BrDR Reports Tool – Initial Version Coming in Release 7.3
August 20, 2021Currently, AASHTOWare Bridge Design-Rating has the capability to design and load rate many bridge types and produce various individual reports for each type. Over time, as new capabilities and features have been incorporated into the product, the software has become increasingly complex. Existing BrDR reports have been developed over the life of the product to meet the specific needs identified when new features were introduced. This approach has resulted in BrDR reports existing in various formats and scattered throughout the software, making it difficult to generate a comprehensive bridge report.
Feedback from the user community has identified the need for a BrDR comprehensive bridge report as a high priority for the product to address the reporting limitations that currently require workarounds. In the absence of comprehensive bridge reporting within BrDR, some agencies have developed their own tools to process and combine BrDR-generated reports into more comprehensive reports. Agency users require a simple tool that allows them to generate a comprehensive report within the BrDR software.
In response to this feedback, ProMiles, the Bridge Task Force, and the BrDR Reports TAG are actively researching, planning, and developing bridge schema definitions and reports mockups to support the development of a new BrDR Reports Tool. The basic premise of the BrDR Reports Tool is to provide a platform that will easily support user-generated comprehensive reports for available structure types, which will include input data, graphics, analysis results, specification check data, design review summary, and load rating summary reports. The BrDR Reports Tool will provide the user with BrDR report templates that can be readily used for report generation, as well as facilities that will allow the user to easily modify reports templates or create new reports. The first release of the BrDR Report Tool – planned for August 2022 – will deliver a limited feature set (BrDR version 7.3).