Proceedings of the 2007 Mid-Continent Transportation Research Symposium, Ames, Iowa, August 2007. © 2007 by Iowa State University. The contents of this paper reflect the views of the author(s), who are responsible for the facts and accuracy of the information presented herein. Development of a Real-Time Productivity Measurement System for Bridge Replacement Seonghoon Kim Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering University of Kansas 1530 W. 15th Street, 2160 Learned Hall Lawrence, KS 66045 [email protected] Yong Bai Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering University of Kansas 1530 W. 15th Street, 2150 Learned Hall Lawrence, KS 66045 [email protected] ABSTRACT Increased attention has been paid to the highway bridges, one of the critical components of the nation’s transportation network, since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Hurricane Katrina, and the tsunami in South Asia. To enhance the capability of rapid bridge replacement after extreme events, a real-time productivity measurement system has been developed. The developed system has the potential to enhance the capability of rapid bridge replacement by providing more accurate onsite productivity information. Using the information, a more reliable construction schedule could be developed to support the rapid bridge replacement operations. To validate the system, field experiments were conducted at U.S. Highway 36 near Washington, Kansas. This paper presents the major components of the developed system, the framework of the system, and the preliminary field experiment results. Key words: bridge—construction—productivity—replacementKim, Bai 2 INTRODUCTION The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and subsequent potential threats to U.S. transportation systems, have presented an urgent need to develop emergency management plans to quickly react to the possible consequences of an extreme event. These events include terrorist attacks as well as man-made and natural disasters, such as explosions, fires, floods, and earthquakes. Highway bridges, as a critical component of the nation’s transportation network, have received closer attention from government agencies. The reasons that bridges are the key element of the nation’s transportation system are as follows (Barker and Puckett 1997): 1. A bridge controls the capacity of the system. 2. A bridge is the highest cost per mile of the system. 3. If a bridge fails, the system fails. To respond to an extreme event, a developed emergency management plan must include four related components (Parsons Brinckerhoff 2002): 1. Mitigation: Steps taken in advance to reduce the potential loss from an extreme event. 2. Preparedness: Steps taken in advance to facilitate response and recovery after an extreme event. 3. Response: Steps taken during or immediately after an extreme event to save lives and property. 4. Recovery: Steps taken to restore the affected areas to their normal status. Since September 11, 2001, several research projects have been conducted to identify the infrastructure’s vulnerabilities and to help government agencies develop or update the emergency management plans with a focus on mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) recognized the need to address the nation’s vulnerability assessment requirements for highway transportation and sponsored the development of a guide for critical asset identification and protection (SAIC 2002). The guideline’s authors divided vulnerabilities in highway transportation into the following three general categories: 1. The physical facilities themselves (e.g., bridges, tunnels, roadways, and interchanges). 2. The vehicles operating on the system. 3. The information infrastructure that monitors and manages the flow of goods, vehicles, and people on the highway system. This guide provides a starting point to identify and mitigate the vulnerability of and consequences to highway transportation assets from terrorist threats or attacks. A companion document, A Guide to Updating Highway Emergency Response Plans for Terrorist Incidents, also funded by AASHTO and developed in parallel with the previous guide, assists government agencies in preparing and executing a coordinated emergency response to terrorist threats or attacks to the highway transportation system (Parsons Brinckerhoff 2002). Besides these two guides, AASHTO and the Federal Highway Administration sponsored other research projects on bridge and transportation security. One project was titled Design of Highway Bridges for Extreme Events, which was supervised by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP). The objective of this research was to develop a design procedure for application of extreme event loads and combination loading to highway bridges (Ghosn et al. 2003). Another project was titled Surface Transportation Security, which was also supervised by the NCHRP. Results of this project were released in NCHRP Report 525 (2004). State departments of transportation (DOTs) also initiated efforts to investigate and develop methods to lessen the impact of terrorist attacks and other extreme events on their transportation infrastructure. TwoKim, Bai 3 recent research projects concentrated on bridges. One project was entitled Design of Bridges for Security and was intended to determine how bridges may be economically designed for security (Burkett et al. 2004). The other project was entitled Rapid Bridge Replacement Techniques and was intended to identify optimal bridge replacement and repair techniques (Bai and Burkett 2006). Bridge replacement techniques were to include both temporary and permanent replacement. Results of previous research indicate that there is an urgent need to address the recovery component in the bridge emergency management plans. Specifically, one of the areas that must be improved in the recovery is to develop innovative technologies that could be used to produce an accurate and reliable construction schedule to support rapid replacement operations. For example, the estimated time for the replacement of the I-40 Webbers Falls Bridge started at 12 months, then went down to 6 months, and finished in a little over 2 months. Although the replacement was finished ahead of the original schedule, the process clearly indicated that an accurate and reliable schedule was unable to