**7. Testing and monitoring**

To ensure the success of all methods implemented to avoid bridge degradation, a testing and monitoring plan must be established as part of the maintenance procedure. The cost of maintenance plan should be incorporated on the bridge's budget [25].

As a first step, visual review of the bridge structural elements should be performed in a scheduled given time. The girders, piers, connections, cables, deck and materials used must show no damage, such as cracks, corrosion, visible deformations or any variable that indicates a problem. Monitoring techniques are used as a way to measures the loading cycles, cracks or corrosion and prevent any damage on the bridge.

For corrosion mitigation and prevention, the maintenance process must have a plan taking into account the next features:


If there is no budget on review and monitoring procedures, maintenance will not be a preventive action and becomes corrective, which means higher repair costs and partial or total closure of the bridge.

maintenance plan is not developed during the design process, and therefore, is not

proper maintenance plan is developed during the design process.

Maintenance plan is always required for a long term useful life of any structure, because degradation process is present all the time. There are issues to be solved if damage due environmental factor is present and maintenance plan was not developed during design process, including budget, repairmen high cost of damaged elements and closure of the bridge. As a conclusion, these issued can be avoided if

For a successful bridge development, a complete plan should be considered in the entire design process, including the bridge's proposal, design process, construction methods and maintenance program. All variables together will result as a long-

Arturo Gonzalez, Michael Schorr\*, Benjamin Valdez and Alejandro Mungaray

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, Mexicali, Mexico

\*Address all correspondence to: mschorr2000@yahoo.com

provided the original work is properly cited.

implemented by the time required.

*Bridges: Structures and Materials, Ancient and Modern DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90718*

term useful life for any structure.

**Author details**

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