variety of product offerings & technology types that have been developed and used over the years. Depending on the state they’re located in, and the timeframe they were built during, the majority of highway bridges in the U.S. were designed to perform for a service life 50 to 75 years (some newer bridges are designed for 100-year service lives). As you can imagine, with the wide variety of decision-makers located in the state, county & local highway department offices, each faced with a smorgasbord of product & technology options to choose from, there is very little consensus on those decisions. In fact, there isn’t even a consensus in some states on whether to budget funds for the preventative waterproofing of highway bridges, or if they should just fix them once they eventually need repairs.

Lastly, to provide a little scope & scale to this situation, there is very little similarity between the State of Delaware for instance which has less than 1,000 highway bridges to manage, and the State of Texas which has over 50,000 bridges to deal with.