Aiming to build “better bridges today for a stronger transportation future,” the Federal Highway Administration's new Innovative Bridge Research and Deployment (IBRD) agenda expands upon the Innovative Bridge Research and Construction program established under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century.

As defined by Congress in the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act (SAFETEA), the focus of the IBRD program is to promote, demonstrate, evaluate, and document the application of innovative designs, materials and construction methods in building, repairing, and rehabilitating bridges and other highway structures. Says Benjamin Tang of FHWA's Office of Bridge Technology, “The intent is to promote and demonstrate innovation in its broadest sense to move market-ready technologies into conventional practice.” FHWA is now soliciting applications from states for candidate IBRD projects.

For fiscal year 2006, approximately $2.2 million in funds carried over from the IBRC program and approximately $5.1 million granted for the IBRD program will be combined into one fund for IBRD projects. Upon selection, qualified individual projects are expected to receive funding up to $250,000.

To qualify, candidate projects for funding should meet one or more of these goals:

• Development of new, cost-effective, innovative highway bridge applications
• Development of construction techniques to increase safety and reduce construction time and traffic congestion
• Development of engineering design criteria for innovative projects, materials, and structural systems for use in highway bridges and structures
• Reduction of maintenance and life-cycle costs of bridges, including the costs of new construction, replacement, or rehabilitation
• Development of highway bridges and structures that will withstand natural disasters
• Documentation and wide dissemination of objective evaluations of the performance and benefits of the innovative designs, materials, and construction methods
• Effective transfer of resulting information and technology
• Development of improved methods to detect bridge scour and economical bridge foundation designs that will withstand bridge scour

Candidate projects can be located on any public roadway. Funds can be used for preliminary engineering, repair, rehabilitation, or construction of bridges or other highway structures. Funding can also be applied to project performance evaluation, including instrumentation and performance monitoring of the structure following construction. Additional information on the IBRD program is available from Chien-Tan Chang in FHWA's Office of Bridge Technology, 202/366-6749; chien-tan.chang@fhwa.dot.gov, or online at www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge.ibrd. — from FHWA's Focus report, “FHWA Introduces Bridge Research and Deployment Program”