The Chilean railway network is managed by the Chilean State Railways (EFE), which has implemented an infrastructure improvement policy since 2012 aiming at minimizing operating-inherent risks and improving load capacities, particularly in the case of bridges. The infrastructure was created in the first decades of the 20th century and involved English and German engineers. Over 100 years after their construction, the structures require now severe interventions both for maintenance purposes and to improve their load capacities. Bridges are divided into bridges with a span over 11 m (328 bridges), minor bridges and cross-sectional drainage works.

Ines Ingenieros was commissioned to develop a Maintenance Plan for major bridges in 2016 by EFE. The aim was to avoid repeating severe and traumatic operations included in the Master Plan by implementing an effective preventive maintenance plan. In the summer of 2017, the board of directors of EFE approved the Master Plan drafted in agreement with the company’s technical experts. It was based on two pillars: periodic inspections and ordinary and extraordinary maintenance works. This decision implied the creation of a Bridge Headquarters, under the authority of the Engineering and Infrastructure Department, composed of 10 experts that carried out specific operations such as periodic inspections, detection of anomalies and proposal of intervention operations.

In 2017, the implementation of a computer tool for the management of all information generated within the Maintenance Plan through the Bridge Headquarters was outsourced to INES by EFE. This tool, with trading name ‘i3met’, was implemented in May 2017 and has ever since enabled to monitor all inspections and operations carried out in major bridges. The network’s minor bridges are being gradually added. INES Ingenieros has been in charge of the training of EFE’s technical staff in order to carry out the tasks they have been assigned by the Bridge Maintenance Plan: planning, inspection performance and monitoring, scheduling of intervention operations, etc.