PRIVATE COMPANIES

• RiverMaranhãoBridgeMonitoring.
  The Brazilian Institute of Concrete - IBRACON, and companies Camargo Corrêa Industrial S/A and Construções e Comércio Camargo Corrêa S.A., signed an agreement to provide services comprehending advisory to the monitoring of the Bridge over the Maranhão River, one of the headwaters of the Tocantins River in the basin of the Hydropower Plant Serra da Mesa, besides counting on the Department of Technical Support and Control of the FURNAS Centrais Elétricas S.A. and the Engenharia Experimental Ltda.
  The bridge was inaugurated in 1997 in the municipality of Uruaçu - Goiás.
  Advisory services to be provided by IBRACON are indicated follows:
  
  • Applications and guidelines for measuring stresses in passive reinforcement, temperature and movement of joints for installing devices;
  • Site visits by instrumentation specialists viewing expert advisory;
  • Reports and advisory for analyzing results.
  In the case of buildings constructed with cantilever technique, 80m, 145m and 80m sections, respectively, using high performance and high strength concrete (the estimated fck from specimens of the site ranged from 62.5 MPa to 70 MPa), monitoring will provide data of great importance to guide future projects.
  

• Bernardo Goldfarb Bridge Monitoring.
  Inaugurated in 1994, in São Paulo, the Bernardo Goldfarb Bridge (new bridge Eusébio Matoso) was designed by Promon Engenharia, built by Camargo Corrêa Construção e Comércio, and managed by Emurb. It is one of the largest structures extensively monitored in the world.
  In Brazil, for the first time ever, a work of this magnitude has had a Monitoring Plan, by means of intense and extensive auscultation system, controlled by two reading stations within the box girder deck, allowing following up the bridge performance from the very beginning of the process.
  The original monitoring idea came from the Emurb technical staff. Performed along its construction, from December 1992 to June 1994, it brought important insights into preventive engineering.
  IBRACON, aware of the relevance and rareness of this work, congregated a group of companies, which allowed resuming the monitoring as from March 1996 by means of a contract signed with Emurb.
  IBRACON found it an opportunity to compare experimental data with the flow model recommended by the CEB (Comité Euro-International du Béton) and the Brazilian standard, and decided to continue the measurements. For this, it sought financial support from: Cimento Eldorado - Silmix Division, Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo Mineira,Camargo Corrêa Construção e Comércio, Mepel Artefatos Especiais de Borracha and Rudloff Industrial.
  With this support, a contract was signed with Emurb to allow this new monitoring phase and Experimental Engineering was rehired by IBRACON to perform it.
  This new phase should verify the adequacy of the bridge behavior, especially with regard to deformation due to temperature, stabilization of the arrows under the action of dead loads, if the lane joints allow the gaps provided in the design, if the concrete creep and shrinkage are stabilizing and, finally, if the support equipment has been moving accordingly.
  In this phase, foreseen to last until December 1997, repairs were made to the equipment installed, which is now working smoothly, and the data collected have been interpreted.
  

ENTITIES IBRACON signed an agreement with the CBGB (Brazilian Committee on Large Dams) promoting a greater exchange with that institution, and they will soon jointly make their publications available.
On Oct.15, 1998 the IBRACON signed an agreement with the Institute of Engineeringexpanding the dissemination of new technologies and research on concrete.
In the globalization era, integration may often be the answer. Hence, technology itself does not mean much if there is no integrated application.
Aware of this, IBRACON signed an agreement with the SINDUSCON/SP (Union of the Large Structures Construction Industry in the State of São Paulo), aimed at improving the quality of Civil Construction with the use of modern calculation and construction techniques, together with ASBEA (Brazilian Association of Architecture Offices), aiming at an exchange with the architects in different studies on concrete in the art of construction and with the  ITQC (Brazilian Institute of Building Technology and Quality), promoting the improvement of quality, productivity and technological modernization in the Civil Construction Industry.

On July 13, 1999, IBRACON signed an agreement with the ABENDE (Brazilian Association of Non-Destructive Essays) in order to promote and to intensify integrated actions aimed at the technological development and technical improvement of personnel and of activities related to the convening entities.

ABPE - BRAZILIAN ASSOCIATION OF BRIDGES AND STRUCTURES

PARTNERSHIP PROTOCOLS ESTABLISHED BY IBRACON with similar entities

Other Bodies and Representatives

Institution	Abreviations	Participants	Position
Federación Ibero-americana del Hormigón Premezclado	FIHP	ENG. LUCIO DONADI AVECRETO - Asociación Venezolana de Concreto Premezclado ENG. MANUEL LASCARRO FIHP	Secretario Geral Secretario Ejecutivo
Associação Brasileira del Mecânica dos Solos e Engenharia Geotécnica	ABMS	JOAQUIM OLIVEIRA	Northeast Regional Nucleo’s President
Associação Brasileira de Pontes e Estruturas	ABPE	UBIRAJARA FERREIRA DA SILVA	Vice-President
Asociación Latinoamericana de Control de Calidad, Patología y Recuperación de la Construcción	ALCONPAT	PEDRO CASTRO	Presidente de Honra
Associação Sul-Americana de Engenharia Estrutural	ASAEE	LUIZ CARLOS PINTO DA SILVA FILHO	Director