• Maryland State Highway Administration (MDSHA) is responsible for over 17,178 lane miles of roads and ramps and more than 2,500 state-maintained bridges 
• MDSHA maintains the state’s numbered, non-tolled roads and continues to deliver transportation projects and solutions to improve Maryland’s roads and bridges 
• AssetWise will help MDSHA increase the accuracy of information and reduce labor hours and maintenance costs for infrastructure assets 
• With improved data, the solution is anticipated to reduce wear and tear on roads, bridges, and pavement, as well as enhance infrastructure preservation  

Project Overview 

Maryland State Highway Administration (MDSHA) is responsible for more than 17,178 lane miles of roads and ramps and more than 2,500 state-maintained bridges, delivering transportation projects and solutions to improve Maryland’s roads and bridges. MDSHA already tracked information about road and bridge structural assets to make operational decisions for permitting oversized and overweight loads. To enhance these existing capabilities, MDSHA had the vision to develop a portal to centralize relevant infrastructure performance, construction data, and bridge strike events. The goal is to empower decision support for maintenance, inspection, finance, pavement, bridge ratings, clearance, and construction information. The portal would need to provide connectivity to multiple asset management products, enabling bridge and pavement engineers and other disciplines, to quickly and securely gain access to all structural information and bridge data from federated data sources in one portal.   

Challenge 

To increase capabilities provided by the existing Maryland One system, MDSHA needed to bring together multiple data sources from maintenance, inspection, pavement, bridge ratings, clearance information, construction, and more, which could be accessed and shared with stakeholders and allied partners. The information required to improve decision support and increase productivity existed within multiple unconnected databases, necessitating manual effort to turn data into information. The lack of a centralized interface to analyze the disparate information made it challenging and time consuming. MDSHA needed to have this information in one central secure location for easy access thereby reducing the time required to improve daily operational decisions.  

Breakthrough 

MDSHA recognized they could build a solution with Bentley’s AssetWise software to create the Violation Tracking and Infrastructure Insight Portal. The solution includes Bentley’s Asset Reliability Inspections, SUPERLOAD, and LARS Bridge. The new portal allows them to quickly and effectively analyze and report across previously unmapped dimensions and relationships between Permitting Operations and Infrastructure Performance. SUPERLOAD Bridge Analysis performs bridge analysis for the specific permit vehicle configuration over each specific structure, while SUPERLOAD Route Data Miner helps improve the management of route data.  

This solution will aggregate data like asset inspections, maintenance records, safety performance, permitting operations and hauler enforcement tracking, as well as enhance agency coordination and improve operational efficiency. Having up-to-date infrastructure performance and analysis data, alongside permit data and hauler operator violation data, and bridge maintenance and pavement performance data will quickly unlock new dimensions of analysis. Being able to track, analyze, and identify the potential relationship between hauler behavior and infrastructure performance can mitigate risk and enhance infrastructure preservation.   

“Violation Tracking and Infrastructure Insight Portal will help MDSHA increase the timeliness of information, saving time and money and reducing processing time,” said Tina Sanders, technical support manager at MDSHA. “Having federated data accessible in one portal presented in maps and reports provides insights into traffic volumes, maintenance information, bridge performance, accident patterns, permit violation data, and construction data. It will empower the stakeholders to improve decisions with broader information, while also increasing communication within MDSHA, with our jurisdictional partners and our allied agencies in other states. We anticipate this portal will help us quickly respond to requests from agency stakeholders and ultimately reduce risk and enhance the safety of the traveling public.” 

Outcome 

The portal will securely provide MDSHA infrastructure stakeholders with federated information derived from historically disconnected systems. Users of the portal will have access to new information to improve all manner of decision support. This includes assistance in determining the optimal routes for oversized and overweight loads through the State of Maryland, City of Baltimore, and into border states. Having this information in one location will save time and money for MDSHA and their allied partners, as well as improve decision-making. The portal will also provide access to departments that previously had not been able to access the data. 

Through this solution, MDSHA anticipates increasing operational efficiency by reducing permit processing time for the state and allied agencies, thereby saving the customers time and money. In addition, MDSHA anticipates optimizing permitting operations, increasing voluntary hauler compliance, law enforcement coordination, and timely access to key information with a goal of enhancing infrastructure preservation. The solution will enable more targeted and proactive enforcement based on violation patterns. 

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