Innovative procurement resulting in a novel FRP bridge

Paper in proceeding, 2014

The Swedish Transport Administration (STA) has undertaken a program to increase the productivity and to promote innovations in the Swedish infrastructure market. To date, there is no vehicular bridge with structural components of fibre reinforced composites (FRP) in Sweden. Hence, a pilot project of building the first FRP road bridge in Sweden has derived from the program, in which innovations are promoted both in terms of procurement and in terms of the use of structural material and technical solutions. An innovative procurement method, Competitive Dialogue, will be used in the tendering process in order to facilitate the development, design and construction of the most competitive FRP solution. To support the pilot FRP bridge project, STA has initiated a R&D project at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg that will set up the framework for the FRP bridge. The overall aim of the R&D project is to ensure that the client is provided with significant technical knowledge throughout the whole process until the bridge is finally built. The pilot FRP bridge project will result in many valuable experiences and gained knowledge about technical features of novel FRP structures as well as from implementing the innovative procurement method Competitive Dialogue. The technical evaluation of the pilot project will lay the foundation for the development of a Swedish code for FRP bridges.