摘要: |
Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) techniques have a great potential to minimize the traffic disruptions during the bridge repairs/replacements, promote traffic and worker safety, and also improve the overall quality of the built bridges. Despite the major advances in design and construction of ABC techniques, transportation agencies are still hesitant about using ABC techniques majorly due to perceived risks during construction and higher initial costs. Furthermore, the current decision process used to prioritize the candidate bridges for this type of construction techniques are solely based on the annual daily average traffic (AADT) and/ or the experience of the decision makers.
Extensive research has been conducted to ensure the structural integrity of the bridges using ABC. This is in addition to the developments in advancing the construction techniques to increase constructability and decreasing the time. However, to date, the overwhelming majority of the research has been in the structures field with little, if any, research devoted to constructability. Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP)2 and Transportation Research Board (TRB) research has proven that projects with a high degree of constructability are both faster and safer to build, which reinforces the aim of ABC. Dr. Gransberg was a member of the national task force that developed and published the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) ABC manual. Based on his experience, a decision tool for ABC project selection is needed that accounts for project-specific constructability of viable ABC design alternatives. Additionally, an enterprise-level decision model is required to provide the necessary justifications for the use of ABC techniques on an enterprise/network basis rather than project basis. This project aims to develop a decision-making algorithm that brings together the project-level decision process that involves the choice of optimized construction techniques together with the enterprise-level process that implements regional prioritization schemes considering indirect costs (such as drivers� delay, economic impact, opportunity losses, economic growth, and social investments) in addition to the direct costs associated with implementation of the ABC techniques. |