Bala Sivakumar is Vice President for HNTB Corporation. Mr. Sivakumar was the architect of the LRFR evaluation philosophy and was the Principal Investigator / Primary author for developing the AASHTO Manual for Bridge Evaluation (2008) and the AASHTO Load and Resistance Factor Rating Manual (2003). He served as the Principal Investigator of NCHRP Project 12-63 that was initiated in 2003 to propose revisions to AASHTO legal loads and loads for posting of bridges. 5 new legal load models developed under this project were adopted by AASHTO as new national posting loads.
He is currently the Principal Investigator for NCHRP 12-76 for the Transportation Research Board to develop protocols for collecting and using WIM Data for developing national design load models for AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design. He is frequently invited to make presentations to the AASHTO Technical Committees during their annual meetings.
Mr. Sivakumar serves as Technical Consultant to AASHTO Technical Committee T18 on Bridge Management, Evaluation & Rehabilitation to assist with the maintenance and ongoing development of the AASHTO Manual for Bridge Evaluation. He has developed and delivered LRFR and LRFD seminars, training courses, and workshops that have varied in length from 4 hours to 5 days for over 30 state DOTs. Under a FHWA contract he has provided technical assistance to several DOTs with their transition to LRFR.