Consuelo Bottamedi and Michael Thorogood have just returned from this year’s Bridges Conference organised by Bridge Design and Engineering. Here they talk about what they learnt from the event.

The opening session covered the use of advancing technology to improve the process of design, construction operation and maintenance. It highlighted that the construction industry is still effectively starting from scratch with each new project and yet there are ways to harness modular systems, digital design tools and virtual reality to be able to bring significant improvements to the entire bridge lifecycle. It was interesting to see how the use of augmented reality and full integration of the 3D model can be used on site to monitor progress. The augmented reality goggles highlight through colour coding what is on schedule or built, what is part way through construction and what, according to programme, should already be in place and hence is behind programme. At Eadon we already use 3D software and pre-designed blocks and elements to speed up the design process, so it is good to see that the wider construction industry is potentially starting to adopt the same strategy.