Between the Poles

SUE proposed as foundation for best practices for utility coordination on P3 projects

Public infrastructure projects frequently experience delays and cost overruns - often due to underground utilities - but delays and cost overruns are rare on P3 projects. Furthermore because P3 projects include not only the design/build part of the project but also the operate and/or maintain phase, P3s deliver better designed facilities that can be efficiently operated and maintained during the contract term, which can extend from 15 to 30 or more years. To help public-private partnership (P3) project stakeholders develop an efficient and consistent process for coordinating utilities, the Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) has developed a best practices guide specifically targeted on P3 projects. Essential to reducing the risk associated with underground utilities is knowing their accurate, up to date location.  The TAC guide makes subsurface utility engineering (SUE) the foundation for coordinating utilities on P3 public infrastructure projects.

Background

Public infrastructure projects frequently experience delays and cost overruns often due to underground utilities. The reason is that on a typical public construction project the government is responsible for project risks that add time and money to an infrastructure project.

Canada has developed a reputation for successfully delivering infrastructure projects using a public-private partnership (P3) approach. P3s are used to deliver an infrastructure project such as building and expanding roads, bridges, transit systems, and other public infrastructure.

On a P3 project the public sector always owns the infrastructure. The government determines when and where to build the project, its scope, and its budget. A competitive process is used by the government to select a private partner. The private partner designs, builds, finances, maintains and/or operates the public infrastructure. Delays and cost overruns are rare on P3 projects, as this approach allocates risks and responsibilities to the public and private sectors based on their areas of expertise. For example, the public sector bears the risk for changes in laws and regulations and the private partner bears the cost of construction delays. Because P3 projects include not only the design/build part of the project but also the operate and/or maintain phase, P3s deliver better designed facilities that can be efficiently operated and/or maintained during the contract term, which can extend from 15 to 30 or more years.

SUE proposed as foundation for coordinating utilities on P3 projects

There is a trend in legislation and regulation which on one hand may provide strong measures for compelling utilities and other infrastructure owners to improve locating, utility treatments and relocations, on the other provide encouragement for a collaborative approach among utility owners and government agencies which replaces the traditional regulatory mechanisms involving fines and other penalties for noncompliance. On P3 projects in particular the key to successful utility coordination is a team approach, with each member having a role in completing their portion of the project. The players on the team are the project owner, typically a government agency that funds the project; the ROW owner, the government agency responsible for maintaining the public ROW; the Utility Coordinator (UC), responsible for utility coordination on all phases of the project; the designer, who designs the P3 project at different stages ranging from conceptual design through detailed design; and utility agencies, the owners of public or private utility infrastructure who are often also the Project Owner. One of the key challenges for utility agencies is providing accurate records of their existing infrastructure to the Project Owner.

SUE and as-built standards

The foundation for the best practices proposed by TAC for utility coordination is subsurface utility engineering (SUE).  Standard practice for SUE investigations is based on American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 38, first released as ASCE 38-02 but soon to be replaced by ASCE 38-21. The ASCE 38 standard establishes quality levels for underground utility information that all parties can use to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of underground utility location data.

The standards for "as-builts" for newly installed and relocated infrastructure are ASCE 75 in the U.S. and CSA S-250 in Canada.  For example, in Colorado both ASCE 38 and 75 are mandated, which means that every underground and above ground utility segment that's depicted could have either a utility quality level based on ASCE 38 for existing infrastructure or a utility accuracy level from the ASCE 75  "as-constructed" standard for newly installed or relocated utility infrastructure.  In Canada it's a little different. Every utility segment could have either a utility quality level based on ASCE 38 for existing infrastructure or a utility accuracy level from the CSA S-250 standard for newly installed or relocated infrastructure.

Application of SUE over project lifecycle

The TAC guidelines breaks the construction process down into phases: Planning, RFP Document Preparation, In-Market Design, Project Implementation and Post-Construction and identifies the roles and responsibilities of each team member during each phase with respect to utility coordination. The TAC guide describes how SUE practice is allocated over the different phases of the project.

During the Planning Phase the Project Owner is responsible for putting together a base plan of the general construction project area that is adequate for the requirements of utility coordination. The base plan is  forwarded to all impacted Utility Agencies (public and private), with a request for each utility to provide maps of their utility infrastructure based on the Utility Agency’s current records in the proposed project area. This information represents some of the QL-D (from utility records) and QL-C (from site visits) information for the project and is typically of limited quality. It is often  inaccurate, out of date or simply missing, which is frequently he case for abandoned infrastructure. At this stage it is critical that the utility agencies flag high risk utilities such as high pressure transmission lines.  Preliminary SUE investigations, providing QL-B (using remote detection technology) and/or QL-A (potholing), may be completed to validate and improve the quality of the utility information. Based on all of this information the Utility Coordinator creates a preliminary Utility Conflict Matrix that lists potential utility conflicts and relevant information about the utilities identified.  At the completion of the Planning Phase the approximate location of existing utilities and potential future utility infrastructure and possible relocations of high risk infrastructure should be known.

The Request for Proposal (RFP) Documentation Preparation Phase involves preparing the final RFP documents that will be made available to potential bidders. Included in the activities at this stage is the development of a Reference Concept Design (RCD) which may require that additional preliminary SUE investigations be performed to a quality level required for the Project’s In-Market Design Phase. The RCD is used by the Project Owner and Utility Agencies to conduct utility conflict assessments.  If a utility is identified to be in conflict with project works, further SUE QL-A investigations may be required to verify whether it indeed represent a conflict. The RCD design augmented by SUE information plays a significant role in the development of a RCD Utility Conflict Matrix which is a key component of the RFP becausee it provides crucial information about potential utility conflicts to the bidders.

The In-Market Design Phase (or Bid Phase) includes all activities required to deliver a preliminary design which forms the basis for preparing bid estimates.  Starting with the RCD Utility Conflict Matrix, each bidder prepares their own Utility Conflict Matrix based on their RFP submission design.  Knowing the location of existing utility infrastructure is crucial for the bidder to estimate scope of work. To help identify the location of existing utilities – both buried and overhead – the bidders use the information available as background documents provided with the RFP including utility records for private and public utilities, the RCD Utility Matrix, SUE reports provided by the Project Owner, RCD designs, preliminary utility relocation designs from Utility Agencies, and visual inspection and survey information. Since SUE often extends over more than one phase, it is essential to commence SUE investigations early in the Planning Phase to ensure the information is available to the proponents prior to and not beyond the initial In-market Design.  Each bidder is responsible for identifying the location of all existing utilities within the limits of construction, for coordinating any required utility relocations, and all the utility relocation and/or protection work necessary to accommodate utility coordination for the P3 project. During this phase estimating activities may require additional preliminary SUE investigations.  The In-Market Design Phase ends with technical and financial submissions from bidders to the Project Owner. Each submission is evaluated based on a technical and financial assessment and the Project Owner awards the P3 Contract to the successful private partner.

The Project Implementation Phase includes all activities associated with delivering the project from contract award through to completion of construction.

The initial objective of the private partner is to complete the preliminary design to a 30% level. To achieve this requires conducting an additional SUE investigation with the objective of achieving QL-B and QL-A for all underground infrastructure within the project limits.  This is required to ensure that all the required information has been collected to complete the Detailed Design.  This SUE investigation builds on the preliminary SUE information captured during the Planning and In-Market Design Phases.  Based on the complete SUE data the private partner creates a Utility Conflict Matrix that can be maintained and updated regularly to ensure that the latest conflict data is always available to project stakeholders. 

It is also extremely important for each Utility Agency to have access to the latest detailed design and SUE data to enable them complete their relocation designs early in the process. The initial objective of design is to complete the Detailed Design to a level that is sufficient for the utility companies to initiate their respective detailed designs for their relocation work.

After design and during construction, conflicts with unknown utilities may be encountered. It is essential that they be reported immediately to the Utility Coordinator who will initiate a field conflict resolution process. The private partner and the Utility Agencies need to notify the Utility Coordinator at the first indication of a delay to their relocation schedule due to the unknown conflict. The Utility Coordinator is responsible for assessing the impact of the delay on the overall Utility Relocation Coordination Plan and the private partner will follow up to determine the impact on the overall project schedule.

Once relocation construction is completed it is important to ensure that the records submitted for all relocated underground infrastructure are accurate. Utility Agencies are required to prepare “As-Built” drawings to be submitted to the private partner that are compliant with CSA S-250 quality requirements.

Operation and maintenance (O&M) typically represents 80% of the lifetime of an infrastructure facility. In the Post-Construction Phase under a Design, Build, Finance and Operate or Maintain (DBFO or DBFM) P3 model, the private partner is responsible for the operation and/or maintenance of the newly constructed infrastructure for 10 years or more. The O&M responsibility includes all activities necessary to operate or maintain transit facilities, toll roads and other infrastructure.  For civil infrastructure this includes supporting One Call notifications.  An advantage of DBFO and DBFM P3 projects is that it is in the financial interest of the private partner to control O&M costs by optimizing O&M activities.  This includes ensuring that accurate, up to date and complete location data for underground utilities and other infrastructure within the project limits is collected and maintained throughout the project life-cycle.

Application of SUE and as-built standards

During the Planning and In-Market Design (Bid) phases preliminary SUE investigations are conducted to collect and compile underground location data, typically to QL-D and QL-C quality levels. Building on these preliminary SUE investigations, the best practices for P3 projects proposed by the TAC requires the completion of a comprehensive SUE survey that achieves QL-B or QL-A quality levels for all underground infrastructure within the project limits. The TAC guidelines also require that as-builts submitted for all relocated infrastructure be compliant with CSA S-250, which is the Canadian as-built standard, corresponding to ASCE 75, the as-constructed standard in the US.

Conclusion

The guidelines for best practices for utility coordination on P3 projects provided by the Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) makes subsurface utility engineering (SUE) the foundation for reducing the risk associated with underground utilities. The objective of SUE investigations is identifying and determining the accurate, up to date location of underground utilities including abandoned infrastructure. The TAC guidelines also require capturing and maintaining accurate location data for relocated utilities.  Accurate and up to date location data for all underground utilities is critical for controlling costs during the O&M phase, which typically represents 80% of the lifetime of an infrastructure facility.

Waste and inefficiency of US underground utility damage prevention systems estimated at $61 billion annually

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.

UK's Geospatial Commission estimates ROI of £30 benefit for every £1 invested in National Underground Asset Register

It is estimated that accidental underground utility strikes cost the UK economy £2.4 billion every year. A top priority of the the Geospatial Commission, an agency of the UK government tasked with extracting more value from government geospatial data, is the creation of a National Underground Asset Registry (NUAR) and to complete the national implementation of NUAR across England, Wales and Northern Ireland by 2024. The Geospatial Commission has just published the economic case for NUAR which estimates conservatively a return on investment (ROI) of £30 worth of benefits for every £1 invested in a national register for capturing and sharing digital underground asset data. The economic analysis concludes that there is a robust economic case for NUAR.

Background

Knowing the location of buried utility assets, such as cables, pipes, sewers, and ducts prior to initiating excavation, or even better, prior to design helps avoid costly damage to assets, and improves safety for workers and the general public.

Major issues in many jurisdictions including the UK are data quality and data access. Data is often privately owned and access is restricted, data is not collected consistently, the level of accuracy varies, and data is often missing or out of date. This means that outages occur more frequently and last longer than they should, projects take longer and start later, cause more disruption to the public and cost more.

In addition utility business models provide no direct incentives to improve their data at the scale required for a full solution. However, the government is able to centrally co-ordinate and invest upfront in whole scale data transformation where there is clear evidence of value to the UK economy, and it can also ensure appropriate safeguards are in place to address commercial and security concerns of efficient, digital data access.

The NUAR initiative grew out of a bottom-up collaboration among actual asset owners and the organizations involved in working on maintaining embedded asset networks in the North East of England and in Central London. Feedback from the field was that with the practices currently in place data delivered inconsistently in terms of scale and content making it difficult to integrate and interpret the data in the field. The strong message from the asset owners and those responsible for maintaining the assets was that a simpler, comprehensive, and standardized approach was required.

The NUAR project was formally initiated by the Geospatial Commission, which is part of the Cabinet Office at the heart of the UK government. While NUAR is being driven from government, this is very much picking up on a bottom-up requirement. Together in North East England and Central London some 40 utility and telecom network operators and local government agencies voluntarily collaborated to share their data using a harmonized data model and symbology to enable viewing all underground utilities on a single map. A database was created in which each data owner remained a steward of its own data, a scheme for data protection and security was implemented, and access was provided via a data hub available to all participants.

The experience of government agencies and network owners in collaborating to share underground infrastructure information using a risk-based legal approach to data protection and security on the two pilots leading up to the Invitation to Tender, suggests that it will be feasible for NUAR, which is not intended to be mandatory, to be based on a secure and trusted data sharing between the public and private sector. From a security perspective the prototype system developed for the pilots adhered to strict security standards and audit controls set by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI), and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) as well as Ordnance Survey guidelines. In addition the prototype implemented data protection, for example, by restricting the size of the area for which data could be requested. This attention to data protection was key in achieving what had not been possible in previous projects with a similar objective - all 35 public and private sector organizations participating in the pilots signed data sharing agreements after review by their legal departments. 

A key feature of the prototype system developed for the pilots was support for feedback from the field.  Referred to as "observations" it made it possible for field staff to report errors by comparing the actual location of equipment with what was recorded in the database.  A more complete implementation of this important capability could become a key mechanism for improving data quality.

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. A U.S. Department of Transportation sponsored survey conducted by Purdue University in 1999 of quantifiable and qualitative savings estimated a total of US$4.62 in avoided costs for every US$1.00 spent on accurately locating underground infrastructure. Although qualitative savings (for example, avoided impacts on nearby homes and businesses) were not directly measurable, the researchers made the case that those savings were significant, and many times more valuable than the quantifiable savings. 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 SUE when elevating the quality level of subsurface utility information using SUE. This significantly higher return on investment when compared to Purdue study is the result of maturation of process and a consideration of some of the qualitative savings in the Purdue study.

Overview of Analysis

The total cost of utility strikes is estimated to be £2.4 billion per year. This is based on the assumption that there are 4 million excavations and 60,000 utility strikes per year in the UK. However, analysis by the Geospatial Commission has determined the number of excavations could be as high as 4.7 million a year. Assuming the ratio between excavations and strikes is the same, this implies that the total number of annual strikes could be 70,000. Using the average direct cost of a strike £3,371 from academic research, it is estimated that annual direct costs amount to £79 million. Using the 29x ratio reported by researchers at the University of Birmingham , indirect costs are estimated to be £2.31 billion.

To estimate the benefits of the program, it was assumed that 30% of strikes could be avoided through better data and easier access to it.  On-site project savings are derived from three areas: the cost of resuming projects after discovering unexpected underground assets, the cost of abandoning projects due to constraints from unexpected underground assets, and field efficiencies from a single, integrated view of all the underground assets. The data exchange and back office efficiency estimates are based on research commissioned by the Geospatial Commission to understand the detailed processes currently involved in requesting, collating and preparing underground asset data and how NUAR would make it more efficient. The total quantitative benefit of the NUAR program is estimated at £3.4 billion, or £347 million annually over ten years.

• Savings from reduced utility strikes, saving £240 million/year
• Data exchange and back office efficiency, saving £91 million/year
• On-site construction efficiency improvements, saving £16 million/year

In addition there are other benefits of the program that are not currently quantifiable, such as strategic improvements to street works coordination and subsurface planning.

Conclusions

The study concluded that there is a strong case for government intervention since the market has failed to fix itself.  The conservative estimate of a return on investment of £30 worth of benefits for every £1 invested in a national register is very high but is not inconsistent with previous ROI studies.   The main conclusion of the analysis is that there is a robust economic case for NUAR and that the project delivers on announced government policy.

Revision to Australian AS 5488 Classification of Subsurface Utility Information

Recently national standards relating to underground infrastructure have been revised or are being revised.  These include the US ASCE 38 with a new title Standard Guideline for Investigating and Documenting Existing Utilities, the UK PAS 128 Specification for underground utility detection, verification and location and the Canadian CSA S250 Mapping of underground utility infrastructure. In addition there is a new US standard ASCE 75 Standard Guideline for Recording and Exchanging Utility Infrastructure Data for utility as-constructed data.  Now there will be a revision to the Australian standard AS5488 Classification of Subsurface Utility Information.

The first Australian standard Classification of Subsurface Utility Information (AS5488-2013) was released in 2013. The standard was upgraded in early in 2019 to include a second part covering subsurface utility engineering (SUE). Now a revised AS.5488.1:2019 will be released before January 2022.

National standards and de facto standards relating to underground infrastructure

1983 – Japan Road Information Center (ROADIC)
1998 – Japan Road Management System (ROADIS)
2002 – U.S. ASCE 38-02 Standard Guidelines for the Collection and Depiction of Existing Subsurface Utility Data
2006 – Malaysia Standard Guideline for Underground Utility Mapping
2011 – Canada S250-11 Mapping of underground utility infrastructure
2012 – France Presidential Decree (DT DICT)
2013 – Australia AS 5488-2013 Classification of Subsurface Utility Information (SUI)
2014 – U.K. PAS 128:2014 Specification for underground utility detection, verification and location
2015 - Ecuador NTE INEN 2873
2017 – U.K PAS 256 Buried services – Collection, recording and sharing of location information data
2019 – Australia AS 5488.1:2019 Classification of subsurface utility information
2020 – Canada CSA S250-2020 Mapping of underground utility infrastructure
2021 – U.K. Revised PAS 128
2021 – U.S. ASCE 38-21 Standard Guideline for Investigating and Documenting Existing Utilities
2021 – U.S ASCE 75 Standard Guideline for Recording and Exchanging Utility Infrastructure Data
2022 – Australia Revised AS 5488.1:2019