# Integration of BIM Tools for the Facility Management of Railway Bridges
## 1 Introduction
Despite the fact that BrIM is an innovative method for storing varied information, two concerns remain in terms of: (1) creating an accurate digital representation and collecting remote and reliable information, and (2) utilizing BrIM data for management purposes in a reliable Bridge Management System (BMS). However, despite technological advancements, timely maintenance is still commonly performed through visual inspection [6; 20; 21; 22; 23; 24; 25; 26; 27; 28], which tends to be subjective, and thus, the accuracy of the results directly depends on the inspector's skills and experience [20; 21; 22; 24; 26; 29]. Railway infrastructure is considered crucial in many transportation systems, both for passenger and freight transport. Therefore, a decrease in service capacity (load or speed), a failure, or a partial closure of these systems can cause economic, social, and, consequently, public or private losses [4; 5; 6; 24; 30; 31]. Currently, the monitoring and maintenance activities for railway infrastructures, particularly railway bridges, face various limitations associated with difficult access, associated hazards, lack of records of existing information, and large amounts of information in various formats such as spreadsheets, texts, and databases, among others [20; 23; 26; 28; 32; 33]. This results in a lack of asset tracking, coupled with the fact that many railway bridges are nearing the end of their useful life, which ranges from 70 to 110 years in countries such as the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and other European countries [25; 34; 35; 32; 36]. Chile is not exempt from this problem, given that the nation's first railway bridge, over the Maipo River, was put into service in mid-1859 [31]. Therefore, continuous and effective asset management is needed to record, ensure, and maintain public safety, investment, the functioning of structures, and, in turn, railway networks. If anomalies and/or failures are found, actions must be developed to resolve these issues [21; 24; 29; 37; 38]. Traditional and current methods of infrastructure monitoring are mostly governed by a reactive approach, without optimized planning for evident damages, which is not effective since reactive monitoring tasks tend to be more costly, both monetarily and structurally. In contrast, preventive monitoring involves simple but periodic interventions on the asset, reducing repair costs and increasing the structure's safety and reliability [39; 40; 41; 42]. There are technologies that, over the years, have mostly benefited design and construction processes, leaving behind the operation and maintenance stage of infrastructures [43; 44; 41]. These include BIM and digital twins, obviously associated with the era of Industry 4.0 [45; 46; 47]. In the literature, various definitions of Building Information Modeling(BIM) can be found, one of which is the 3D digital representation of the physical and functional characteristics of a facility [48]. By 2018, it was believed that the use of BIM in civil works was almost three years behind its use in buildings, with the United States leading the way, while Europe quickly adopted this technology for infrastructure design and management [49]. Regarding the definition of a digital twin, a similar situation occurs as with BIM. There are various definitions in the literature, but one that encompasses many and provides a general definition was proposed by [PERSON] and [PERSON] in 2021, defining it as a visual representation of a physical system (and its associated environment and processes) updated through information exchange between physical and virtual systems [3; 33; 42; 45; 50; 51; 52].