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1 PDH · about 60 minutes · Course no. BR-B02 · Instructor: Michael Craig, PE
Michael Craig, PE is Senior Vice President and Southeast Director at Strinteg Corporation, leading bridge inspection and structural engineering across eight states and Puerto Rico. In 27+ years he has inspected over 4,000 structures and completed 3,000+ load ratings and 160+ load tests. He has managed repair and preservation design for complex bridges, including cable-stayed bridges. He holds PE licenses in twelve states, DC and Puerto Rico, SPRAT Level 1, and FAA Part 107 credentials.
Deck joints are where most bridges start to fail. A strip seal that tears, a compression seal that drops out of its opening, or a finger joint whose trough has filled with grit will let salt water onto bearings, beam ends, seats and pier caps that were never meant to be wet. This course covers the families of deck joints and what each one is for, how they fail, how to inspect and code them using the AASHTO element definitions, how to choose and install a replacement joint so that it lasts, and when it makes sense to eliminate the joint instead. It draws mainly on NCHRP Synthesis 319, Bridge Deck Joint Performance (Purvis, TRB 2003), a survey of 49 agencies, 35 of them state DOTs, and on the joint element and defect definitions in the Alabama DOT Bridge Element Inspection handbook (rev. 08/2014), which follows the AASHTO Manual for Bridge Element Inspection. The FHWA Bridge Preservation Guide (2018) is used for the preservation framing. Numbers in worked examples that do not come from these documents are labeled illustrative.