NTSB makes safety recommendations to FHA.
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Press Release Summary:
According to NTSB, Federal Highway Administration should develop and implement bridge design quality assurance/quality control program, to be used by States and other bridge owners, that includes procedures to detect and correct bridge design errors before design plans are made final. Additionally, bridge owners should be required to assess truss bridges in their inventories to identify locations where visual inspections may not detect gusset plate corrosion.
Original Press Release:
NTSB Safety Recommendations H-08-17 through -19
The National Transportation Safety Board makes the following recommendations to the Federal Highway Administration:
Develop and implement, in conjunction with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, a bridge design quality assurance/quality control program, to be used by the States and other bridge owners, that includes procedures to detect and correct bridge design errors before the design plans are made final; and, at a minimum, provides a means for verifying that the appropriate design calculations have been performed, that the calculations are accurate, and that the specifications for the load-carrying members are adequate with regard to the expected service loads of the structure. (H-08-17)
Require that bridge owners assess the truss bridges in their inventories to identify locations where visual inspections may not detect gusset plate corrosion and where, therefore, appropriate nondestructive evaluation technologies should be used to assess gusset plate condition. (H-08-18)
Modify the approved bridge inspector training as follows:
(1) update the National Highway Institute training courses to address inspection techniques and conditions specific to gusset plates, emphasizing issues associated with gusset plate distortion as well as the use of nondestructive evaluation at locations where visual inspections may be inadequate to assess and quantify such conditions as section loss due to corrosion; and, (2) at a minimum, include revisions to reference material, such as the Bridge Inspector's Reference Manual, and address any newly developed gusset plate condition ratings in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials commonly recognized (CoRe) structural elements. (H-08-19)
http://ntsb.gov/recs/letters/2008/H08_17_19.pdf
The complete recommendation letter is available on the Web at the URL indicated above. The letter is in the Portable Document Format (PDF) and can be read using the Acrobat Reader 5.0 or later from Adobe (http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html).
