They don’t teach this in school. A bridge inspector rappels down the South Tower (the San Francisco side) of the Golden Gate Bridge for its 2018 inspection. (Picture courtesy of San Francisco Examiner.)
Eyes in the sky. The modern method of inspecting bridges uses drones and photogrammetry. (Picture courtesy of Bentley.)
Falling over the furniture won’t kill you. A bridge inspection using a 3D model of the bridge derived from thousands of photos taken from a drone and Microsoft’s virtual reality headset, the HoloLens.
Dan Vogen, vice president of Road & Rail Asset Management at Bentley Systems. (Picture courtesy of LinkedIn.)
A civil engineer inspecting a bridge dangling from a rope must surely be thinking, “I did not sign up for this.” Indeed, nothing in a civil engineering curriculum prepares one for the unnerving task of bridge inspection—perhaps to prevent students from switching to other safer disciplines.
Rappelling should not have to a requirement for a bridge inspector, says Dan Vogen, vice president of Road & Rail Asset Management at Bentley Systems. Bentley offers a better—and safer—approach using drones and photogrammetry.
Most departments of transportation (DoTs) are already there, according to Vogen.
The Need for Bridge Inspection
It is nearly impossible to read or hear anything about infrastructure that does not refer to it as crumbling. A bridge failure, such as what occurred in Minneapolis, Minn. (more on that…