Case Study: West Virginia Department of Transportation achieves real-time automated oversize/overweight permitting and enhanced bridge safety with Bentley SUPERLOAD and LARS Bridge

West Virginia DOT Opts for an Integrated Solution for Oversize/Overweight Permitting

The West Virginia Department of Transportation faced a rapid increase in oversize/overweight hauling tied to shale oil and gas development, with permits issued rising to about 123,000 in 2011 and manual processes unable to keep up. To incorporate bridge load-rating into real-time permitting and routing, WVDOT selected Bentley and its products—SUPERLOAD, LARS Bridge, and InspectTech (and later the hosted GotPermits.com service).

Bentley implemented an integrated SUPERLOAD/LARS Bridge/InspectTech solution (later hosted on GotPermits.com) to perform instant route connectivity, clearance checks, and live-load bridge analysis across roughly 15,000 miles and 5,000 bridges. The results: superload requests grew from ~10 to ~250 per week, the system can handle up to 500 permits/day with >80% issued automatically, WVDOT processes ~130,000 permits annually while retaining an eight-person permit staff (saving the equivalent of five engineers’ time), and outsourcing to Bentley’s GotPermits.com removed infrastructure and maintenance costs.

West Virginia Department of Transportation

Bill Wolford

Evaluation Section Supervisor and Manager