Two-day international seminar on bridges

A two-day international seminar on “Pre Engineered and Quick Launch Bridges” was held from November 3-4 in New Delhi. The seminar was organised by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, the Railways, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and Indian Army (Corps of Engineers). The initiative for the seminar was taken by the Indian Institute of Bridge Engineers, Delhi State Centre and the Border Roads Organisation (BRO). Speaking on the occasion Dr. C P Joshi, Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways, who inaugurated the seminar, said that India needs good transport connectivity to sustain its development, which in turn needs better transportation infrastructure. He pointed out that there were more than 1 lakh bridges over the road network across the country. A major concern about building good quality bridges was the fact that many of them were in difficult terrain which have frequent landslides and poor soil conditions. Under these conditions pre-engineered and quick launch bridges would be of immense help. These building techniques could also be used to improve the majority of the existing conventional bridges. Vinay Mittal, Chairman, Railway Board said that the Railways had a plan of eliminating the highly accident prone level crossings in the country. This would require constructing thousands of over bridges. Pre-engineered bridge material would be of immense help in making these railway over bridges as well as road over and under bridges.