Structure Maintenance and Investigations

Maintaining California's Bridges Caltrans bridge inspectors are responsible for maintaining the safety and integrity of over 26,000 bridges owned by the State of California and California's local government agencies.

Structure Maintenance and Investigations is responsible for managing the department's transportation structures. This includes performing bridge inspections in accordance with federal regulations on over 13,300 State Highway bridges and approximately 13,400 bridges owned by local government agencies, making structure work repair recommendations, determining the safe load capacity of all bridges, reviewing and approving encroachment permits and air space lease proposals involving structures, delivering plans, specifications and estimates for bridge maintenance on projects, and coordinating the protective coating work on over 800 state highway steel bridges.

Structure Maintenance and Investigations is Organized into Six Offices:

Office of Structure Investigations - North
The Office of Structure Investigations - North is located in Sacramento and is responsible for the investigation, evaluation, work recommendations and documentation of all city, county, state, and federal bridges in the following counties:

Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Contra Costa, Del Norte, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Humboldt, Kern (portions), Kings, Lake, Lassen, Madera, Marin, Mariposa, Mendocino, Merced, Modoc, Monterey, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, San Benito, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Tulare, Tuolumne, Yolo, Yuba

Office of Structure Investigations - South
The Office of Structure Investigations - South is located in Los Angeles and is responsible for the investigation, evaluation, work recommendations and documentation of all city, county, state, and federal bridges in the following counties:

Imperial, Inyo, Kern (portions), Los Angeles, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Ventura

Office of Structural Design and Analysis
The Office of Structural Design and Analysis performs a variety of analysis and design functions to ensure the safety of the traveling public and to maintain the structural integrity and prolong the service life of the state's bridges. This work is performed by three design offices (Design North, Design South, Toll Design), the Bridge Load Rating Office and the Permits Office.

Office of Bridge Asset Management

The Office of Bridge Asset Management provides statewide management for Major Maintenance program for bridges (HM3), the bridge objectives covered under the State Highway Operation and Protection Program (SHOPP), and the Paint Program. The other primary function of Bridge Asset Management is to maintain, update, and disseminate data and information pertaining to both state-owned and locally owned bridges throughout the state.

Office of Specialty Inspections
The Office of Specialty Inspections has four specific areas of concentration:

• The Fracture Critical unit conducts fracture critical inspections and provides technical advice on the maintenance, inspection, analysis and rehabilitation of all types of fracture critical and fatigue prone bridge structures.
• The Hydraulics unit (State Scour and Local Scour) is charged with ensuring that the foundations of bridges over waterways have not been undermined by scouring and perform scour evaluations of all state and local bridges.
• The Overhead Sign Structure (OHSS) unit is responsible for ensuring the structural safety of approximately 18,000 state owned overhead sign structures sprinkled across all 12 Caltrans Districts.
• The Underwater Investigations (UWI) unit develops and maintains the inventory of bridges requiring underwater investigations, schedules and performs the investigations, and recruits and trains the divers who perform them.

Office of Structure Investigations - Toll Bridges
The Office of Structure Investigation - Toll Bridges is located in Oakland and is responsible for the investigation, evaluation, work recommendations, repair, design and documentation of all major toll crossings (except the Golden Gate Bridge)and toll plaza bridges in the bay area.