The wood and steel bridge elements were small and light enough to be carried in trucks and lifted into place by hand, without the use of a crane.

Bailey bridges continue to be used extensively in civil engineering construction projects and to provide temporary crossings for pedestrian and vehicle traffic.

The success of the Bailey bridge was due to the simplicity of the fabrication and assembly of its modular components, combined with the ability to erect and deploy sections with a minimum of assistance from heavy equipment.

Each individual part could be carried by a small number of men, enabling army engineers to move more easily and quickly, in preparing the way for troops and materiel advancing behind them.

The modular design allowed engineers to build each bridge to be as long and as strong as needed, doubling or tripling the supportive side panels, or on the roadbed sections.

The side-panels form an effective barrier between foot and vehicle traffic, allowing pedestrians to safely use the bridge.

[4] A useful feature of the Bailey bridge is its ability to be launched from one side of a gap, without a need for any equipment or personnel on the far bank.

Although the parts were simple, they had to be precisely manufactured to fit correctly, so they were assembled into a test jig at each factory to verify this.

[4] Donald Bailey was a civil servant in the British War Office who tinkered with model bridges as a hobby.

[10] The design was tested at the Experimental Bridging Establishment (EBE), in Christchurch, Dorset,[7][11] with several parts from Braithwaite & Co.,[12] beginning in December 1940 and ending in 1941.

[13] For early tests, the bridge was laid across a field, about 2 feet (0.61 m) above the ground, and several Mark V tanks were filled with pig iron and stacked upon each other.

[23] The first Bailey bridge built under fire was constructed at Leonforte by members of the 3rd Field Company, Royal Canadian Engineers.

[13][16] Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery wrote in 1947:Bailey Bridging made an immense contribution towards ending World War II.

[33] The Ontario government was, several years after World War II, the largest holder of Bailey Bridging components.

[citation needed] The first Bailey Bridge built for civilian use in India was on the Pamba river in a place called Ranni in Pathanamthitta district of the state of Kerala.

[42] In March 2021, the Michigan Department of Transportation constructed a Bailey bridge on M-30 to temporarily reconnect the highway after the old structure was destroyed in the May 2020 flooding and subsequent failure of the Edenville Dam.

Following the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle in the North Island of New Zealand, Bailey bridges were installed to reconnect communities.

[43] Following the 2023 floods in Madrid, Spain, the Spanish Army is set to build a Bailey bridge in the village of Aldea del Fresno.

[44] In 2024, following the catastrophic landslide in Kerala’s Wayanad district, the Indian Army build a 190 feet Bailey bridge in the village of Mundakkai.