Utility locates and relocation work have historically been the cause of construction delays on public construction projects, particularly in urban areas with dense population and the commensurate underground utility and telecom infrastructure. With the massive investment require to improve infrastructure not only in Ontario but around the globe, improving outcomes and reducing risk has become absolutely essential. In recent bills the Ontario Legislature has addressed the problem of underground utility locates and relocations by providing strong enforcement options when the work is not completed accurately and in a timely manner. While the legislation provides strong measures for compelling utilities and other infrastructure owners to improve utility treatments and relocations, the legislation has resulted in a new approach to utility coordination based on a collaborative approach among utility owners and government agencies replacing the traditional regulatory mechanisms involving fines and other penalties for noncompliance.
Mitigating underground utility risk through collaboration
Infrastructure Ontario is an agency of the provincial government working with the private sector to renew the province's infrastructure by developing new linear projects with a focus on transit. Underground utilities represent one of the top transit project delivery risks identified by Infrastructure Ontario. Mitigating utility risk for transit projects is a continuous process involving many stakeholders. Infrastructure Ontario and Metrolinx, the regional rail organization that runs the regional transit system in the Toronto area and South Central Ontario, have developed an approach to utility risk mitigation based on early collaboration, a single source of project truth, subsurface utility engineering (SUE) surveys to improve utility location data, shared workflows that ensure data freshness, options to avoid, protect or relocate utilities, and making underground utility location data accessible to all stakeholders including engineering firms and contractor bid teams.
Legislative foundation for new approach to utility coordination
The Ontario government identified an opportunity to expand on its transit agenda and launched a very ambitious program with four priority subway projects in the GTA worth just under $30 billion. In February 2020 the government introduced enabling legislation, referred to as the Building Transit Faster Act (BTFA). Among other things it provided mechanisms for compelling utility network owners to better coordinate their activities with government transit agencies. Under the legislation Metrolinx has authority to manage and maintain its own right of way like a municipality. It is responsible for issuing consents for utility conflicts or new utility construction activity within its right of way and easements.
Infrastructure Ontario and Metrolinx decided to keep the regulatory “big stick” as a rarely used exception and focused on developing a collaborative approach to utility coordination as a more productive and efficient way to achieve better utility coordination. In this vein the Utility Coordination Program (UCP) was launched in March 2020 with the goal of formalizing a new, more streamlined way of performing utility relocation work by enhancing coordination between stakeholders groups. The immediate objectives of the UCP were the development of a Utility Relocation Guideline and associated workflows. At the same time the Office of Utility Coordination (OUC) was created to monitor compliance with the processes designed by the UCP. Infrastructure Ontario began working with key utilities and telecoms, the Ministry of Transportation, the ministry responsible for the act, and Metrolinx, to develop a program to improve utility coordination. The goal of ths UCP initiative was a coordination scheme that would allow Metrolinx and utilities to work together to coordinate underground utilities without constantly relying on the legislation. To achieve this all of the industry stakeholders met at the beginning of the project to map out step-by-step how the work would progress. It was recognized that construction does not flow in a linear fashion, a lot of the work is happening simultaneously and there are hundreds of thousands of conflicts constantly occurring within the program at different stages. But major workflows were mapped out and a consensus was arrived at with all the utilities impacted by those workflows. The result was a well-documented understanding how construction would progress and what was required of each stakeholder at each step along the way. The results of these efforts were encapsulated in the Utility Relocation Guideline, which formed a set of regulations that became part of the BTFA act. It is a manual for how organizations will use the utility relocation workflows that have been developed.
Single source of project truth key to effective collaboration
It was recognized that the foundation for a collaborative approach to utility coordination is a single source of project truth. The Office of Utility Coordination (OUC) was setup to became the single custodian of project data and applications. The OUC has compliede a Spatial Library containing the alignments and engineering designs for all of the transit projects, the location of all utilities and telecom infrastructure, and identified utility conflicts. Shared workflows are designed to ensure that the data is kept fresh enabling an OUC dashboard that allows project activities to be monitored in near real time.
One of the major issues recognized by Metrolinx/Infrastructure Ontario is incomplete, inaccurate and out of data records of the location of underground utilities. Therefore to improve the quality of the data on all projects Metrolinx conducts subsurface utility engineering (SUE) surveys in accordance with ASCE 38 along the entire transit alignment. The level of SUE required is typically a minimum QLC/QLB with QLA at locations of interest including stations and transmission utilities. Combining the results of the SUE surveys with the alignments and designs in the Spatial Library results in a conflict matrix identifying the locations of utility conflicts. Based on this information treatments and relocation plans are developed and added to the Spatial Library.
The primary source of the data is provided by utility and other partners. Metrolinx improves on that data through SUE surveys. But in dense urban environments there is often unidentified infrastructure because it was mislocated, unknown or has no known owner. It has been found that many SUE providers and surveying organizations that Metrolinx/Infrastructure Ontario work with have institutional memory of their own experience independent of the records that the utility holders own and they are able to provide valuable insights and data. For example, they may have found that a specific utility's data is not reliable but that they, the SUE provider or surveyor, had actually already done a survey in the area and can share the improved data set with Metrolinx.
The OUC dashboard provides a number of spatial views that allows conflicts and construction activities to be tracked at the transit line level, the utility level, and the conflict level. For example it is possible to view one of the entire transit lines to see all the utility conflicts. Hovering over any of the conflicts provides data about that conflict; the identification and type of asset, the asset owner, information about asset from asset registries or from a SUE survey, and any plans to develop a treatment or relocation for it.
The Spatial Library is being compiled for current priority transit projects, but it is designed to be persistent. This is in contrast to the past approach where data was captured on a project basis, not maintained and effectively lost at the completion of the project. Now Metrolinx/Infrastructure Ontario will be retaining and maintaining the data within the transit right of way. The OUC dashboard and OUC spatial library will eventually be expanded beyond Ontario's four priority transit projects to also monitor public service works for transit in other parts of the province.
Infrastructure Ontario is working with the Centre for Advancement of Trenchless Technologies (CATT) at the University of Waterloo on a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the utility coordination program resulting from the BTFA. A report is expected at the end of the year that will not only describe how the improved utility coordination program provides benefits to Ontarians in managing the risks of transit project construction, but will also provide quantitative financial data on how this program improved outcomes and reduced costs and risk.
Expanding improved utility coordination to other public projects
In December 2020, Bill 222 Ontario Rebuilding and Recovery Act, went into force. It extended the special regulations applicable to designated transit corridors in the GTA to other provincial “priority transit projects”. It also provided measures to enforce compliance on highway projects by amending the Public Service Works on Highways Act.
Furthermore, the recently passed Bill 257 Building Broadband Faster Act, 2021 which is intended to expedite the delivery of broadband to under served areas of Ontario, revises the 2012 Ontario One Call Act in several way to improve utility coordination. Specifically it requires network owners to accurately locate their equipment within 10 business days after notification by Ontario One Call or face “pay for delay” or “pay for mislocate” penalties. The legislation mandates that the cost of these penalties cannot be passed on to ratepayers but are to be borne by shareholders. But the focus is on collaboration rather than on the regulatory stick. The Building Better Broadband Faster Act is built on the experience of the utility coordination achievements of the BTFA. The data, the application of the data, utility coordination program and the capabilities of the office of utility coordination to enable a single source of project truth have made it possible to work with all the key stakeholders on the broadband initiative in a transparent coordinated fashion.
Vision for the future
Effectively what Mterolinx and Infrastructure Ontario is the foundation for a digital twin. In the priority transit corridors the location and other properties of existing infrastructur including all the utilities and infrastructure such as the station boxes and the alignments, the tunnels, whether it's low grade, at grade or above grade all captured in 3D. This approach is being expanded to other public projects such as highway expansion and improvement projects and broadband. Combining this data and applications could provide reliable data and capabilities for a significant proportion of public projects in the province. There is also evidence that industry is finding that the advantages of the new utility coordination regime can be applied to other non-public projects raising the prospect of a single utility coordination approach being adopted throughout the construction industry.
Conclusion
Since 2020 Ontario has put in place the legislative foundation for improving utility coordination on public construction projects in the province. It has used this as a way of motivating a concrete collaborative program to utility coordination that aims to avoid the combative environment that often characterized the traditional regulatory mechanisms involved in utility locates, treatments, and relocations. An essential key to enabling this collaborative project environment is a single source of project truth based on shared data including the location of existing utility and other infrastructure, alignments and designs, utility conflicts and treatment relocation plans. Shared workflows are designed to ensure that the remains fresh enabling real-time monitoring of the status of utility conflicts, treatments, and relocations. The legislation together with the implementations of the Utility Coordination Program, the Office of Utility Coordination, the Utility Relocation Guideline and shared workflows provide a practical approach for improved utility coordination on construction projects that represents a model for other jurisdictions that have recognized the human and economic risk associated with underground utilities and are looking for practical ways to mitigate that risk.
This post is based on Gord Reynolds's talk at the Canadian Underground Forum. You can listen to Gord's talk on the GeoIgnite CUF Youtube channel. Further insights can be found in the contributions of Alon Gat and Gord Reynolds to the panel discussion on the role of government in underground infrastructure.
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