Considerations for Administering Underwater Contracts

About the report:

State highway and transportation agencies are required to inspect all bridges on the public road system using guidelines established by AASHTO. Procedures for inspecting the superstructures are well known and the expertise to perform them is available within highway and transportation agencies. However, the need to inspect bridge structures in water too deep to allow evaluation from the surface presents most agencies with a difficult technical task. Many states have solved this problem by employing contractors to inspect such substructures. Since procedures for performing these inspections are not standardized, selection of the criteria to be used is left to the contractor. The objective of this study was to identify issues that should be considered when administering an underwater inspection program to be conducted by contractors. The issues include identifying and prioritizing structures for periodic inspection, establishing inspection procedures to be used, selecting a contractor, formatting the contract, and estimating contract costs.

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