DfI sets competence requirements for TRAM structures inspectors in new memorandum

The Department for Infrastructure (DfI) in Northern Ireland has published a Director of Engineering Memorandum setting out the competence requirements for its Transport & Road Asset Management (TRAM) staff who carry out structures inspections.

The memorandum, DEM 197/26 TRAM Structures Inspector Competence, was published on 12 October 2026 under the department's Roads and Roads policy topics. It is issued as a 211.69 KB PDF on the department's website.

In its description of the document, the department said the memorandum "sets out the competence requirements for DfI TRAM staff to undertake structures inspections".

The asset base

TRAM is the DfI group the department describes as responsible for the strategic stewardship, maintenance and enhancement of Northern Ireland's public road network and associated infrastructure.

According to the department's consultation page on NI Direct, that infrastructure includes about 26,000km-plus of roads, 5,900 bridges, 10,000km of footways and 607,500 gullies. The department's separate DfI Roads overview page gives slightly different figures, putting the stock at over 25,000km of public roads, about 9,700km of footways, 5,800 bridges, 290,000 street lights and 367 public car parks.

DfI Roads has four divisional offices, in Belfast, Coleraine, Craigavon and Omagh. The department's Highway Structures Unit provides specialist structural assessment, design and contract services for DfI Roads.

Earlier memoranda

The new memorandum joins a series of Director of Engineering Memoranda on road structures that the department has issued over two decades.

DEM 102/06, published on 31 August 2006, introduced enhanced inspections of sign and signal gantries, checking that equipment, signs and screening panels are secured and cannot fall onto the carriageway.

DEM 139/12, published on 10 February 2012, told bridge inspectors to pay close attention to precast concrete copings on parapet upstands and retaining walls.

DEM 159/17, published on 14 March 2017, set out how reference numbers are allocated to bridges, safety barriers, retaining walls, masts, gantries and slopes ahead of centralising records in the proposed Structures Management System-Roads (SMS-R). Its stated aim was to ensure duplicate structure numbers are not allocated.

Procurement context

The memorandum arrives as the department procures new delivery frameworks for its structures work. DfI TRAM hosted an online pre-market engagement event on 20 November 2025 for its planned Structures and Road Restraint Systems frameworks.

Those frameworks form part of a suite of 11 new Road Asset Management (RAM) frameworks being procured by the department, which it describes as a key deliverable of its Procurement Enhancement Programme procurement strategy.

DEM 197/26 is available to download from the DfI publications pages, where the earlier structures memoranda from 2006, 2012 and 2017 also remain published.