Between the Poles

An infrastructure digital twin provides a dynamic environment for managing underground assets of a multi-utility campus

For organizations managing a campus such as educational facilities, healthcare facilities, commercial real estate, utilities, and municipalities managing public works, storm sewer systems, and parks which are characterized by having many different utilities and and other infrastructure, an infrastructure digital twin provides owners, operators and third-parties with a streamlined, cloud-based solution that maps, manages and shares a wide range of subsurface and above ground assets, including fibre, pipes, electric power cables, lighting, conduits, and other structures enabling campus asset owners to not only track their assets but to provide all the information about their assets; their history, their replacement cost and their current cost without which you cannot justify your financial demands, be it a budget request for next year or a bid bond for a major project.

Infrastructure digital twin

A major challenge for legacy asset management systems is that documents are hard to access. Problems in the field are hard to identify because it takes too long to access the relevant documents and other information in the field. It's hard to share architecture and utility drawings with contractors and other stakeholders. People are really copying large blueprints or as-builts and delivering a set of documents to a new contractor who's just been onboarded and the contractor has to spend weeks studying these documents and comparing this information to what's there, what's underground, what's above ground and matching it together.

The way we address this challenge is by creating an infrastructure digital twin which provides accessible information to all stakeholders through a subscription service. A full digital twin of your campus, is a big, costly project, but an infrastructure digital twin is simpler and much faster. It involves site verification and infrastructure mapping as a service including drone imaging, site surveying, walking the campus and verifying objects. If the customer is using some type of infrastructure detection, the accurate information from that system plugs into our system, so it remains live. We support Open Geospatial Consortium standards to ensure interoperability. We onboard all of the data and we do that for any new updates on the campus. If something is wrong in the map and it's not in the site, or in site and not in the map, or if the drone gave us a better accuracy, we detect that and make corrections. For example, customers often hire utility engineering firms to conduct subsurface utility surveys (SUE).  We load that information and match it with everything we have in the system about their underground and other assets. Full onboarding requires 40 days or less. And more importantly, all the data is owned by the client all the time.

We've loaded over four million assets for our customers. Those assets are being used by thousands of users, including facilities, teams, construction managers, engineering and architecture firms, local utilities, fire departments and others.

You can share data immediately with anyone you want. And there are no limits on the number of users in any of our systems. If you onboard a new construction company for a new project, you just provide them with a login, specify what they can access and see, and they are onboard.

Dynamic view of your assets

The system provides a dynamic view of all your assets. It's not a static image, GIS or CAD files which you update every several months. It's real time, live presentation of information coming from a database and it is integrated with all your other systems. You can drill down on every single conduit, cable, pipe, or other piece of infrastructure and query all its attributes and see the sources of the data. You have access to the data in real time from your phone, your tablet, or your laptop because it is a fully cloud solution. We are able to do that because we are compliant with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and follow OGC standards. We are using open systems in terms of representing all the attributes about every item.  For a typical campus environment, ranging from a few blocks to a college campus or hospital complex, for example, you may have 20,000 assets. All of those assets and their associated attributes are captured and live in that database. We're building IOT integration, so you will have real time data on top of their various asset layers. You can see the water flow and the temperature and the pressure from the sensors. To go back to the updates. We are building integration with augmented reality. so that all underground assets can be visualized in 3D AR.

We provide a dynamic way of having base maps. You can use Google Maps, Esri World Imagery, or OpenStreetMap or even a mix of these. You can add your own imagery. 

In addition to the dynamic view of the locations and attributes of all your assets, you also have a plan room. All your documents are there, your engineering drawings, as-builts, survey and SUE reports, legacy maps, and other sources of underground data. You can search them by date or by the contractor or surveyor who supplied this data to you. These documents are accessible to you at any time from any device.

Managing asset budgeting

More importantly, the system provides an executive summary of all your assets. For example, in this site, which we have built as an example (we cannot share real data publicly) we have included about $4 million worth of assets. FM people need to deliver projects on time, minimize disruption of services to those people who are using these facilities, and improve the sustainability of their facilities. To do this requires that you can justify your CAPEX and OPEX budget. For some capital projects, you might be able to look at the total cost for adding a new building. But for budgets for operations and maintenance, retrofitting a fiber network, changing your irrigation network, it's really difficult to do that without having access to everything about your assets, their history, their replacement cost and their current cost. Without this information you cannot justify your financial demands, be it a budget request for next year or a bid bond for a major project.

The key to managing budgets is by replacement costs. If you want to replace your electric network, you need to know how you built the electric network in the first place. The database provides access to all this information. You can break your assets down by type of structure; electric power, conduits, lighting, water, wastewater and gas pipe networks. You can see their life expectancy, aggregate them based on their expected time of expiry and then decide on remedial action. You also need to worry about the impact of potential accidents and most importantly your liabilities. If a major underground gas line is damaged, then you might face heavy liabilities because it might interrupt gas service not just to your campus but for the entire area or even an entire municipality.

Our system has an ROI calculator so you can compute your potential savings. This has helped customers secure grants because they were able to compute the information needed to submit a bid bond.

Conclusion

An infrastructure digital twin provides immediately accessible information to all your assets for all stakeholders through a subscription service. It's a real time, live presentation of information coming from a database and it is integrated with all your other systems. For critical budgeting operations and maintenance, you have immediate access to everything about your assets; their history, their replacement cost and their current cost that enables you to justify your financial demands, be it a budget request for next year or a bid bond for a major project.

This post is based on Moufid Charafeddine's (BetterGIS) talk at Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF).

Pilot project to create national map of UK energy infrastructure launched

A proof-of-concept project to develop a National Energy Systems Map (NESM) has been launched by the UK’s electricity and gas networks. The pilot project will give customers information about energy network assets, where those assets are located as well as who owns them. This project is a result of a core recommendation of the Energy Data Taskforce for the development of a digital system map of the UK energy network infrastructure with the overall goal of developing a full digital twin of the UK energy system.

Background

In October 2018, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of the UK government launched the Energy Data Taskforce, led by Energy Systems Catapult and supported by Ofgem and Innovate UK.  The objective of the task force was to determine how to release the power of data within the UK energy system. The final report A strategy for a Modern Digitalised Energy System provided a suite of recommendations on how data can contribute to developing and maintaining a decarbonized, decentralized and efficient energy system.

In most of world's major economies energy is increasingly decentralized increasingly relying on distributed energy resources (DER). Many assets such as electric vehicles, electric storage heaters and home batteries are capable of not only of consuming power but also able to generate it.  Modern assets are smart and able to signal and receive signals from network operators. Reducing the carbon content of power generation is a worldwide objective supported by governments, regulators and the utility industry.  New business models for utilities are emerging which reflect this new grid.  The UK government sees data as the key to unlocking the potential of the new grid. Transparent, accessible, interoperable and accurate data is seen as key to enabling network operators to adapt to and exploit the opportunities created by the new grid.

In the current energy system there are barriers to the effective use of data; no common data standards, no openly shared data repository and a culture of data hoarding rather than sharing.  It is estimated that a smart and flexible system can contribute to cumulative savings of up to £40 billion by 2050.

Development of a national digital energy map

One of the key recommendations of the task force is the development of a unified digital system map of the UK energy system. Such a map is intended to make infrastructure data accessible to all, to lower the barrier to entry and enable developers to create new solutions and validate new business models. Interoperability of network data is intended to provide networks, Ofgem and developers with efficiency benefits reducing data preparation and translation requirements.The digital energy system map will become one of the three data building blocks that will transform the energy system; a data catalogue which will provide a single, searchable location for energy system datasets, an asset registration strategy for identifying assets, and the digital system map that will provide a digital representation of the UK energy system.

The list of actions of the energy digitalization strategy in the recent Digitalising our energy system for net zero: Strategy and Action Plan 2021 includes the procurement of a National Energy System Map, with a proof of concept delivered by Q4 2021. The map will initially present datasets shared by network companies but is intended to grow and evolve with the addition of other energy sector data and potentially data from other sectors. To begin the implementation of this objective the Energy Networks Association has kicked off the development of a National Energy System Map for mainland UK that initially will encompass electric power and gas network data.  It is intended that this energy system data will be made publicly available as a digital map. The Energy Networks Association intends to deliver a proof of concept of a national energy system map in Q4 2021.

It is foreseen that a digital energy system system map will provide significant benefits; more efficient planning of renewable energy projects and future energy system infrastructure, more rapid development of new business models for energy, data standardization and interoperability, and increased energy system resilience through better system visibility.  In addition it will provide a foundation for the development of a digital twin of the UK's energy network.

UK's bottom-up/top-down approach to creating a voluntary National Underground Asset Registry

Many jurisidictions are recognizing the human and economic cost of not knowing the location of underground utilities and other infrastructure and are looking at legislative, regulatory, technological, business practice and other measures to find ways to ensure the capture and sharing of reliable underground utility location data. An important question that each jurisdiction needs to decide is whether participation in a scheme for compiling and sharing underground infrastructure data should be voluntary or mandatory. The National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) initiative in the UK has adopted a voluntary approach, most likely because it grew out of a initial grass-roots collaboration of asset owners and the organizations involved in working on maintaining embedded asset networks.

Mandatory or voluntary ?

Colorado

Colorado is among the first state/provincial jurisdiction in North America and in the world to mandate a subsurface utility engineering survey (SUE) at the pre-construction stage. Colorado's legislation provides for strong enforcement options. The new regulations mandates the electronic submission to CDOT of a digital plan, typically the result of a SUE survey, showing all physical offsets, both horizontal and vertical, to all existing utilities, including laterals to buildings, before commencing work on a public construction project. Furthermore, the new regulation requires that accurate as-builts, stamped by a PE or PLS, must be submitted electronically to CDOT within 45 days of the completion of work on a public construction project. 

A technical innovation that the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has adopted and mandated is a mobile and cloud-based hybrid GIS/surveying system for recording and sharing underground utility location data. CDOT requires its construction contractors to use this app so they are all able to view CDOT data in the field and add to the data as new infrastructure is installed or existing infrastructure is located or relocated in preparation for a road or highway project. CDOT now requires that over 150 utility companies and more than 1,000 utility installation stakeholders to also use this app to capture and record the location of underground utilities.  Furthermore, anyone conducting a SUE survey is required to use this app to record underground utility location and other data collected.

Ontario

In Ontario legislation since 2020 provides strong enforcement options when locates are not completed accurately and in a timely manner. In addition legislation provides strong measures for compelling utilities and other infrastructure owners to improve utility treatments and relocations. But instead of adopting a traditional mechanism involving fines and other penalties for noncompliance based on the legislation, Infrastructure Ontario has implemented a new approach to utility coordination by fostering collaboration among utility owners and government agencies.  Infrastructure Ontario 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. Infrastructure Ontario began working with key utilities and telecoms, the Ministry of Transportation, and the transit agency Metrolinx to develop a program to improve utility coordination. 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.  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 primary source of the data is provided by utility and other partners. Metrolinx improves on that data by requring SUE surveys.

Scotland

Scotland has a history of asset owners and roads authorities working collaboratively. For many years this tradition has enabled utilities and telecoms to share details of planned works. In 2012 Scotland implemented a nation-wide collaborative system for sharing information about the location of underground infrastructure among stakeholders involved in road construction including roads authorities, utility and telecom network operators, and Transport Scotland. The Scottish Vault system was implemented by the Scottish road works community on a voluntary basis and remains voluntary. (One of provisions in the recently passed Transport (Scotland) Bill could make the sharing of data mandatory, but it has not been implemented.)

England and Wales

The National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) initiative in England and Wales has also adopted a voluntary approach to bringing utility owners, government agencies and others together in a collaborative environment to share underground utility data. An important reason that participation is voluntary is this 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 London. Feedback from the field was that with the practices currently in place data is 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.

NUAR background

In 2018 Northumbrian Water brought network operators and local government agencies in Newcastle upon Tyne together at the Northumbrian Water Group Innovation Festival. The event benefited from a spirit of cooperation which enabled 20 utilities, telecoms, local government authorities to voluntarily sit down at the table to collaborate in developing a shared underground infrastructure map showing the location of water, wastewater, gas, electricity, telecoms and other underground services provided by the network owners.

The UK government created the Geospatial Commission to unlock the significant economic opportunities offered by geospatial data.  The NUAR initiative was very much a case of the coincidence of top down interest in digitalization, in general and specifically around geospatial data, and bottom up initiatives by actual asset owners and the organizations involved in working on maintaining embedded asset networks. The Geospatial Commission built on the grass roots initiative in North East England. In addition the Mayor of London’s Office was awarded a share of £3.9m to create a digital map of the utilities and pipes below ground. Known as London's Underground Asset Register (LUAR), the Mayor’s Office worked closely with utilities, transport providers, and six local authorities to create a shared digital map of underground infrastructure. 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.

Since completion of the two pilots the Geospatial Commission has announced that it intends to complete procurement for a National Underground Asset Register by Summer 2021. Initially it plans to develop products for three regions, London, Wales, and the North East of England with the intention to complete a national implementation by 2024.

This post is partly based based on the contribution of Neil Brammall, Geospatial Commission, to the panel discussion on the role of government in underground infrastructure at the Canadian Underground Forum (CUF). You can listen to all the talks at CUF on the GeoIgnite CUF Youtube channel.

UK BIM adoption survey reveals facilities/asset management trails other disciplines

The UK Government as part of its building information modeling (BIM) initiative has said repeatedly that it expects the big payoff of a digital model will be during operations and maintenance, which typically represents 80% of the cost of a facility.  But to date there has been limited uptake of a full lifecycle approach focusing on cost reduction during operations and maintenance. Since 2018 there has been begun to be quantitative evidence of the benefits of a full lifecycle integrated BIM+geospatial approach to construction.

The UK BIM Alliance has just released its State of the Nation Survey 2021 to measure the adoption of information management using BIM across the UK built environment. The survey involved 1,170 total respondents with broad cross sector coverage of 25 organizational roles and functions in construction.

Architecture (165 respondents), general contracting(143) and clients/asset owners (115) were the top three best represented organizational roles of respondents.  Of particular note is that nearly 10% of the respondents were clients/asset owners, which have been typically underrepresented in previous BIM surveys.

Main conclusion

The main conclusion about the adoption of BIM in the UK, which has been mandated for public projects since 2016, is that 65% of respondents report that that they have used BIM on projects. Of these organizations most of them have used BIM on at least half their projects. 60% state that they used BIM on over half of their projects.  This equates to 740+ companies that have adopted BIM for at least half of their projects.  It is not clear from the survey whether firms that are working primarily in the private sector are adopting BIM to the same extent as firms working primarily in the public sector where BIM is mandatory.

Awareness and adoption of BIM among disciplines reveals a considerable range. Not unexpectedly the disciplines/functions with the highest BIM adoption rates are architecture (75%), general contracting(76%), and various engineering disciplines (77-89%).

Facilities/asset management is still lagging in BIM adoption

Facilities/asset management (23 respondents) is less well represented in the survey and the BIM awareness and adoption rate for facilities/asset management (43 %) was among the lowest which suggests that the adoption of BIM by the facilities/asset management industry is still very low.  A survey a few years ago of the Facilities Management (FM) industry found that while 92% had heard about BIM and 84% agreed that BIM has the potential to deliver value add to FM, over two thirds said that the FM is not prepared for BIM. The survey suggests that facilities/asset management is still lagging the rest of the industry in adopting BIM and this is inhibiting the broader adoption of a full lifecycle approach to construction.

Elements for improving underground utility mapping to reduce risk of damage during construction

Without accurate maps of underground infrastructure, every construction project has the potential to become a disaster site. Unlike the aviation industry where reliable data is collected and is accessible to investigators to prevent disasters from happening in the future, there is limited access to data about the location of underground infrastructure and what data is accessible is inaccurate, out-of-date and incomplete with the result that serious incidents during construction with injuries and fatalities occur again and again.  It is estimated that in the United States $10 billion is devoted to locating underground infrastructure prior to and during construction, but the available statistics indicate that this is not reducing the number or severity of incidents of underground utility damage.  Furthermore inaccurate and missing information about underground infrastructure increases the risk of schedule and budget overruns.  It has been estimated that this represents a $50 billion drag on the U.S. economy and upto a £6 billion drag on the U.K. economy.

Nearly every month the news carries reports of explosions caused by damage to underground utilities during construction excavation. In the last few months of this year there have been explosions in Murrieta, California (July) where a utility worker was killed and 15 others injured, downtown San Francisco (February), Durham, North Carolina (May), and I could go on. These incidents are more frequent than many people realize. 

This is not an impossible problem. A number of cities, regions and countries around the world have recognized the importance of accurate information about the location of underground infrastructure and implemented processes to reduce the risk of these events. For example, comparing the United States and Japan reveals a startling difference in the number of incidents of underground utility damage during construction. The number of incidents in the U.S. is between 400,000 and 800,000 per year (roughly one or two every minute). For all of Japan the number of incidents in 2016 was 134. Clearly something can be done to reduce the risk for construction workers and the public.

Over the years I have personally compiled information on 25 jurisdictions including airports in the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific that have implemented various policies and organizational structures for sharing information about the location of underground infrastructure. These range from government mandated and implemented, government mandated and privately implemented, voluntary industry associations, and private companies. In this article I provide a synthesis of measures most of which have been implemented, are being implemented, or have undergone pilot implementations. These can be grouped in several broad categories.

• Reliable statistics on underground utility damage

• Policies, procedures, and technologies for raising the level of accuracy, timeliness and completeness of information about the location of underground infrastructure.

• Digitalizing the capture, sharing and updating of location information about underground infrastructure.

• Ensuring security and privacy of location information about underground networks including protection for competitive information. 

• Providing access to stakeholders to underground infrastructure location information throughout the construction project life-cycle from planning and design through construction to operations and maintenance.

• Liability model for sharing responsibility for costs of underground utility damage.

Airports, university campuses, and industrial campuses are characterized by a greater density of underground utilities and by more types of underground equipment( communications cables, aeronautical ground lighting cables, gas mains, low voltage electric power cables, high voltage electric power cables, storm water mains, sanitary waste water mains, potable water mains, grey water mains, fuel mains, fire fighting water mains, and a variety of underground structures.) Underground infrastructure in airports, university and industrial campuses typically has a single owner though not always.

Public jurisdictions such as national, regional, state or provincial and municipal governments are responsible for the public right of way.  Typically underground infrastructure in the public right of way involves multiple private owners; telecom network operators, electric power utilities, gas network operators, water and wastewater operators,and others such as heating and fuel transmission pipeline operators. Dealing with multiple private owners who attempt to maintain information about their network facilities typically in a GIS considerably complicates the process of acquiring and maintaining accurate location information about underground cables and pipes.

1. Reliable statistics are essential to determine the social impact of underground utility damage and to assess the effectiveness of policies, procedures and technologies designed to reduce the number and severity of incidents of underground utility damage. Every incident of damage to underground infrastructure should be reported including injuries, fatalities and direct cost. Indirect cost is a nice to have, but very difficult to estimate. Cause is difficult to determine because it depends on who is reporting the incident - network operator, the excavator, or by an independent organization.  A network operator's perspective may be that the contractor did not exercise care during excavation, whereas the contractor's perspective may be that the location of the cable or pipe as identified as a result of a one-call request was inaccurate.  Responsibility for submitting this information has to be assigned to the   One option for doing this efficiently is to classify incidents by seriousness and assign different levels of reporting based on this classification. For pipelines PHMSA assigns levels of seriousness based on cost, consequence, injuries and fatalities.  Significant incidents include any of the following: (1) Fatality or injury requiring in-patient hospitalization, (2) $50,000 or more in total costs,(3) release of significant volumes of gas or hazardous liquid. Serious incidents include a fatality or injury requiring in-patient hospitalization.  In civil aviation each serious incident is investigated by the NTSB, an impartial group of experts who determine technical cause but do not assign blame. The available evidence from the U.S. civil aviation industry, pipeline industry, and many national statistical agencies suggest incident reporting should be mandated to ensure statistically reliable data.  This entails significant penalties for not reporting incidents. Ex. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Heathrow International Airport, Japan Construction Industry Association

2. 3D mapping of underground infrastructure prior to planning and design. Making the location of underground infrastructure available to engineers so that designers have access to not only accurate above-ground survey but also accurate below-ground location information enables engineers to avoid underground infrastructure during design. 3D maps of underground utilities also contributes to reducing unnecessary and costly utility relocation. Below-ground location information should be at least ASCE quality level B.  The entire area should be should be assessed by an SUE engineer in collaboration with utilities and telecoms with equipment in the area. The assessment may include scanning with modern remote-detection tools (EMI, GPR and inertial locating ) to raise the quality of location of all underground facilities to QL B and to identify abandoned or unknown infrastructure.  The cost of raising the quality level of facilities in the design area to B could be assigned to the relevant network operator, engineering firm or shared. For unknown and abandoned equipment an attempt should be made to find the original owner. Ex. Colorado 811

3. Locating unknown and abandoned facilities.  The current one-call system is targeted toward utilities locating their own facilities, typically based on their as-builts.  But there is no formal mechanism for locating facilities that have been abandoned or are not shown on network operator as-builts.  Requiring a full SUE survey in addition to a traditional surface survey at part of planning and design at the beginning of a construction project helps avoid surprises during construction. Ex. Colorado 811
   

4. Capturing and sharing the location of infrastructure detected as a result of a SUE survey at the beginning of a project or as the result of an information request to one-call/811.  Currently utilities are required to paint the ground and in some jurisdictions to provide a paper sketch indicating the location of underground utilities.   This information needs to be captured digitally and shared.  The objective is over time to build up a high quality (QL A and B) database of the location of underground infrastructure that can be shared.  Ex. Colorado Department of Transportation

5. Capturing and sharing the location of infrastructure exposed during construction. In the United States it is estimated that $10 billion is spent annually to locate underground infrastructure prior to and during construction.  Much of this information is not shared and the next time excavation occurs in the same area, the underground infrastructure must be located again.  If this information is captured and shared, over time a high quality (QL A and B) database of the location of underground infrastructure will be formed that will avoid locating the same infrastructure over and over again.  Alternatives for recording the location of exposed infrastructure include total station, RTK, and LiDAR, which tend to be expensive but high quality (QL A). Other alternatives are consumer photography with control points or structures with accurately known locations.  It is essential that this does not increase excavation costs for the contractor.  Contractor margins are tight and having to keep a survey crew on hand during excavation would significantly increase costs. There have been experiments by the City of Chicago, Bentley and Costain aimed at efficiently capturing location information about utilities exposed during construction.

6. An efficient process to update the information recorded in network operators' databases. Information captured as part of a SUE survey, as a result of an information request to one-call/811, or detected during excavation may differ from the records contained in network operators' databases.  For continuous improvement of the quality of the information about the location of network facilities requires an efficient way to compare and update this information.

7. Reducing or eliminating the update backlog.  Utilities regularly maintain underground infrastructure, move it as part of a construction project, or abandon it.  This information has to be reported back to the network operator to update the information in the utility GIS.  There are two dimensions to updates; the accuracy of the location information provided from the field and the update backlog, the time it takes for updates to be entered in the utility GIS.  As with the as-built backlog this backlog can stretch into months.  The objective should be better than a day. This issue can also be resolved by regulation or by a suitable liability model. Ex. Ofgem in the U.K. requires backlogs to not exceed 42 calendar days.

8. Improving the accuracy of location information for new underground infrastructure.  If all new facilities are located to survey quality, over time location accuracy will continue to improve  as older facilities are retired. Alternatives for recording the location of newly installed infrastructure include total station, RTK, LiDAR, and photogrammetry with control points or structures with accurately known locations.  Whatever the technology the result should be ASCE quality level A.  Special provision must be made for capturing the location of facilities installed using horizontal (trenchless) drilling, for example, inertial mapping of pipe networks.  Since reliable as-builts are generally a network operator responsibility - policies are required to ensure that as-builts for newly installed equipment are accurate. There are several ways to do this; legislation which enables a government or regulator to conduct QA/QC checks on submitted as-builts or a shared liability model that assigns some responsibility for subsurface utility damage to network operators whose as-builts are inaccurate or out-of-date. A  liability model would assign liability of any underground damage during subsequent excavation to the network operator if the as-built location information is incorrect. Ex. City of Calgary, Singapore

9. Reducing or eliminating the as-built backlog.  If the time it takes for as-built information to enter the utility GIS or other database from the time new infrastructure is installed is measured in months or longer, the utility GIS is not sufficently reliable for locating underground infrastructure for construction purposes.  The objective should be better than a day. This can be resolved by regulation or by a suitable liability model.  Ex. Ofgem in the U.K. requires as-built backlogs to be less than 42 calendar days.

10. Assigning a quality level based on a generally accepted quality standard to every piece of underground infrastructure. This is critical for determining the type of excavation equipment that it is appropriate to use. It can also provide the basis for a shared liability model.  Ex. ASCE 38-02 in the U.S., CSA S250 in Canada, PAS 128 in the U.K., France DICT

11. Digitalizing the capture and sharing of information about the underground.  In North America, most one-call legislation only requires marking the ground prior to the initiation of construction.  In Ontario a written record is required in addition to marking the ground. At the federal level in Canada there is legislation initiated in the Senate and that offers the alternative of the exchange of only a written record of the location of utilities mapped prior to excavation - no visit to the site to mark the ground is required. This would open the door to exchanging a digital record of the location of utilities found prior to excavation which would be much more efficient because it could obviate the need to visit the site of the proposed excavation.  However, it would also a higher quality standard for the location of underground infrastructure than is currently the practice.  Ex. ROADIC (Japan), KLIP in Flanders, KLIC in the Netherlands

12. Digitalizing the flow of information about underground infrastructure requires a generally recognized standard for sharing information about the subsurface. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is developing an underground information exchange standard, with the appropriate acronym MUDDI, that is intended to provide an open standards-based way to share information about the below ground. There are a number of data models for different types of underground infrastructure and geotechnics. MUDDI builds on and augments existing standards to create a unified model supporting multiple use cases. The MUDDI model is intended to support routine street excavations, emergency response, utility maintenance programs, large scale construction projects, disaster planning and response, and smart cities programs. For street excavations the requirement is location of all entities with high horizontal, medium vertical accuracy (2.5D) of underground infrastructure; for large construction projects, detailed 3D geometry of underground infrastructure and detailed 3D geotechnics; for emergency response, interdependencies between different networks; for utility maintenance, network topology and facility location and condition; and for smart cities the ability to monitor and relate streams of data from sensors. This has not yet been adopted by a jurisdiction, but agencies in the U.K. (Ordnance Surevy), Singapore (Singapore Land Authority), and New York (Fund for the City of New York) are actively supporting the development of the standard.

13. Efficient information flow.  Requiring vans with locating crews from several network operators to visit the site of a proposed excavation just prior to construction to scan the ground for their facilities using EMI and GPR and mark the ground is inefficient. An on-line system that allows an engineer or contractor to go online and define a polygon enclosing the proposed excavation and then within less than a day providing access to maps of underground infrastructure in the area can save network operators time and money.  However, the effectiveness of this solution is highly dependent on the quality of the location information maintained by network operators.  In North America the current one-call system requires that underground facilities be mapped to ASCE QL B before starting construction.  An online system providing digital maps composed of utility operators' as-builts would lower the accuracy of the location information provided to contractors and in the absence of other measures would likely increase underground utility damage. Ex, KLIP in Flanders, KLIC in the Netherlands.

14. Rules for the appropriate type of excavation equipment.  Rules are required that restrict the type of excavation equipment based on the quality level of underground utilities identified by network operators.  For example if facilities have been assigned ASCE quality level C or D, only hydraulic, vacuum or hand excavation may be used.  Ex. Heathrow airport

15. Security, privacy and protecting competitive information. To enable this information to be useful in reducing the risk of underground infrastructure damage during construction it has to be shared in a secure way which respects privacy.  In particular it must protect competitive information. There are a number of organizational ways of doing this; government can mandate, implement and run the system, government can mandate but leave it to the private sector to implement and run, an industry consortium with or without government mandate can implement and run the system, regulations could require sharing this information but leave it to the private sector to implement and run, or a private company could take overall responsibility.  Around the world there are examples where each of these alternatives can be found.  The information should be available to engineers during the planning and design phases of construction projects, to contractors for use during excavation, and to organizations responsible for operating and maintaining highways and other civil structures.  Other potential use cases for this data include disaster planning and emergency response.  Ex. KLIP in Flanders and KLIC in the Netherlands, North East Underground Infrastructure Hub (NEUIH) in Newcastle, England

16. Liability model for sharing responsibility for costs of underground utility damage.  The advantage of a rule-based shared liability model that assigns varying levels of responsibility to both contractors and network operators is that it provides motivation to network operators to improve the quality of their location information about their underground infrastructure existing and new.  An example of a shared model is the following: if a network operator identifies the location of a piece of underground equipment as Quality Level A according to the ASCE 38-2 standard and an excavator hits it, the excavator would be liable for costs if the facility was where the network operator said it was, or the network operator would be liable if it wasn't.  For an excavator intending to dig in an area where there is underground infrastructure assigned to level C or D, the cost to bring all infrastructure to quality level B would lie with the network operator (as it does now with North American one-call systems). If the network operator declines to do this, the liability for any underground damage would lie with the network operator. Ex. France DICT

These measures not only can reduce the risk of underground utility damage and the associated risk to the public during construction and thereby lower insurance costs, but can also significantly reduce the cost of infrastructure construction, for example, by avoiding major utilities and reducing the unnecessary and costly moving of utilities on civil engineering projects.

Experience has shown that over time these elements can result in increasingly accurate digital representations showing the location of underground infrastructure that is available to stakeholders in construction projects including planners, engineers, contractors and facilities managers, for utility maintenance, and potentially for other use cases such as utility outage management, disaster planning, emergency response and smart city programs.

BIM and geospatial for facilities management is penetrating construction

Typically at BIMForum events, the audience is composed of architects, engineers and construction contractors, with the odd owner, but rarely facilities management (FM) folks. At this year's BIMForum 2019 conference in St Louis several talks addressed how BIM and geospatial add value during the operate and maintain phase of a construction project. In his talk Saurabh Gangwar of Clark Construction Group) explained the why, what and how of Clark's application of BIM to facilities management including a couple of case studies.

On many projects information provided by the construction contractor is handed over months after completion of the project. It can take the operator of the facility a year to go through this information to find the information required to operate the facility. This period is what is called the "blind spot" corresponding to the time the facility operator is managing the facility with limited information. Since for many types of equipment the highest probability of failure is in their first month or two of operation - just during the period that the building operator often doesn't have access to information about warranties and extended warranties - this increases the risk of equipment and even facility failures. In addition there is a cost associated with just finding the information required to service equipment.

Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects. While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture. Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects. Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.

Over the past decade, there has been impressive progress in developing open standards for the integration of geospatial and AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) views of city infrastructure which provides a standards-based basis for full lifecycle management from design through to operations and maintenance of infrastructure projects.

Why:

FM data is collected to support a number of activities including space management and renovations and both preventative and reactive building maintenance.

What:

Traditionally with a design-build approach to construction, FM data collection involves compiling as-builts, printed, pdfs, and 2D CAD drawings and operations and maintenance manuals that are required to operate and maintain a structure.  With a BIM approach most of the information required for operation and maintenance is collected during design and construction.  Four types of data comprise what is required for FM; geometric data, parametric data, field data, and O&M submittal data.  Geometric is the 3D model created with a tool such as Revit.  Parametric data is comprised of properties of assets associated with a building or other structure.  A key property is the location of the asset.  Another important property is classification using Uniformat, Omniclass or COBie.  Field data is data collected in the field often with the aid of asset tagging.  O&M submittal data involves warranty and safety information associated with each facility and piece of equipment.

Coordinate systems

One of the challenges on construction projects is that there are multiple coordinate systems; the architects, MEP and FM folks may use different coordinate systems. Saurabh explained that the most important requirement for efficient FM is agreeing on a single coordinate system. If the FM software used by the owner requires or is linked to a GIS, then the coordinate system with be a real world projection.  This reflects the experience of other construction firms on full life cycle projects, that a real world coordinate system shoudl be used from project inception.

How:

Data is created or collected using BIM design tools, spreadsheets, COBie, or FMCloud tools like Autodesk BIM 360, Onuma, or KTrack.  An Not one of these tools is good for all four types of data required by FM.  The FM solution that is used on different projects combinations of all four. Another important issue is that the designers create design BIM models, while contractors create and use construction models, typically built up from scratch independent of the design models.

For example, one of the projects Clark was responsible for was Kansas City International Airport.  On this project construction COBIe was a requirement and BIM models were relied on for geometric and parametric data stripping out some information that was not relevant for FM.  Field data was collected with an FM Cloud application.

As owners see the advantages full-lifecycle thinking for construction projects and are beginning to changing their procurement practices, construction companies are changing their business processes to optimize facility maintenance and operation. Construction companies that have taken on the challenge of design, build, operate and maintain projects are realizing that there are significant benefits from an integrated BIM+geospatial approach to full lifecycle construction. Standards organizations in both the AEC and geospatial worlds are making progress on BIM+geospatial interoperability. Over a year ago major software vendors Autodesk and ESRI announced an agreement to partner for greater interoperability between their products.

A survey of the FM industry found that while 92% had heard about BIM and 84% agreed that BIM has the potential to deliver value add to FM, over two thirds said that the FM is not prepared for BIM.  Evidence suggests that full lifecyle construction including FM is gaining traction in the construction industry.  The time is ripe for FM vendors to learn more about BIM and geospatial and their application to asset management.

Geospatial Commission announces UK registry of underground utilities

Every construction project devotes significant efforts to locating underground utilities prior to and during construction. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again.  To begin to address this problem, the Geospatial Commission, part of the U.K. Government Cabinet Office, has begun the process of creating a national Underground Assets Register which will show where electricity and telecom cables, and gas and water pipes are buried.

In the U.K. damage to underground pipes and cables during construction excavation is not only a risk to the public and workers but according to the Geospatial Commission is estimated to cost the UK economy £1.2 billion every year. 

To begin to address this problem a pilot has recently gone live in Sunderland (Newcastle on Tyne) in North East England that includes almost full water, gas, electricity and a great deal of telco data. North East Underground Infrastructure Hub (NEUIH) is the overall initiative name for OS's and Northumbrian Water's underground work in the North East of England. The first phase of this project was a ‘Common Infrastructure Map’ covering a few small sample areas around Newcastle.  This combined map is the first step towards creating the NEUIH.  The current phase of the OS initiative is called ‘Sunderland sand box’ and implements a dataset that contains almost full water, gas, electricity and a great deal of telco data for the city of Sunderland.

To develop a national map of underground utility infrastructure for the U.K. the Geospatial Commission has just announced its intention to create an Underground Assets Register.  The register will show where electricity and telecom cables, and gas and water pipes are buried and is intended to prevent both accidents and disruption to the economy.  The project will start with £3.9 million pilot projects split between London and the North East.

I blogged previously about a related development in the Netherlands.  Legislation passed in 2015 by the States General in the Netherlands created a Basisregistratie Ondergrond (BRO) or Key Registry for the Subsurface. The law mandates that if you excavate or drill you have to share your geotechnical data with the registry. In addition if when using the data in the registry you find something is incorrect you are required to report it.

The Key Registry for the Subsurface (BRO) came into force in January, 2018. The BRO registry forms part of the System of Basic Registrations of the Netherlands  which includes location and other data on addresses, buildings, topography and cadastral data. The BRO registry consists of 26 data types, which will become mandatory in installments over five years and all of which include location. On 1 January 2018,it become mandatory to report the first three data types, geotechnical surveys (CPT), groundwater monitoring wells and soil drilling sample profiles. On 26 June 2018, this data became publicly available via the Dutch open data portal PDOK.  Work is underway to implement data models for the remaining data types including geotechnics, soils, and groundwater.  All 26 will become mandatory by 2022. Man made underground infrastructure, apart from mining, is not part of the BRO.

Bringing reliable near real-time GIS within reach of every utility

Workflows for ensuring utility GIS quality are fundamentally broken and have been for decades.  Integrating CAD and GIS into an efficient workflow has been a challenge and it has simply not been a priority in the utility industry and in some parts of the communications sector to ensure real-time, high quality asset GIS data. Recently business drivers for high quality GIS data such as implementing a smart grid, estimating service availability and other applications have made GIS quality a top priority.  And now non-traditional geospatial companies are offering geospatial-based technologies that are revolutionizing the capture and maintenance of GIS information about utility and communications assets that can provide a foundation for the real-time network digital twin that is essential in the era of the smart grid and our increasing dependence on communications and utility networks. 

Broken business processes degrades GIS data quality

Maintaining accurate, up-to-date asset data has been a challenge for utility and communications firms for decades.  Over the years the lack of CAD/GIS interoperability has cost communications and utility companies hundreds of millions of dollars trying to cleanup their GIS data and streamline their CAD+GIS workflows.  One of the persistent themes from the very beginning of the Between The Poles was the challenge of integrating CAD and GIS data in a common workflow (some examples; 2006, 2007, 2008 ).  Critical metrics for utility readiness for the smart grid is the as-built backlog, field update backlog and the location accuracy of the assets in the utility's GIS.  It is not uncommon for as-built backlogs to stretch into months even years, for updates from the field to take months to be entered into the records database if they are entered at all, and for the location of assets as recorded in the GIS to be city blocks from its actual location.   The challenge is to fashion workflows that include both engineering and geospatial data and applications into an efficient data flow from planning through design and construction to operations and maintenance with feedback loops that ensures an accurate, near real-time GIS.  For many utilities and communications firms traditional GIS, which has been the standard platform for utility GIS for the past few decades, has simply not delivered cost-effective, real-time, high quality asset location and associated data.

A key workflow found at all utilities and communications firms is the field maintenance process.  In many utilities this is a broken feedback loop which results in the quality of GIS data degrading over time.  When a field crew performs maintenance on network infrastructure, which includes routine and emergency maintenance, or encounters equipment incorrectly located or described in the GIS, the changes or the corrections to the GIS data from the field need to get back into the GIS quickly.  Too frequently this is still a paper-based process typically involving redlining as-builts, which get to sent to records for updating in the GIS.  The backlog associated with field updates can stretch into months.  The slow turnaround of field updates discourage field staff from reporting corrections and changes further exacerbating the GIS quality problem.  The result of this and other broken workflows such as the as-buillt workflow is that not only is GIS data incomplete, inaccurate and out-of-date, but that its quality degrades with time.

Business drivers for accurate, real-time GIS

For communications companies a major driver for an accurate and up-to-date GIS is providing rapid availability of service estimates to prospective customers.  I remember a large U.S. telecom that because it could not rely on the information in its GIS had to resurvey all the locations of its fiber terminations in order to respond to potential ADSL customers indicating whether they were close enough to a fiber termination for the service.

For electric power utilities a powerful business driver that has emerged in the last few years is the smart grid.  Digitalizing the grid has made the role of geospatial data and technology strategic for utilities. As a Navigant Research report stated the smart grid is all about situation awareness and effective anticipation of and response to events that might disrupt the performance of the power grid. Since spatial data underlies everything an electric utility does, GIS is the only foundational view that can potentially link every operational activity of an electric utility including design and construction, asset management, workforce management, and outage management as well as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), distribution management systems (DMSs), renewables, and strategy planning. As John Simmins of EPRI has reiterated on a number of occasions a prerequisite to implementing a smart grid is cleaning up GIS data and developing business processes (feedback processes) to ensure that it remains accurate and up-to-date.

Technology enablers: Open standards, open source geospatial and handhelds

Recent technical advances have made it possible to implement cost-efficient processes for ensuring that utility asset data including GIS data is accurate and up-to-date.  There are now many widely adopted geospatial standards; Simple Features for SQL, WMS, WFS, GML, KML, and InfraGML to name just a few from the OGC that were not available two decades ago.  Secondly, since the founding of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO) in 2006 there has been rapid development of open source geospatial projects including PostGIS, GeoServer, MapServer, Leaflet and others.  This open source code-base has enabled entrepreneurs to rapidly develop low cost geospatial applications because the cost of maintaining most of the code is shared across a broad developer community.  Thirdly the advent of the handheld touch screen computer and phone provides a low cost universally accessible hardware platform for field staff to access geospatial and other information stored in a utility's databases.  With the appropriate software smart phones and tablets make it possible for field staff to see all of the information about an asset in the field at the touch of a finger.  For example, I blogged about how Duke Energy field staff are using an open source based mobile application which provides a single, common easy-to-use web tool for viewing geospatial asset data stored in GE Smallworld, ESRI ArcGIS, Intergraph GTechnology, spatialNET and Google Maps as well as non-GIS data in Maximo, SAP, three different outage management systems, four or five customer information systems, CAD drawings and photos and images.

Shifting the paradigm: GIS data maintenance from the field

The paradigm shift is empowering field staff to take responsibility for the quality of data in the utility GIS. Since they have direct knowledge about the location and condition of utility infrastructure, the key to revolutionizing data maintenance and enabling near real-time, accurate GIS and other data is "cutting out the middle man" and enabling field staff to maintain the utility GIS and other data in the field as they are working. Enabling field folks to do this without adding significantly to their workload (and over time reducing their workload as the quality of the GIS improves) requires a simple "touch and go" user interface which minimizes typing, responsive applications running on handhelds, and workflows that enable field staff to see their changes with a minimum delay measured in hours or days at the maxium.  Of course, operational data can be protected from problematic updates using data versioning technology (long transactions) which provides a rapid way for records folks to review and identify potentially problematic updates.

At Distributech 2019 a new entrant IQGeo emerged into the utility and communications space and announced an alternative to traditional GIS.  myWorld Capture is a mobile solution that prioritizes direct data maintenance from the field.  Building on an open source geospatial platform that supports data versioning and interfaces to legacy utility/communications GISs such as ArcGIS and Smallworld, myWorld provides tools that make it possible to develop and maintain a high quality near real-time GIS with the information that is required for a complete network asset data model including equipment location, descriptions, connectivity, condition, and status. 

The key to ensuring that the data is high quality and up-to-date is empowering field workers to make updates at the source as the work happens and to automate the data maintenance workflow as much as possible.  This approach can eliminate backlogs in field updates, encourage field staff to take responsibility for ensuring the quality of the utility GIS and enable an effective feedback loop that improves GIS data quality over time.   With the promise of near real-time updates directly from the field this approach provides a key foundation for the digital twin of the grid that integrates sensors reporting in real-time with simulation and analytics that makes it possible to create a accurate real-time situation assessment and to model the electrical state of the grid and possible future states based on reported or forecast outages and planned expansions and other changes to the electric network.

Operationalizing the new paradigm

How does this work in real world practice? I had a chance to chat with Dick Rohm, Director of Engineering at Cable One about how they are progressing toward their goal of no backlogs for field updates or for as-builts.  The business driver for this initiative, which they have been working on for the past several years, is service availability - being able to tell a customer immediately whether a fiber service is available at the customer's location or whether it will require an addition to the network.

Cable One provides commercial fiber services to businesses as well as cable services in 21 states, primarily in small cities and big towns.  Sales success requires being able to respond rapidly to potential customers requests for business fiber service, and say yes we already have the fiber capacity in your neighbourhood or no we have to build out a fiber line to support you.  Improving the quality of the data in their GIS is an important business driver for Cable One.  

By prioritizing as-built and update workflows Cable One has managed to ensure that as-builts and updates are in the GIS quickly, typically within 2-3 business days.  To achieve this, they first changed the as-built process, making the design process paperless about five years ago. Their engineering GIS allows engineers to use AutoCAD to design fiber and RF networks directly into GIS .  For construction, contractors are provided with AutoCAD drawings (DWG) on thumb drives and it is up to them if they wish to print them.  For small jobs, contractors can work completely electronically. For large jobs, contractors still use paper, but they print the DWG files themselves. Contractors must register with Cable One's Project Central which is used to track all projects. When paper as-builts are returned, they are spot-checked, and the GIS is updated based on any redlines. A project will not be closed out (and contractors paid) until redlines are in the GIS.  The GIS is used by Marketing and Sales as an added application to myWorld.

For updates from the field the initial idea was to use a web extension to their GIS, but they found that it was too cumbersome and slow.  It was replaced by myWorld on a handheld working with Google or Bing Maps which provided front end for viewing all engineering geospatial and associated data in the field. The myWorld solution only requires about an hour training time using a video. 

Based on the success of the myWorld implementation, user acceptance testing of myWorld Capture is currently underway. myWorld Capture enables field staff to update GIS and other data as they work.  Ease-of-use and rapid response are its key features. It makes it possible for field validators to do most of their work by tapping and drag and drop with very little typing.  Field engineering staff have to do more typing but even for them it is minimal.

The objective of the myWorld Capture implementation is 24-hour turnaround for updates from the field. It could even be less, but it is currently limited by the process of posting updates to the GIS and to the MyWorld database, which occur every night.  myWorld Capture will roll out to all field staff by July 1 of this year.
Dick Rohm emphasized that the key to making a transformative project, such as this at Cable One, successful is changing thought processes in the field. Data needs to be treated as just as important as physical assets.  When something changes or an error is found, the priority for field staff is to update it.  To encourage field staff to make changes in the GIS, tools need to be provided on handhelds that are fast and easy to use. Update processes must be fast so that their changes can be seen by field staff quickly in the GIS. Over time, field folks will increasingly rely on the GIS because they will see corrections that they make from the field appear in the database within 24 hours or sooner.  As data quality improves as a result of this feedback loop, field staff will find that they can rely on the GIS for locating and accessing up-to-date information about assets.

Conclusion

Prioritizing updates from the field to reduce the field update backlog to 24 hours or better together with an as-built backlog on the order of two to three days is a remarkable achievement.  It shows that with a business perspective that prioritizes a near real-time, reliable digital twin of utility and communications networks and geospatial technology supporting open standards and based on opensource and implemented for handhelds in the field, a cost-effective solution to the decades old GIS data quality challenge is within the grasp of any utility or communications firm.

Progress toward a unified model for underground infrastructure and geology

TNO, Geological Survey of the Netherlands

Information about the location, condition and interdependencies of the infrastructure and geology below our feet is poor or lacking.  Even though information about what is below ground is revealed by every excavation, it is rarely shared.  At the December Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Energy Summit at EPRI in Charlotte, Josh Lieberman of the OGC presented an overview of the progress of OGC's underground information initiative, with the appropriate acronym MUDDI, which is intended to provide an open standards-based way to share information about the below ground.

Unreliable information about what is underground including infrastructure and supporting structures and their interdependencies; soil, sediment, fill, and interstitial water and air; and physical, biological, and chemical properties leads to risk of injury to workers and the public and produces a significant drag on the construction sector.   Josh quoted an estimate from the the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) that about 50% of cost and time over-runs on civil engineering projects are caused by 'unforeseen ground conditions. If we are going to optimize where and how we build, we need much better information about what is below ground at the planning stage. To give a practical example close to home, in the middle of the Ottawa LRT project, a huge sink hole which unexpectedly appeared in the middle of a major street in Ottawa was blamed for a significant delay in the project as well as serious traffic disruptions.

There are a number of data models for different types of underground infrastructure and geology which raises the question; why do we need another ? The answer is twofold; in the context of a smart city we need to be able visualize and analyze all this information together, not just one network at a time.  Secondly MUDDI is not an attempt to replace existing standards, but to build on and augment existing standards to create a unified model supporting multiple perspectives.

Use cases

The MUDDI project has identified several different broad use cases that the model is intended to support including routine street excavations (EX), emergency response (ER), utility maintenance programs (OM), large scale construction projects (AE), disaster planning and response (DP), and smart cities programs (SC). For each of these, several basic requirements that the model needs to satisfy have been identified.  For street excavations the requirement is location of all entities with high horizontal, medium vertical accuracy (2.5D) of underground infrastructure; for large construction projects, detailed 3D geometry of underground infrastructure and detailed 3D geology;  for emergency response, interdependencies between different networks; for utility maintenance, network topology and facility location and condition; and for smart cities the ability to monitor and relate streams of data from sensors.

To provide a way for the model to be used by different types of users, the concept of profiles has been introduced. Profiles have been used for other OGC standards and allow for different levels of complexity for different domains and applications. The proposed profiles include asset, excavation, emergency, planning and integration profiles.

Reference standards

The MUDDI model is intended to build on and be compatible with many existing reference/target models.  For infrastructure these include CityGML with Utility Network ADE (Application Domain Extension) , INSPIRE Utility Networks, IMKL (Information model for cable and pipes), BIM-IFC, Land and Infrastructure Conceptual Model (LandInfra), Singapore Underground Geospatial Model, PipelineML, Underground Pipeline Information Management System, CIM (Common Information Model), Multispeak, ESRI Utility Model, and GEOfeature.  For geology, the reference/target models are GeoSciML, INSPIRE Geology, GroundwaterML, BGS National Geological Model, EarthResourceML, GeoTOP, SoilEML, IFC Geotechnical Extension, MINnD, and BoreholeIE.

Next steps

Josh outlined the next steps in the development of the MUDDI model which include implementations, experimental and prototype deployments with real world data, and estimates of returns on investment (ROI).

Growing evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction

Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects.  While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture.  Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects.   Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the world will need to spend $57 trillion on infrastructure through 2030 to keep up with global GDP growth. This is a massive incentive for the  construction industry to transform productivity and project delivery through new technologies and improved practices.  McKinsey reports that large construction projects typically take 20 percent longer to finish than scheduled and are up to 80 percent over budget. Construction productivity has actually declined in some markets since the 1990s and financial returns for contractors are relatively low and volatile.  Construction has been slow to adopt process and technological innovations. R&D spending in construction lags most other industries - construction R&D  is less than 1% of total industry revenue compared to 3.5-4.5 % in the auto and aerospace sectors.  McKinsey & Company suggests that the construction industry is ripe for disruption and two of the technologies that it believes will be key in that anticipated transformation are geospatial and BIM. 

The UK Government as part of its building information modeling (BIM) initiative has said repeatedly that it expects the big payoff of a digital model will be during operations and maintenance, which typically represents 80% of the cost of a facility.  Companies who take on design, build, and maintain and/or operate projects find significant benefits from a full lifecycle BIM + geospatial strategy. For example, EllisDon in Canada considers BIM+geospatial as best practice for its PPP projects, Rijkswaterstaat pioneered design, build, finance, and maintain (DBFM) projects in the Netherlands, Crossrail, which is currently the largest engineering project in Europe, has adopted this approach, Malaysian firm PESTECH International Berhad employs this approach for build, operate and transmit (BOT) projects, and major U.S. construction firm AECOM is applying BIM+geospatial on large design, build finance and operate (DBFO) projects. But to date there has been little reported quantitative evidence supporting the benefits of this approach.  This is changing with several projects providing estimates of benefits including ROI of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction projects.

Integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction

On many projects information provided by the construction contractor is handed over months after completion of the project. It can take the operator of the facility a year to go through this information to find the information required to operate the facility. This period is what is called the "blind spot" corresponding to the time the facility operator is managing the facility with limited information. Since for many types of equipment the highest probability of failure is in their first month or two of operation - just during the period that the building operator often doesn't have access to information about warranties and extended warranties - this increases the risk of equipment and even facility failures. In addition there is a cost associated with just finding the information required to service equipment. A NIST study across several industries estimated that the cost associated with this is 23 cents/square foot which adds considerable cost to operating the facility.

A full lifecycle facilities information flow starts with a facilities information specification from the owner identifying the building information to be included as part of the final deliverables at the time of commissioning.  The facilities information specification is part of the contract between the owner and the designers and contractors who will construct the building.  The facilities information required by the owner's specification are entered into the BIM database during design and construction by the designers and contractors.  At the completion of construction the facilities information data collected by the designers and contractors and stored with the BIM model in digital form represents a key deliverable to the owner together with the BIM model.   The facilities information can then be used to populate the building manager's asset management/facilities management system database including links to the BIM model of the facility to identify where each element or piece of equipment can be found. Most of the spatial and non-spatial data collected during construction is useful during operations. 100 % of floor plans and most of the 3D model (geometry and associated data) are needed in operations. Some owners find that just the BIM model including geometry and associated data is adequate for managing the facility. Others augment the BIM model by a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) which adds financial, occupancy, maintenance history and other information.

In an award winning paper at a 2011 conference organized by Britain’s Association for Geographic Information (AGI), Ann Kemp, then head of GIS at Atkins Global, the design and engineering firm, asked the question ‘BIM isn’t geospatial — or is it?’ and then argued that integration of geospatial and BIM was essential to address the challenges of the 21st century.  The need to integrate geospatial and BIM has been gaining traction for some time.

BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance.  A leader in this space, Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch transportation authority, began offering design-build-finance-maintain (DBFM) projects a number of years ago which has motivated private Dutch engineering and construction companies to adopt an integrated geospatial+BIM approach to construction.

A few firms such as Parsons Brinckerhoff, Atkins Global, and several Dutch firms including Arcadis and Royal BAM, in the construction sector realized a number of years ago that BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance.  For example, the firm Royal BAM Group nv/BAM Infraconsult adopted integrated BIM + geospatial because of market developments including more complex construction assignments and an increasing demand from customers for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a project. 

Geolocation plays a key role in integrating GIS and engineering data and applications for optimizing asset management workflows.  One of the foundations for an integrated system of this type is Bentley's decision many years ago to geospatially-enable all of their products Bentley calls this capability geocoordination. It provides a location-aware foundation for workflows that require integrated engineering and geospatial data and applications.

Benefits of Integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle construction

Recently, Microdesk has reported case studies including hospitals, a medical research facility, an airport and a university. For each facility several use cases were included in the ROI analysis.  For example, dealing with plumbing leaks, electric power shutdowns, passing on tribal knowledge from senior staff to new hires, and conducting infectious risk assessment (ICRA/PCRA), and so on.  After introducing BIM models for facilities and asset management, FM staff were surveyed and asked whether they found dealing with a plumbing leak, for example, using BIM easier, the same or more difficult than the traditional approach. The analysis quantified the time required to resolve a plumbing leak before and after the introduction of BIM.

Two very interesting examples of the ROI analysis performed by Microdesk relate to maintenance operations in a hospital. Passing tribal knowledge on from the older generation of FM staff to the younger involves a junior FM staffer accompanying a senior staff member walking the building for about a month. This requires about 200 hours of staff time. The hospital hires about 12 people per year so this amounts to 2400 hours per year. With BIM and virtual reality (VR) this was reduced to 22 hrs per person, a very significant staff time savings.  In another example, a review of infectious risk assessment (ICRA/PCRA) analysis in a hospital takes about 152 hrs and this has to be repeated 200 times per year. With BIM the time required to conduct these analysis was reduced to 74 hrs per review saving 15,600 hrs annually.

At the conclusion of five years running on the projects, the ROI analysis found a positive BIM in all cases, and estimated that introducing BIM for FM saved on average 5 % of operating costs per annum. It was estimated that introducing BIM reduced the time looking for things by 83% of the 23 cents per square foot cost for doing this from the NIST study. Since operations and maintenance are roughly 75% of the total cost of a facility, these results represents a substantial savings over the full lifecycle of a building.

The Napgur Metro, which is a US$1.3 billion project underway in Nagpur, is the first project in Asia to integrate a digital twin with an asset management system to eliminate information loss about assets during design and construction.   A 23 digit asset code was used to link 3D models developed using Bentley BIM tools with SAP financial management making it possible to track assets right from design through to operation and maintenance. BIM best practices followed the British PAS 1192 guidelines. Since the Nagpur system implements a full-lifecycle approach to project management, the location of each of the 500,000 assets comprising the systems is recorded making it possible to click on an asset in SAP and be shown the location of the asset in a 3D map.  Final deliverables are digital models rather than paper drawings providing a basis for digitalizing operations and maintenance.  The benefits of a 3D BIM+geospatial approach have been projected based on a 25 year lifetime for the project.  It is estimated that this will result in US$400,000 savings during plan, design and build, a reduction in operating manpower requirements by 20%, and increased availability and reliability.  The really big payoff is an estimated savings of US$222 million over the lifetime of the project.

 

PESTECH International Berhad, the winner of a Year in Infrastructure award, used geocoordinated digital design for the development of a new substation Kratie and Kampong Cham, Cambodia.  The decision to use geocordinated design technology for this project was partially motivated by the requirement that the company would not only be responsible for designing and building the substation but also for operating it for a period of 25 years before transferring it to the utility.

 

A number of projects in the Netherlands have been initiated by Rijkswaterstaat (RWS), the Dutch highway authority, using a design-build-finance-maintain (DBFM) approach. The Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) board is convinced of the benefits of BIM and BIM/geospatial integration and rolled out BIM/geospatial for four DBFM projects with the intention to require BIM on all DBFM-contracts in the future. Royal BAM Group nv / BAM Infraconsult was responsible for several of these projects.  A DBFM project at BAM starts with 2D geographic data that is visualized through a GIS web portal. The web portal gives everyone on the team an early perspective on the project site including underground utilities and aboveground structures before design begins. During the tender process the geospatial data is combined with 3D data including 3D representations of nearby natural and man-made features as well as proposed designs to create a 3D environment for assessing alternative designs. The 3D environment improves collaboration among the team members as well as enabling better communication with the client through 3D visualization of proposed designs. After award, the first step is conducting LiDAR scans of the site/proposed route. At completion of construction, the data collected during design and construction is migrated to an integrated GIS + asset management system system to support maintenance activities. 

 

In Canada public–private partnership (P3) have been remarkably successful for building and maintaining infrastructure. For EllisDon, a major construction and building services company, integrated BIM + geospatial is considered best practices on full lifecycle projects P3 projects in Canada.  EllisDon was involved in its first P3 project in Canada fifteen years ago. Since then the P3 business has grown and now P3 is a big part of EllisDon's business. For P3 projects EllisDon builds a wide variety types of structures including hospitals. In the P3 world the contractor often shares the risk of operating and/or maintaining a facility for an extended period. This means that people who are going to be running and managing a facility need to be involved in designing the facility right from the beginning. It is necessary to cost out the lifecycle of each piece of equipment whether it be a carpet, baseboard or cooling unit because you have to be able to maintain it and at the end of the 30 year period you are expected to turn over a hospital that looks brand new. For this reason P3 projects are very different from design+build projects.

 

AECOM, which is a US$18.2 billion a year firm in the construction sector and has been ranked for eight years running it has been ranked #1 in Engineering News Record‘s “Top 500 Design Firms”, uses BIM + GIS on design, build, finance and operate (DBFO) projects around the world.  At AECOM, the discussion has shifted from CAD/BIM alone to include geospatial and its capabilities specifically for design, build finance and operate (DBFO) projects. This mirrors the Dutch experience with design, build, finance and maintain (DBFM) projects encouraged by the Dutch highway authority. AECOM has found that by adding real world coordinates they increase the value and types of data for all stakeholders across the entire lifecycle. Integrated geospatial + BIM connects data types together. BIM holds the utility content and GIS is a visual platform for maintenance linked to a maintenance workflow. AECOM has applied this approach to the external campus of Denver International Airport, and to lease management at Orlando, Hong Kong, and South West Florida international airports. For the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) in Hong Kong AECOM developed and maintains a central repository with district-wide data from various sources including all operational data - architectural planning and engineering- for the district. The advantage of an integrated BIM+GIS approach based on a centralized integration of information is that it allows the client to make strategic decisions during the design, build and operate phases of the construction lifecycle.

BIM+geospatial interoperability

Fashioning AEC and geospatial data into an efficient data flow from planning through design and construction to operations and maintenance represented a challenge that remains a problem for owners.  The Between The Poles blog is over ten years old and one of the persistent themes from the very beginning in 2006 was the challenge of integrating CAD and GIS data and applications in an efficient workflow (some examples; 2006, 2007, 2008 ). It is indicative of the importance of the integration of BIM and geospatial data and technologies that Autodesk and ESRI, 800 lb gorillas in their respective areas of AEC and GIS, have announced an agreement (for the second time) to collaborate to help bridge the gap between CAD/BIM and GIS/geospatial. 

 

Over the past decade, there has been impressive progress in developing open standards for the integration of geospatial and AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) views of city infrastructure which provides a standards-based basis for full lifecycle management from design through to operations and maintenance of infrastructure projects. 

 

The Netherlands has led in the development and application of open BIM+geospatial standards‎ in the construction industry. The Netherlands has created a BIM Gateway that is intended to be a national portal for information about open BIM standards including related geospatial standards. 

In the AEC world Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are the open and neutral data format standard for the exchange of building information models (BIM) that is widely used in the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction)  sector.  The IFC standard was developed and is supported by buildingSMART International.   The IFC BIM standard is used in the construction industry in many countries and is mandated in countries such as Finland.  The first versions of IFC were intended for buildings (vertical BIM).  Recently buildingSMART initiated the IFC for Infrastructure project to extend the IFC standard to support linear transportation infrastructure (horizontal BIM or BIM for Infrastructure) such as rail, road, bridges, and tunnels. 

In the geospatial world a widely used international geospatial standard for cities is CityGML.  Thomas Kolbe and co-workers are the developers of the CityGML standard that has been adopted by the Open Geospatial Consortium.  Kolbe et al. are translating a vision of the city as an interactive system comprised of functional components, utility networks connecting components, and interdependencies between utility networks into standards-based intelligent models that can be used to analyze urban environments for a variety of purposes including risk- and disaster management energy consumption, carbon balancing and city life-cycle management.

Currently CityGML includes 3D geometry, topology, semantics, and appearance for urban environments. CityGML also supports a standard mechanism for adding extensions, called Application Domain Extensions (ADEs).  There are several Application Domain Extensions (ADEs) that have been developed to extend CityGML to other domains.  For example,  I blogged about a basic extension UtilityNetworksADE that was proposed for city utility networks.  The INSPIRE Data Specifications Annex III contains use case encodings and a data model for Buildings the development of which was strongly influenced by CityGML. There have been attempts to integrate or at least develop a mapping between IFC and CityGML. 

A major breakthrough in bringing the architectural and geospatial views onto a common footing is the OGC LandInfra Conceptual Model developed by the OGC in cooperation with buildingSMART International and approved as an OGC standard in August, 2016.  LandInfra  was developed by Bentley Systems, Leica Geosystems, Trimble, Australian Government Department of Communications, Autodesk, Vianova Systems AS, and buildingSMART International and provides a unifying basis for land and civil engineering standards including the OGC's InfraGML and buildingSmart International's IFC for infrastructure standards.  

buildingSmart International's IFC-Alignment project uses this common conceptual model of alignments for roads, railways, tunnels and bridges.  The objectives of the IFC-Alignment project is to enable the exchange of alignment information through the full infrastructure lifecyle from planning through design and construction to asset management. On the geospatial side  InfraGML is the OGC's application schema supporting land development and civil engineering infrastructure facilities.

Open source support for AEC/geospatial interoperability

Where there are recognized open standards, there are more often then not open source projects supporting those standards.  mago3D is a new open source 3D geo-platform.  It is open source and integrates many well-known open source geospatial products and APis.  The importance of this technology is that it shows that it is possible using the available open source, geospatial APis and tools - together with some genuine innovative development - to create an open, non-proprietary 3D geospatial platform for integrating geospatial and BIM. Given the critical importance of addressing the cultural and technical divide between the AEC and geospatial worlds, a viable open source alternative is essential for developing the innovative solutions to the challenge of interfacing the two worlds. 

Bentley has announced that it intends to build its products supporting digital twins around an open source project already on Github called iModel.js.  Bentley is committing its resources to developing an ecosystem around iModel.js. To quote Keith Bentley this is a huge change in direction for Bentley although Bentley had puts its toes in the open source water previously.  Bentley used open source geospatial components to develop a new front-end for its leading road and rail asset management system AssetWise Lifecycle Information Management solution (ALIM).  Bentley has also partnered with AGI to support the open source Cesium project.

Conclusion

As owners see the advantages of design, build, operate and/or maintain projects and are beginning to changing their procurement practices, construction companies are changing their  business processes to optimize facility maintenance and operation.  Construction companies that have taken on the challenge of design, build, operate and maintain projects are realizing that there are significant benefits from an integrated BIM+geospatial approach to full lifecycle construction.   The advantages of an integrated BIM+geospatial approach have remained for the most part company internal.  Now it appears that the word is getting out.  Standards organizations in both the AEC and geospatial worlds are making progress on BIM+geospatial interoperability.  Major software vendors Autodesk and ESRI have announced an agreement to partner for greater interoperability between their products.  The open source community is also addressing the issue of BIM+geospatial interoperability. We are now beginning to see data from real world projects that offer quantitative evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.