Bridge Information Modeling - Approach for Improving Safety and Serviceability from the Design Phase throughout the Life Cycle

This paper will discuss how building information modeling has recently become an often-used catchword. The paper shows how data management of large buildings and bridges with a variety of functional requirements and utilization demands is a challenging task. Several attempts to improve the integrity and error rate by automatic procedures have been allowed for by the fast-paced development of the information technology capabilities. This paper describes efforts currently underway to evolve the concept of bridge information modeling (BrIM) in support of the development of similar capabilities for bridge engineering. The authors are actively involved in all aspects of this effort. This effort includes definition of the physical bridge model and the enabling of a complete suite of bridge engineering applications that encompass the entire bridge life cycle from planning, design, fabrication, construction and operations/maintenance, to the seamless operation with the bridge information model. A description of the work accomplished to date is included in the paper to help illustrate the concept.