Structures Maintenance Plan

9.1  Resilience is defined by the Cabinet Office as the 'ability of the community, services, area or infrastructure to detect, prevent, and, if necessary to withstand, handle and recover from disruptive challenges'.

9.2  For highway assets this can be achieved through the identification of key areas of the network which receive priority through maintenance and other measures in order to maintain economic activity and access to key services during disruptive events. As such resilience is based around an integrated approach covering all highway infrastructure assets rather than individual elements.

9.3  For structures, the resilience of the network is achieved through the use of regular programmed inspections to identify the potential for and protect against structural failure.

9.4  Structural failure can result in network disruption with significant repair costs, damage to third party property and more importantly the potential loss of human life.

9.5  Whilst bridges and other highway structures rarely experience complete collapse during non-extreme events, when such collapses do occur the consequences can be catastrophic. The review of failures can assist in the resilience of structures by applying lessons learned to the preservation of existing structures which will help prevent future failures.