French to help overcome Flaws in Jeddah’s Flyovers

Sunday, 06 January 2008
By Adel Al-Malki

JEDDAH - Jeddah Municipality is adopting tapping into French expertise to improve its efficiency and accuracy in bridge inspections and maintenance. French experts at a workshop held here over the past three days demonstrated to municipality's technical staff an inspection-and-monitoring software program that is the first of its kind.

The program, called Scanprint, was developed by Advitam, a division of French construction giant The Vinci Group.

Today, most countries in North America, Asia, and Europe use Scanprint to inspect their flyovers and bridges.

The program, by accurately determining the status of a bridge or flyover, helps in preventive maintenance so as to avoid a fault or collapse. It allows for quick decision-making on whether to change a bridge's parts also facilitates accurate monitoring of work on it. In addition, it helps in precisely determining maintenance schedules and costs.

The title of the workshop was "The system of development and maintenance bridges."
The workshop was held to develop the municipality's technical cadres overseeing new projects in the city.

"Through this workshop, the municipality seeks to keep pace with modern techniques to improve supervision of its projects," said Ahmad Ba-Nafe'e, director of Projects Management.

The municipality had recently run into a technical problem that saw construction work suspended at the finishing stages of a major flyover network across Palestine Road at the intersection of King Fahd Road (Sitteen Street).

"The new system will help in surveying flaws of bridges and allow for building a database on the status of all bridges," Ba-Nafe'e said.