Industrial Bridge Construction -Need for a more effective bridge construction process 1 INDUSTRIAL BRIDGE CONSTRUCTION- NEED FOR A MORE EFFECTIVE BRIDGE CONSTRUCTION PROCESS DANIEL EKSTRÖM 1, 2 , RASMUS REMPLING 1 and MARIO PLOS 1 1 Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden 2 WSP Sweden, Bridge and Hydraulic Design, Gothenburg, Sweden Designing for ease of construction is something that is always demanded by contractors and a challenge for the designers. It is widely known that the ability to influence a structure and its future properties is at its greatest in early stages, i.e. the project preparation phase followed by the design phase. Despite the fact that there is an obvious need for knowledge of construction in design work, there is a lack of a consistent and structured transmission of experience between the construction stage and the designing engineers. The results in this project are achieved based upon three standalone studies. A thorough literature review, a meta-analysis of the current research covering effective bridge construction and a study of the current industrial view on how the industry intend to achieve a more effective bridge building process. Based upon these studies it is clear that using a holistic approach and a production oriented design methodology is likely to generate the progress that the construction industry needs. Keywords: Sustainable, Efficient process, Structural design, Knowledge transfer, Integrated design process. 1 INTRODUCTION Previous research has tried to introduce the concepts of industrial construction without succeeding. Only in Sweden there have been several attempts to unify around one definition and its content, in both housing and infrastructure (Harryson 2002; Löfgren 2002; Lessing 2006; Harryson 2008). Nevertheless, no significant change has occurred within the industry up to date and the concept of industrial construction seems to still be a product of academia. The rate of productivity and innovation capacity within the building industry of today is perceived to lead to a poor return of investment within infrastructures. One of the identified reasons for the poor investments are mainly due to the non-integrated design and production process, and the long lead-time in both planning and execution of a construction project. In addition to less value for invested money, the ineffectiveness causes disturbance for stakeholders in society (SOU 2012; Statskontoret 2010).