Critical Finds

This past week I was busy with bridge inspections in Rhode Island and worked about 90ish hours in five days. The week started off hot and muggy and was made even worse when I started finding broken welds in our first shift and then section loss holes in beam ends in my second shift.

This continued for most of the week and was really making me question the integrity of the past inspections. Both the state and federal government QC the actual inspection reports and do a great job making sure the provided information makes sense and correctly identifies the condition of the bridge but should they go one step further and field check some bridges too? Should consultants be rated on the accuracy of their field investigations?

I've also noticed that some of the past inspection reports from different consultants have started to take a "lazy" approach to writing a report. Instead of writing the conditions they observed they state that the conditions are generally the same as the past inspection. I feel that an inspection report should convey the current conditions of a bridge and not the conditions observed in the past.

Well that's enough venting for now, I meant to write about the process of critical finds but was side tracked,  I'll post pictures and bridge information for the past month or so this coming week when I have a nice and easy 40 hour week.