One of the most important tasks of structural engineers today is to deal with the safety of the exist-ing concrete bridges. Unlike new structures, existing concrete bridges inherit dated design details and deteriorated conditions that cannot be dealt with using models or design guidelines that are devel-oped for general design purpose. Often, detailed physical models of the dated design details with or without deterioration are the essential key to help structural engineering and researchers to under-stand the phenomenon and eventually come up with more accurate assessment of the bearing ca-pacity of the structure. This special session aims at providing a platform for structural engineers and researchers to sharing experiences on physical based modelling and assessment of typical existing concrete bridges. Both analytical and/or numerical models are welcome to be discussed in this ses-sion.

The maintenance and upgrading of existing concrete infrastructure require innovative strengthening solutions combined with reliable monitoring technologies. This special session focuses on recent advances in smart strengthening systems using reinforce-ments with sensor functionality and structural health monitoring (SHM) for reinforced and prestressed concrete structures. Topics include novel strengthening techniques, such as carbon-based reinforcement and shear strengthening, sensor-integrated rein-forcement, distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS/2D-FOS), digital monitoring concepts, and data-driven assessment of structural performance. Contributions addressing ex-perimental investigations, field applications, and long-term monitoring are welcome.
The session aims to bring together researchers to discuss integrated approaches that enhance structural safety, durability, and sustainability while enabling efficient mainte-nance and life-cycle management of existing concrete infrastructure.

Quality management (QM) mission can be defined as turning technical evidence into reliable life-cycle decisions for concrete infrastructure, which span from performance and competent delivery, inspection, intervention and service-life extension.
This session aims to be highly practice-oriented, assured by the guidance of a chairing team covering the wide spectrum of QM. While materials, design, construction, inspection, documentation, maintenance and ESG agenda will be covered, aspects such as consequence-of-failure-based requirements; competence, responsibility and interfaces; management of deviations; monitoring and inspection evidence; as-built birth certificates; and data quality and interoperability are the main outputs of the session. This session is promoted by the recent new fib TG 3.6 – Quality Management of Concrete Structures, in liaison with IABSE: TG.1.4 on probabilistic modelling, quality control and lifetime assessment; TG.1.6 on risk- and reliability-informed decision-making; and TG.5.4 on life-cycle structure-management systems.

The session is planned with two blocks: an inspirative lecture session followed by a discussion session.