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FHWA has recently introduced a Transition Tool that utilizes the published crosswalk logic. While the tool serves as a valuable starting point for agencies, it has certain limitations and discrepancies that hinder its complete utility. It requires additional effort from agencies to clean and validate the output before it can be used in production.
SNBIX is an intuitive platform designed to facilitate seamless transitions from NBI to SNBI for agencies. It is fully compatible with FHWA crosswalk logic while providing additional features to address existing limitations and discrepancies of the FHWA Transition Tool, which are as follows:
The AssetIntel Team has conducted thorough validation processes and identified several bugs in the FHWA Transition Tool. A detailed list of these bugs can be found on the SNBI Resource Hub: https://snbi.io/Home/Discrepancies. While addressing these issues may take time from FHWA, AssetIntel promptly responds by addressing confirmed errors and updating them in SNBIX. This ensures that users benefit from timely resolutions and improvements to the transitioning process.
Many agencies maintain inventories of both non-NBI and NBI bridges. Unfortunately, the FHWA Transition Tool is limited to transitioning data exclusively for NBI bridges, which means agencies are left to handle the transition of non-NBI data on their own. To provide some perspective, the State of Ohio oversees the management of over 27,000 NBI bridges alongside 13,000 non-NBI bridges. Manually transitioning and collecting data for such a large number of bridges would impose significant costs on ODOT.
Many agencies are already collecting data that is suitable for SNBI transition. One example is the Posting Evaluations, which is a no transition data set. Instead of entering the data manually, agencies can define custom logics in SNBIX to transition their load rating data, making the process much more streamlined and efficient.
The FHWA Transition Tool generates output values in JSON format. It requires data extraction using Excel or Power BI, and it is not easy to validate the output against NBI data. In contrast, SNBIX provides a convenient side-by-side comparison between NBI and SNBI values. All SNBI attributes are color-coded and marked with notations indicating clean, partial, or no transition. Each SNBI attribute can be expanded to give users access to all information from the SNBI Manual and Transition Notes from the FHWA Crosswalk, consolidating everything they need in one place.
In addition to having its own automated transition, SNBIX also consumes the output from FHWA. Agencies can conveniently upload the JSON output, and the software will take care of the rest. They can then compare and choose between SNBIX, FHWA, or manual overwrite as the transition value for any SNBI item.
While the FHWA Transition Tool is solely focused on data transition, SNBIX goes beyond that by offering comprehensive capabilities to both add and update SNBI data. Users have the option to update attributes for a single bridge or perform a batch update of attributes for multiple bridges. Moreover, SNBIX incorporates built-in validations to minimize data entry errors. These validations help ensure data accuracy and integrity throughout the updating process, providing users with added confidence in the quality of their SNBI data.
SNBIX seamlessly integrates with inspectX and AASHTO BrM, allowing agencies to export the data to these software platforms when they are ready for production use. For agencies not utilizing either software, there is no need to worry. The data can be exported in JSON or Excel format for smooth migration to other systems or for further analysis.