Developing and implementing simple and innovative solutions that help transportation agencies which saves time and boosts efficiency through user-friendly technology.
The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) manages one of the nation’s largest bridge inventories, over 22,700 bridges and 17 tunnels across multiple districts. Operating independently, these districts faced challenges in maintaining data consistency, ensuring accountability, and achieving efficiency. Of VDOT's extensive inventory, 14,100 bridges fall under NBI standards, subjecting the agency to rigorous Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) inspection and reporting mandates. Before inspectX™, manual workflows and legacy tools slowed inspections and complicated data management. Partnering with AssetIntel™, VDOT modernized its bridge inspection program, enabling faster turnaround, automated reporting, real-time alerts, and seamless system integration.
Before inspectX™, inspectors painstakingly marked edits in Word or PDF, strikethroughs for deletions, and bold for additions. Functional but slow, inconsistent, and prone to human error across districts. This manual reconciliation and editing process consumed an estimated 6 to 8 hours of non-inspection time per report, multiplying the inconsistency and audit risk
Each VDOT district followed its own inspection workflows, creating fragmented oversight and uneven data standards statewide. The Bridge and IT teams sought a way to unify visibility without compromising each district’s operational independence. This decentralized approach across VDOT's nine districts resulted in fragmented oversight..
In the legacy setup, inspections often remained “open” indefinitely, with NBI data extracted regardless of finalization. Without internal QA checks, VDOT risked submitting unvalidated data to the FHWA, compromising data integrity and compliance. Here, inspectX™ introduced a structured, approval-based workflow, ensuring data is submitted only after validation while meeting FHWA timelines. This shift required new logic, training, and cultural adoption, but the payoff was accuracy, accountability, and automation.
VDOT partnered with AssetIntel™ to deploy inspectX™, a modern, end-to-end bridge inspection platform designed to enhance transparency, automate workflows, streamline reporting, and scale seamlessly across Virginia’s statewide infrastructure network.
By leveraging inspectX™’s advanced version-tracking capabilities, AssetIntel™ introduced custom logic that automatically detects key text changes between inspections and generates a tracked-changes PDF with one click. This automation eliminates hours of manual comparison, ensuring consistent, transparent, and audit-ready reports across all inspections.
The Alerts Add-On automatically notifies both district and headquarters personnel whenever immediate action is required, including critical findings, scour, load posting, or bridge closure. This real-time escalation ensures that urgent issues are promptly flagged, enhancing safety response times, operational consistency, and proactive decision-making across the entire statewide bridge network
Initially developed to meet VDOT’s stringent governance standards, the Audit Log has since been expanded to benefit the entire inspectX™ community. It captures every user action with precise detail—who made changes, when, and what was modified, enhancing transparency, reinforcing accountability, and safeguarding data integrity across all inspections and projects.
To facilitate a smooth transition, AssetIntel™ deployed a hybrid NBI extraction model, enabling data submission from both approved and in-progress inspections. This hybrid approach enabled VDOT to meet immediate FHWA deadlines during the transition while establishing a 90-day finalization workflow, now the standard for timely, consistent, and compliant submissions across all districts.
Inspectors can securely upload their PE stamp, initials, and signature directly into inspectX™. Once approved, these are automatically applied to reports, streamlining workflows, eliminating manual steps, and ensuring full regulatory compliance.
VDOT implemented seamless authentication via its OKTA system, providing secure, unified access for all staff and consultant users, streamlining login processes while maintaining robust security across the organization.
Whenever inspections are approved or asset information is updated, the data seamlessly transfers to VDOT’s BrM system, ensuring both platforms remain fully synchronized and up-to-date at all times. This ensures BrM, VDOT's authoritative system of record for maintenance, capital planning, and asset performance modeling, operates solely on real-time, verified inspection data, eliminating the risk of decisions based on stale information.
Inspectors can choose reference PDFs for offline access, allowing field-ready viewing of plans, manuals, or prior reports without switching devices or depending on internet connectivity, ensuring seamless workflow in any location.
As FHWA transitions from NBI to SNBI, SNBIX™ ensures continuous data flow. Approved inspections migrate to SNBIX™ and can later sync back, preserving seamless continuity between both systems throughout the transition. This proactive integration guarantees VDOT's data foundation remains compliant and viable for the next decade of federal reporting, avoiding the massive cost and disruption associated with future mandated system retrofits.
AssetIntel™ provided comprehensive web-based training for both in-house staff and consultants, including:
Each session was tailored to the audience, ensuring practical, hands-on learning and immediate applicability in daily operations.
VDOT is steadily expanding its digital ecosystem. By 2026, the agency will transition from BrM to the upgraded DataMart, which will be fully integrated with inspectX™ and aligned with the SNBI standard. This advancement enables a seamless, data-driven bridge inspection program, enhancing operational efficiency, reporting accuracy, and long-term infrastructure management.
For VDOT, inspectX™ wasn’t just a tech upgrade; it was a shift toward consistency, accountability, and efficiency across Virginia’s districts. With automated reporting, real-time alerts, and seamless data flow, inspections, findings, and bridge safety are managed smarter.
Transformative Results
VDOT’s journey goes beyond modernization; it’s a model for future infrastructure oversight, where automation, accountability, and data intelligence converge to redefine bridge safety, efficiency, and transparency on a statewide scale.
Developing and implementing simple and innovative solutions that help transportation agencies which saves time and boosts efficiency through user-friendly technology.
