Assessing the sustainability of methods of repairing concrete bridges subjected to reinforcement corrosion

Sustainability should be at the heart of all decision making, according to the UK government. The construction industry has a key role in delivering this objective because its products impinge on many facets of human activity and the environment, and also because it consumes vast amounts of resources each year. The repair and maintenance of concrete bridges suffering from reinforcement corrosion remains a significant problem in the UK. Many methods of treatment are available but the challenge facing engineers is how to select options that are demonstrably sustainable. Because sustainability is a relatively new subject and the information required to study it quantitatively is not currently available, either because the measurements have not been made or because the data has not been compiled into an accessible form, a pseudoquantitative method has been developed which can be used to appraise sustainability. The paper describes the background to the method and discusses its application to three commonly used bridge maintenance strategies: silane application, concrete repair and cathodic protection.