The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has asked the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) to examine designs of major bridges to be built on national highways across the country in all new projects.
The initiative, announced on Tuesday, aims to ensure that major bridges designed with a service life of 100 years or more undergo a rigorous independent technical review before construction.
About 12 IITs, including IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Roorkee, IIT-Kharagpur and several other leading institutions have expressed their willingness to collaborate with NHAI.
The proposed framework will establish a national institutional mechanism for independent design examination of important bridge projects. Participating organizations will review structural design calculations, engineering drawings, construction methodologies, geotechnical investigations and hydraulic studies before construction begins.
The framework will be applied uniformly across projects undertaken under Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC), Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) and Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) modes, creating a consistent quality assurance mechanism across different project delivery formats, NHAI said.
The move comes after the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways directed all road-owning agencies, including state public works departments, to complete the nationwide digital inventory survey of bridges by September 30 under the Indian Bridge Management System (IBMS). The survey aims to create a comprehensive database of bridges to support scientific monitoring, maintenance and timely interventions.
