How can a Bridge Engineer contribute to a sustainable infrastructure?

As Bridge Engineers we have a significant leverage to influence our built environment, but all too often we choose to stay with established solutions instead of striving for new and better alternatives. When designing for sustainability, we should have the following aspects in mind:

• Environmental impact of our design over its whole life, locally and globally.

• The possibility for our structures to grow with increased traffic – but also to shrink where population is on decline.

• Plan for environmental friendly means of transport and make their use more comfortable, i.e. wide bike lanes, widening for light rail addition.

• Minimize traffic obstruction during construction.

• Design for a long service life.

• Design for dismantling and re-use of structural parts.

This presentation will show examples where a sustainable design could be achieved and explains possibilities how the engineer can convince the client to agree on better than the traditional solutions.