Cost-Effective

By avoiding expensive replacement, preservation techniques save owners millions by identifying, addressing, and preventing corrosion problems.

• Emergency repairs are much more expensive than proactive preservation.
• For the cost of replacing one bridge, owners can preserve five.
• Indirect costs of replacement, such as traffic closings/delays and resulting lost productivity, are estimated to be 10 times that of direct corrosion costs.

Environmentally Beneficial

By providing alternatives to large-scale replacement projects, in-depth evaluation and preservation techniques are instrumental in reducing carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions.

• 2.35 billion tons of cement are produced per year – 1 cubic meter of concrete per person.
• Cement production accounts for 5-10% of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions.
• A 10% carbon dioxide reduction in cement processes would accomplish one-fifth of the Kyoto Protocol’s Carbon Dioxide reduction goal – 5.2%

Crucial to Enabling Service Life Goals

By providing owners with vital information and quality services, in-depth evaluation equips owners to meet service life extension goals.

• Only repair what is necessary
• Accurately measure remaining life and time-to-failure
• Create comprehensive plans to save significant long-term costs and realize full service life

Sources:

¹http://events.nace.org/publicaffairs/images_cocorr/ccsupp.pdf
²http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/concrete.html