AASHTOWare Bridge Design and Rating™ Software
ProMiles staff has provided software development and support from its inception of the most widely used bridge rating software and design package in North America. The AASHTOWare Bridge Design and RatingTM (AASHTOWare BrDR) software package is licensed by over 40 states and agencies and numerous consultants who support them. The software continues to be enhanced by ProMiles bridge engineer/software developers to meet the needs of our nations aging bridge infrastructure and the continuing growth in size and volume of the traffic traveling our highways.
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) maintains specifications governing the design of new bridges and the ongoing analysis and evaluation of load carrying capacity for all bridges. AASHTO has contracted with ProMiles to develop, maintain, and continually enhance their AASHTOWare BrDR software to implement their specifications and provide a comprehensive bridge design and load rating software package with the goal of promoting efficiency, accuracy and consistency nationwide.
ProMiles staff has assisted AASHTO in preparing and designing the functional requirements used to design and develop the database and software that enables owners to efficiently and accurately design, analyze and load rate the majority of bridge types that make up the nation’s bridge inventory. The solid architecture developed by ProMiles staff has enabled a data preservation capability that has enabled state agencies to initially define bridge models and use them for decades-long maintenance and repeated load rating. Through the direction of AASHTO and the licensing state agencies, ProMiles continues to enhance the software to improve the software usability and to provide an ever-increasing list of bridge types that can be load rated and maintained. To date, over 100,000 of the 500,000+ bridges in the National Bridge Inventory (NBI) have been modeled in BrDR. This list grows daily as more AASHTOWare licensees move to modeling their bridges in AASHTOWare BrDR.
AASHTOWare Bridge Design and Rating™ is architected in a highly modular way using object-oriented programming methods. The software recently underwent an extensive modernization that included upgrading the more that 800+ windows included in the user interface. This update also provides the foundation for moving the software to a cloud-based platform.
This modular architecture makes it possible for commercial software packages, such as permit routing systems, to the access the system’s data and functionality. The system includes a database system that allows the users to use one of several commercially available database software products. The descriptions of each bridge defined in BrDR are independent of analysis packages and specifications. This data independence promotes long term data reliability a requires minimum data maintenance on the part of the licensing agency. Data is migrated from one version to the next so that the bridge owner can concentrate on simply updating the bridge deterioration and heavier vehicular loads. Updates to enhanced analysis procedures and the latest AASHTO specification updates are incorporated automatically with each new version.
To date, over 40 states and agencies license the BrDR software. Many of those agencies have input their entire bridge inventories, with the number growing daily.
Data preservation/daily use
The AASHTOWare Bridge Design and Rating™ software not only provides a versatile tool to analyze and load rate nearly all bridge structure types, but permits the preservation of the bridge description in a comprehensive, relational database. This preservation has allowed the state DOT’s the ability to define a bridge once and rate that bridge for the decades-long life of the structure. This allows bridge owners to continually evaluate their bridge inventory for the increasingly heavier traffic loads.
State Engineer Testimonials
“…99% of our bridges are capable of being analyzed in the BrDR software. AASHTO is very responsive in listening to the owners needs when enhancing the software.”
-Mike Johnson, Idaho Transportation Department, Division Administrator of Engineering Services, AASHTOWare Task Force Member
“I’ve worked on BrD for over 30 years and BrD has been a go-to tool. You can do a lot of ‘What-if’ scenarios by being able to use multiple engines…and easily run different versions of the AASHTO Bridge Specificiations.”
-Jeff Ruby, Kansas DOT, Bridge Design Squad Engineer, AASHTOWare Task Force member
“Our goal initially was to create a database of everything you needed to do a rating of a bridge. BrDR eventually crew to include an analysis engine and continually updated specifications. To date, over 100,000 of the 500,000+ National Bridge Inventory Bridges (NBI) have been input into BrDR.”
-Todd Thompson, South Dakota DOT, Bridge Maintenance Engineer, AASHTOWare BrDR Task Force Chair
19 State Departments of Transportation + Manitoba
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40 State Departments of Transportation + District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Manitoba & FHWA
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For more information please contact:
Herman Lee, P.E.
Project Manager
herman@promiles.com
Geoffrey Trees
Technical Manager
geoffrey@promiles.com
or visit the AASHTOWare BrDR Website: https://www.aashtowarebridge.com/bridge-rating-and-design/
