Bridgebase

Web Design by Chrian Solutions.




	A Completely New Bridge Management System from Chrian Solutions

“Engineers participate in the activities which make the resources of nature available in a form beneficial to man and provide systems which will perform optimally and economically.”
L. M. K. Boelter, 1957

Why develop bridgebase now?

The government is committed to invest heavily over the forthcoming years in the maintenance of the UK structures stock. To enable the effective and balanced share of funding, Bridge Condition Indicators and Bridge Stock Condition Indicators have been introduced. This together with future bridge performance indicators and further natural progressions has led to the development of this database. In addition, the requirements of bridge management engineers has been incorporated within the database.

Commitment.

At Chrian Solutions we are committed to the future development of bridgebase. These will include bridge performance indicators, changes in Local Government funding and year on year bidding information will be developed allowing the monitoring of shortfalls in funding.

The system has been developed in partnership between a Bridge Maintenance Engineer, who is involved in the management of several client’s bridge assets and a MS Access developer.

What bridgebase offers.

Bridgebase provides a user friendly layout, designed under the following headings; General Structures; Superstructure; Substructure; Restrictions; Services; Records and Images; Bearings; Joints; Parapets, Prestressing; Safety Fences; Paints; Inspections; Work Required; Health & Safety; Maintenance Works; Routine Maintenance; Post Selby Assessments and General Assessments. Bridgebase provides reporting of Bridge Condition Indices (BCI) and Bridge Stock Condition Indices (BCSI). To this end, essential information on bridge elements, current restrictions, owner, location, measurements, span references, construction and material details are held.

The system considers the safety of inspectors, engineers and operatives on site when carrying out inspections and maintains a record of known risks at each structure.

Where necessary, free access to tables via the use of forms has been allowed to enable new manufacturers, materials, for instance, to be added to the drop menus, ensuring that the database develops to keep up with modern advances in material technology.

Bridgebase also offers the following:

Maintains a live database of outstanding maintenance works.
Reporting and inputting of bridge inspections in either BE11 and BCI formats.
Provides graphical statistics and reports of the condition of the current bridge stock via easy to use reporting modules.
Provides due inspections for any given period and type of inspection.
Bespoke reporting against any data held enabling custom filtering and sorting on given criteria.
Functionality of reporting for the upload and retrieval of any information or combination thereof, contained within the database.
Single point of storage, linking of photos, documents and drawings to particular structures.
Advanced search facilities.

We have developed a very comprehensive system but what if something’s missing?

We offer 3 free months of support plus fixed price support thereafter. We also offer a bespoke service to our clients, eg. if a specific report is required, we’ll write one.

What are the alternatives?

There are very few comparible systems on the market that offer similar capabilities to bridgebase. Alternative systems are likely to be considerably more expensive to both purchase and maintain. We aim to offer bridgebase at a very reasonable price.

Why not develop in-house?

Do you really have the time? The cost of employing a database developer for a thousand or so hours may not be justified against the level of funding for bridge maintenance works. Factoring in Project Management then the benefits of Bridgebase become increasingly apparent.

With version updates and bespoke reporting available, then you can have confidence that bridgebase will incorporate the latest County Surveyor’s Society recommendations.

Why MS Access?

MS Access is the most widely used relational database. Bridgebase is split into a front end and back end, offering you the capability to store the data on a standalone PC, your network or in an SQL server like Oracle. MS Access is very inexpensive and most people have some knowledge of using it.

If you would like more information, download our brouchure or contact us by email.

What’s Next?

Works Order, A database may be developed, allowing works orders to be written against specific bridge element defects. This will be dependent on the functions and will be available as a separate module.