Introduction1

Bridge Planning Seminar 2008

Design without a plan

What was built first stage

What good planning said was required ultimately

First Stage of Plan

“Failure to Plan is Planning to Fail”

Introduction2

Introduction

• Welcome• Purpose of Seminar

– Original goals were:• To provide a venue for bridge planners to discuss and

exchange ideas and issues impacting delivery of this specialized engineering function

• To present and discuss recent changes in AT bridge planning info, best practices and tool advancements.

– Due to the unexpected level of interest from various other bridge disciplines we have amended the seminar to also include a more generic overview of the bridge planning process as relates to current practice

Introduction3

The Plan for Today

• Housekeeping– Bathroom locations– No smoking– Breaks– Cell phones– Emergency Exits

Introduction4

Agenda

• Agenda Overview– Questions/discussion welcome– Moderator (Des) will keep things on schedule– May be a few minutes at the end of

presentation for discussions– Process for additional feedback

Introduction5

Agenda

Introduction6

Bridge Planning Mini-History

Formal bridge planning started in Mid 1950’s

• Gordon Taylor was minister 1951-1971. He was the first minister of Highways and Transport

• Was committed to developing key network highways in east/west and north/south directions supported by district roads and local roads

• 1960’s marked an era of the largest expansion of highways and bridges in the province even under constrained financial budgets

• This was only possible from the bridge perspective by optimizing bridge crossings through the bridge planning process

• Many of these structures have fully met their functional design service life and still continue to function today in spite of massive growth in traffic

Introduction7

Bridge Planning Mini-History• First DD’s were completed in 1955• The DD basic content used then is still used in current practice• Emil Sanden was first AT bridge planner and became the guiding light for

dealing with the difficult complex river crossings that were necessary to support the rapidly expanding highway network.

• Gerry Mazurek was the first Section Head of the Bridge Planning Section. Under his direction many of the current senior practitioners learned their trade.

• Up until 1995 all bridge planning for Alberta Transportation was done by the Bridge Planning Section for major crossings. Preliminary engineering of standards bridges and culvert was ultimately undertaken by regional bridge staff in the mid 1980’s with the onset of the regional transportation offices

• All formal bridge planning has been outsourced since 1995 however AT will likely undertake some limited bridge engineering including bridge planning in order to preserve in-house expertise and to effectively better communicate with practitioners with respect to technical issues.

Introduction8

DD-100

Introduction9

DD-100

Introduction10

DD-100