Post by Albrecht Karlusch

A pretty shocking state of affairs! According to a report of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Transport from 2020, over 10% of the nation’s total bridge area (31.1 million square meters) are considered to be in a state described as “insufficient” or “inadequate”. The report has been in the news in January 2022 as a 53-year-old bridge on the A45 near Lüdenscheid in North Rhine Westphalia has been judged unfit for future use and will be demolished. All traffic over this bridge has now been forced to stop. This led Tim-Oliver Müller, the Chief Executive of the Main Association of the German Construction Industry, Hauptverband der Deutschen Bauindustrie, to go on record, saying (1): “Germany is facing a bridge collapse. The demolition of the dilapidated bridge near Lüdenscheid is, along with Wiesbaden and Berlin-Treptow, another example of a nationwide traffic disaster. Now it is a matter of quickly pooling all possible capacities, forces and know-how in order to get on top of the situation in a coordinated and speedy manner”. "A joint approach is now needed to pool competences together across the construction industry, along with politicians. Time-consuming and bureaucratic processes risk holding up overdue work on infrastructure inspection." We are working hard to ensure that STRUCINSPECT | Infrastructure Lifecycle Hub can play an active part in providing cutting-edge services, knowledge and partnerships for a sustainable and – most of all – safer future of the infrastructures we all rely on. Allone we can do so little. Together we can do so much. #infrastructure #infrastructuresecurity #concreteconstruction #bauindustrie #digitialinspection #strucinspect (1) Source: https://hubs.la/Q0132bTg0 (2) [Image credit: Michael Kramer, Lüdenscheid Rahmedetalbrücke FFSW-0993, CC BY-SA 3.0]