Engineers could be missing out on vital knowledge as a result of the lack of an investigation body to carry out forensic analysis of road bridge collapses in the UK.
The gap in the UK’s regulatory line-up was raised by independent bridge consultant Richard Fish during an evening lecture hosted by the Institution of Structural Engineers last week but the need for such a body has been supported by other leaders in the bridges sector.
“Every bridge collapse needs a forensic investigation to understand the causes and then we need to get that knowledge shared,” said Fish, but he believes that type of investigation is not always undertaken. He pointed to the 2016 collapse of Eastham Bridge in Tenbury Wells, which was owned by a local authority, and he said that “we still don’t have a full picture of what went wrong”.