AASHTO Journal, 23 October 2015
The software unit of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials is launching a major modernization project to develop the next generation of its AASHTOWare “Bridge Design and Rating System” or BrDR.
That $14.8 million effort will run from second-quarter 2016 through 2020, and be the first major redesign of that BrDR software suite in 20 years.
It is a cooperative software development project under which participating states pool financial resources to fund it. Last month, AASHTOWare sent state departments of transportation a solicitation seeking at least 20 to join the effort, and asked DOTs to respond with commitments by Dec. 15.
Those helping fund the effort will also be eligible to nominate subject-matter experts to serve on a project advisory group.
The program qualifies for states to use money from their annual federal highway research allocations to help pay for it, although state-generated funds may be used as well when contributing to the cooperative project.
The AASHTOWare Bridge Task Force – whose products are used throughout the United States by agencies and private contractors to guide their design and construction projects – said this modernization of the bridge software “will result in the BrDR system being the ultimate bridge analysis and design software in use by most state agencies and their consultants.”
The framework for the current version of this unit’s BrDR software was initially developed in the mid-1990s and released in 1999. This new project “will significantly upgrade the core technology to a modern software architecture that better utilizes current and future hardware and the latest software development technologies,” said Judy Skeen, AASHTOWare’s bridge products manager.
Some of the modernization’s goals will be to produce software that improves reporting capabilities, cuts maintenance costs and time needed to implement new features, and simplifies the interface to make it easier for beginners to use without losing the software’s robustness for advanced users.
The project schedule calls for contractor Michael Baker Intl. to begin a two-year software development and testing phase next spring.
That would lead in 2018 to the first new software release, this one focused on modernizing the AASHTO analysis engine while using the existing user interface. A year later, in 2019, a second software release will introduce the modernized interface and domain along with a modernized AASHTO engine.
Finally, a 2020 software release will finish the project by including many enhancements requested by users over the past decade, but which could not be funded by the software’s ongoing licensing revenue.
Readers can direct questions about the project solicitation or this AASHTOWare program to Skeen by email, email hidden; JavaScript is required, or by phone at 512-963-1465.
