The role of maintenance plans on serviceability and life extension of existing bridges

A selection of bridges has been investigated to suggest the key features to beassessed during their aging. The main idea is to highlight the relevance of themaintenance plans in the through-life management of the structure. Accurate rules might provide a basis for enhancing the structure performance and evaluating whether the risk associated with its use is limited to acceptable thresholds. The paper analyses also the classification procedures in use, highlighting the main issues that could facilitate a more aware evaluation of the synthetic indicators for these structures. Furthermore, it aims at describing the main deficiencies recurrently encountered during the surveys on the selected bridges. The main goal is to provide bridge owners and managers with more streamlined methods and tools that can be used in the existing bridge ranking procedures to meet the latest national requirements for maintenance management.