Bridge Management

For 30 years, AASHTOWare Bridge Management (BrM) has been widely used as the primary bridge management software for transportation agencies across the United States and internationally. The software is owned and maintained by AASHTO, a nonprofit, nonpartisan association representing highway and transportation departments in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

The BrM software is a key product in the AASHTOWare software suite and has seen dramatic improvements since its initial release by Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in 1990. As with all products in the AASHTOWare software suite, BrM is an enterprise software solution designed by transportation professionals for transportation professionals.

NOTE: A patch, BrM 6.7.1, has been released that includes Dashboard Enhancements, Improved API Security, and Bug Fixes. Read more.

The latest release of the web-based software, BrM 6.7, now includes:

  • NBI Conversion Profiles – This enhancement was the top-voted user priority for BrM since the 2021 BrMUG. This enhancement separates each bridge component (deck, superstructure, substructure, and culvert) into its own profile, providing the user with more flexibility and control.
  • Ancillary Assets Module – This module enables agencies to create certain transportation infrastructure asset types and define fields and elements necessary to conduct inspections as well as collect inspection data and multimedia. It provides various other enhancements including permissions, updates to the mapping widget for ancillary assets, adding previous comment control, editing the landing page, and much more. It is noted that the BrM SuperSite license support is limited to bridges, tunnels, dams, and structural roadway appurtenances and does not cover other asset types (e.g., office buildings, pavement, etc.).
  • Visual Dashboard Editor (VDE) – This tool allows agencies to create dashboards by querying the BrM database and modifying the output to their needs. This provides visual and summary information for all sorts of uses. Additionally, the dashboard responds with counts from the queries and allows the user to open the results in the table below. The 6.7 release comes with an out-of-the-box, default dashboard that is shown below. The Task Force plans to host a webinar covering the setup, querying, and various uses of the dashboard enhancements added in BrM 6.7.
  • Request for Action (RFA) – Added the Ancillaries > Sign Request for Action task, as well as an RFA landing page to the Admin > General Config > Manage Asset Types task, and added a Request for Action as a context in subfolders in Admin > General Config > Multimedia.
  • BrM Cookie Setting Updates – BrM 6.7 now allows users to log into more than one instance of BrM at a time.
  • Configurable Landing Page – Added the ability for a user to configure its landing page by using a selector on the user profile page.
  • Element Specification – Added a checkbox to allow for setting elements as active/inactive and added a modeling-only checkbox to all for an element to be part of deterioration modeling but prevent it from being selectable in the Element Condition grid.  
  • Bulk Utility Task – BrM 6.7 adds the Analysis > Bulk Utility task to calculate and view the utility value and health index of selected bridges based on a selected weight profile. This was on the user group’s priority list as well.
  • Various Bug Fixes and Improvements – The full list is supplied with the release notes.

View the full release notes here.

Email brm@mayvue.com if you have questions about BrM 6.6.

Top 5 Things BrM Users Should Know

  1. BrM works off the shelf. Import your NBI/NBE files and go.
  2. Invest the time in setting up BrM correctly. Your agency will have meaningful and useful projects if time and resources are dedicated to setting up BrM properly.
  3. Support and training. Mayvue, the product’s consulting agency, can provide training courses, setup, and configuration of BrM, and assist in the installation of BrM.
  4. Validate often. Be sure to run validation on subsets of bridges throughout the year so that issues can be addressed before the submittal season.
  5. Help is always available! With a comprehensive user guide, technical manual, YouTube Channel, active user community, and growing knowledge base of articles, the answer is always just a click away.

View the Frequently Asked Questions section for more.

BrM Management and Oversight

AASHTO’s efforts are headed by a Task Force comprised of state bridge engineering and information technology professionals. This Task Force, partnered with Mayvue, manages the product on behalf of AASHTO and the user community in order to ensure that the continued development, maintenance, and support of the software meets the needs and requirements of state and local agencies, governmental organizations, and private consultants.

The objectives of the Task Force include:

  • Strategic planning for the continuous evolution of the product
  • Soliciting and facilitating the collection of feedback from the user community
  • Grooming and incorporating the user community’s feedback into product features
  • Creating yearly operating plans that identify specific deliverables in a given year
  • Overseeing the product development life cycle for feature releases
  • Ongoing collaboration with Mayvue across all phases of the product’s lifecycle

Active User Community

The continued success of the BrM product can be largely contributed to the ongoing involvement of its active user community. Licensed members of the BrM product participate in different committees that ensure the product remains innovative and high quality.

Annual User Group Meeting

AASHTO hosts an annual user group (BrMUG) meeting with the purpose of promoting the software through presentations, training sessions, and forums. Members represent their respective agencies by guiding and supporting the AASHTOWare BrM product. Member feedback is collected, organized, and provided back to the community enabling them to vote on future enhancements, ultimately steering the continued growth and development of the product. Visit the User Group page for more information.