A critique of the “NCHRP Synthesis 397 Bridge Management...

During the period after the collapse of the I-35W BRIDGE in Minnesota, the National Cooperative Highway Reset Program(NCHRP) published a synthesis about bridge management system and decision making that need to be applied across the country. The collapse has awakened public and private agencies in charge so that they begun a new era characterized by paying much attention on their career. A synthesis made by The National Cooperative Highway Reset Program (NCHRP) and lead by Markow and Hyman showed programs and system that need to be put in place in order to reshape bridges management for the sake of program performance. The point at issue is to see why it were important to implement those programs and also analyze its content in order to†¦show more content†¦Engineers need to make sure that skills and attitudes listed above are part of their work. For example, according to the report, costly researches on bridge condition are undertaken whenever necessary but sometimes the ir result are overlooked and never given their due consideration. Unfortunately, the report failed to show clearly attitudes engineers need to develop in order to make their work successful and avoid failures. This analysis was professionally powerful because it would help engineers to recognize and understand systematic errors that can lead to failures. Understanding what engineering is and what engineering can do is to know how failures can happen (Petroski). Among the main causes of this collapse was the lack of accurate inspection because the investigation conducted before were claiming that the bridge was still in good shape as shown by the National transportation Board (NTSB). This shows that in investigating causes of failure and identifying the parties responsible, engineers will not only check strength and stability of their design but also try to investigate business and practices that may be hidden behind the failure. The report put emphasize on preventing failures but never shows how to get the best out of failures because it did not take into consideration the previous failures. And this would make the report a bit poor. According