The 2019 estimated national cost of damage to underground utilities estimated by the CGA is approximately $30 billion annually. In a recent report the Infrastructure Protection Coalition estimates that an additional $61 billion in waste, inefficiency, and excess cost is embedded in the system. It has proposed 13 recommendations that would eliminate $40 billion of the combined $90 billion in damage and waste costs over a 3- to 5-year timeline. The cost of implementing the recommendations is estimated at $1.2 billion. The return on investment (ROI) for implementing these measures is estimated to be $33 for every $1 invested in improving the system.
Background
Underground utility damage is expensive. Several jurisdictions have attempted to estimate the cost of underground utility damage for individual incidents and for entire national economies. Costs can be broken down into direct costs and indirect costs. Direct costs include the costs of sending a crew to repair the damaged pipe or cable. Indirect costs include many factors that are often hard to quantify such as traffic disruption, injuries and fatalities among workers and the public, and the lost custom that local businesses experience. An important conclusion from the research into the cost of underground utility damage is that it represents a major drag on national economies.
Direct costs include the costs of sending a crew to assess and repair the damaged pipe or cable. Indirect costs include the impact of traffic disruption as a result of the strike, any injuries and other impacts on the health of the workers directly involved and the public in the immediate neighbourhood, and the lost custom that businesses experienced as a result of the traffic disruption. Research in the UK estimates that the true cost is about 29 times the direct cost.
In the US the CGA compiles information on the direct cost of damage to underground infrastructure for different types of underground infrastructure based on voluntarily submitted damage reports. At an average cost of $4000 per hit, the CGA estimates that the direct cost to the U.S. Economy is about $1.5 billion and that the total cost to the US economy is $31 billion annually.
Return on investment (ROI) studies of the benefits of improving the mapping underground infrastructure on highway construction projects conducted since the late 1990s have consistently revealed a large return-on-investment. In 2007, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation commissioned Pennsylvania State University to study the savings on Pennsylvania highway projects and found a return on investment of US$21.00 saved for every US$1.00 spent for Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE). The UK's Geospatial Commission estimates that the ROI of the National Underground Asset Register, the implementation of which has just kicked off, is £30 for every £ invested by the government.
Inefficiency in states' implementation of damage prevention system
A comprehensive, independent, in-depth examination of every state's one call system including Washington, D.C. and the city of Chicago has concluded that failures in the 811 systems cost $61 billion a year in waste and excess costs and create unnecessary hazards for public safety, particularly in states where the implementation and accountability are most lax. The reasons for the waste and cost overruns found in this study include: utilities and third-party locators sent to locate lines for construction projects that do not happen; poor instructions given to locators, causing wasted time or additional work; locate marks destroyed by construction and then requiring repeat locates; and late locates leading to contractors having to wait and delaying projects.
Thirteen recommendations have been proposed by the Infrastructure Protection Coalition on a state-by-state basis to eliminate and mitigate these costs. It is estimated that these measures would eliminate $40 billion in damage and waste costs and that these recommendations could be implemented for approximate $1.2 billion over a 3- to 5-year timeline. The ROI for implementing these measures is estimated to be $33 for every $1 invested in improving the system. Unquantifiable benefits such as severe damage reduction and public safety or societal benefits are not included in these benefits.
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