Rehabilitation and repair of transportation structures, such as bridges and elevated guide ways, pose significant costs to the structure owners due to the effort needed to assess, re-design and restore the existing structure to its intended functionality. Due to the challenges posed by aging infrastructure, government entities such as Municipalities, and Provincial Transportation Ministries, are leaning towards a Public-Private-Partnership (P3) model for infrastructure projects. P3 projects are bid to be design-build-maintain-finance by the concessionaires and the financial success of P3 infrastructure projects depends on the project performance over its entire service life. Therefore, for the private entity represented by the concessionaire, a successful project should not only meet the budget, schedule and contractual requirements, but also minimize the maintenance costs over its service life. Decisions made during the planning and construction stages of the project will have significant implications throughout the project service life and affect the overall financial performance and ultimate success of the project. Therefore, it is important to consider the durability performance of transportation structures, in addition to other project considerations.
This paper provides the examples of durability considerations that were developed during the P3 projects for transportation structures in the past decade in Western Canada, which are, Canada Line Project, & Port-Mann Highway Projects in the province of British Columbia, and Northeast Anthony Henday Project & Valley Line East LRT Phase 1 Project in the province of Alberta. Innovative solutions in the structural design, construction methods, and project quality control to minimize the deficiencies that affect durability and maintenance costs are presented. These examples provide the best practices to address the following aspects of bridge structures:
· Introduce minimum requirements for asset management (inspection intervals, and minimum inspection requirements) and explain how inspection data should be used to manage a structure.
· Include guidance on what an inspection report should include
· State replaceable components and the target service life of replaceable components