Between the Poles

Estonia developing a national digital twin to increase construction productivity

Estonia is well known as one of the most digital countries in Europe.  At the GEOBIM 2020 conference this morning Christopher-Robin Raitviir, of the Estonian Department of Digital Construction in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, described how Estonia is adopting a BIM-based building permit process which is contributing to the development of a  national 3D digital twin.  The business objective behind these initiatives is to improve construction productivity by a factor of three.

The objective of the digital permitting process is to speed up permitting and raise the level of compliance enforced by the process. The digital permitting application accepts BIM models in IFC format and then applies rule-based and algorithm-based checks to ensure compliance with national standards.  For example, a standard for door size can be checked automatically and any doors that are not compliant are highlighted in red and identified and visualized in the 3D model making it easy to identify and correct problematic doors.  After permitting approval building designs are deposited in the National Building Registry.  This is interesting because it addresses a widespread problem; what to do with designs after the permit has been issued.  The designs have been submitted as part of a building permit application and have been publicly available for a period of time.  They contain important information that can be very useful for emergency responders and for other purposes.  The designs are often left to molder away in the basements of municipal governments because of uncertainty about ownership - even though the designs have been publicly available during the permitting process, access after permitting is often restricted because the information is considered to be proprietary.  Currently the models in the National Building Registry are designs, but the ultimate goal is for it to contain accurate as-builts.

The Estonian National Digital Twin was initiated in 2018 and includes buildings, roads and other transportation infrastructure such as rail and airports, and, remarkably, underground utility networks.  This data is publicly available and buildings, transportation links and utility networks can be selected for download in CityGML and other formats.

This is a remarkable initiative on a national scale and is similar in many ways to Singapore which has had a sustained effort to improve the speed and comprehensiveness of the permitting process by requiring digital BIM models.

Innovative solution efficiently captures accurate underground utility as-builts during construction

Most of underground utility damage during construction is attributable to incomplete, inaccurate and out of date records and network documentation. This data is the result of an inefficient, error-prone, and paper-based information flow from engineering, through construction crews, and resulting in "as-builts" of uncertain quality which eventually form the utility's repository of record, typically in a GIS.  Recently a mobile solution has been developed that ensures that centimetre-level accurate as-builts are efficiently captured in the field in real-time. By digitalizing and automating the collection and validation of all construction data, accurate and up-to-date as-builts become the new normal.  Already used by over half of the 20 largest energy companies in the US, the Locusview system is being extended to support natural gas utilities, electric power utilities and telecom.

Background

Without accurate maps of underground infrastructure, every construction project has the potential to become an expensive disaster site. In the U.S. there are between 400,000 and 800,000 incidents of underground utility damage every year. Every year there are injuries and fatalities attributable to underground utility damage during construction. According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) missing or inaccurate location information about underground utilities is a major source of highway construction project delays. The drag on the U.S. economy resulting from underground utility damage is estimated to be at least $50 billion annually.

Inefficient, error prone construction information flow

90% of underground utility damage during construction is attributable to incomplete, inaccurate and out of date records maintained by utilities and telecoms as well as data format issues including paper and digital ink (pdf).  The reason for unreliable records of network infrastructure can be found in an information flow that is found at every utility and telecom.

The design-build-maintain information flow begins with an engineer and drafter producing a design, typically a CAD drawing, which is printed for construction contractors to use in the field in installing new underground network infrastructure. Typically the design is based solely on above-ground surveys because information about existing underground infrastructure is unreliable or missing. The construction contractor may attempt to follow the paper design drawing, but for a variety of reasons what actually ends up in the ground differs from what was designed.  The design drawing, nominally an "as-built" but typically an “as-designed”, is then returned to the records management/network documentation group who enter it into the utility's GIS where it forms the permanent record of the utility or telecom's network infrastructure. This process is slow and error-prone and backlogs of as-builts waiting to be entered into the GIS stretch into months. The result is that utility and telecom GIS data is often inaccurate, out-of-date and incomplete.

Accurate as-builts are becoming mandatory

To address the problem of unreliable as-builts and the associated human and economic consequences several governments have enacted legislation and regulations requiring the submission of accurate as-builts.  Montana has recently revised its statutes governing the installation of utilities on state highway right-of-ways.  An updated Administrative Rule mandates that as part of a new permitting process accurate electronic as-builts must be submitted to the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) upon completion of construction.  To ensure accuracy the regulations require that the as-builts be stamped by a licensed professional engineer (PE) or professional land surveyor (PLS). 

In 2017 the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) released a standard and specifications for the procedure and practice of utility surveying in Singapore.  The standard specifies that after installing utilities and prior to filling the trenches an as-built survey must be performed by a registered surveyor to capture the location of the utilities with horizontal accuracy of ±100mm and vertical accuracy of ±100mm.  In addition the standard specifically identifies the survey equipment to be used; total station, GNSS Real Time Kinematic (RTK), or 3D laser scanning.  This standard is not mandated, but provides a baseline to be incorporated in all government construction contracts.

In response to the requirement for accurate as-builts, the challenge for contractors is to capture accurate as-builts without adding to field crew workload and without impact to project schedules.

Digitalizing the construction information flow

Locusview was founded in 2014 as a spin-out of the US Gas Technology Institute (GTI) with industry funding to develop next-generation digital construction technology for the energy and telecom industry

Locusview has adopted a paperless, digital approach based on a mobile app that makes field crews the nexus for efficiently capturing accurate as-built information.  The user-friendly mobile application makes it easy and even attractive for crews in the field to move from a manual, paper-based process to one in which all construction data is digitally captured and validated in real-time during construction.  In addition to ensuring that as-builts accurately represent what was actually built in the field, this approach reduces time and costs in field data collection, reduces the time required to prepare as-builts for submission, and ensures that data gets into the GIS faster.

During construction field crews use the Locusview Mobile app with high accuracy GPS and barcode scanners to capture as-builts, track material usage, capture photos and support other field operations such as joints, splices and welds. But the app doesn’t just capture the asset information, it also validates that the information is complete and accurate according to the company’s data requirements and construction standards. Locusview captures material data faster and more accurately with automated feature creation and attribute generation using barcode scanning. In the case of gas utilities information on all welds and joints needs to be recorded because if done incorrectly welds and joints can lead to leaks and other problems. Locusview helps ensure that these processes are carried out correctly by capturing real-time pictures and by validating welder qualifications (OQ).

High accuracy GPS is implemented in several ways.  RTK base stations can be used for real-time high accuracy GPS. In GPS denied areas a laser range finder can be deployed. Alternatively control points can be used to ensure accurate georeferencing.

Back in the office the Locusview Web application enables visibility into the real-time status of projects, making it easier to assess progress and to project revenue streams. It also provides for data validation with automated warnings and notifications of violations; review and approve pre-configured check lists; exporting data to GIS, ERP and asset management applications; reports generation and project closeout.

Benefits

There are several critically important benefits that Locusview provides.  Most critically it provides for real-time reality capture, ensuring construction quality by enabling survey-grade accurate location, attributes and material data to be recorded by construction crews as new infrastructure is installed.  This ensures that as-builts are accurate and material usage is verified and traceable. It reduces the time to prepare as-builts for submission and speeds up the process of getting the as-built information into the utility's GIS by up to 70%, which is also crucial for emergency repairs. Having full visibility over the project’s status information in real-time using Locusview’s web tool makes it easier to track project progress and to project revenue streams. The field visibility also enables supervising the work remotely, which is helpful during Covid-19 times. In addition, time and costs are reduced for capturing and managing construction data by eliminating manual paper-based processes.

Just as importantly Locusview ensures that field construction information is captured efficiently. Maintaining a survey team on site to survey newly installed pipes and cables can be prohibitively expensive especially for smaller projects.  In actual projects it has been found that Locusview can reduce surveying costs by 50%.

In summary, utilities and telecoms use the technology to build a high-quality digital twin, to support asset management strategies and to ensure regulatory compliance.

Electric power case study

VPI, a Charge company, specializes in the construction of utility-grade electric power distribution infrastructure. During a recent major project involving 35,000 feet of open trenches and 35 construction sites for a large electric power utility in California the as-built requirements changed for both above and below-ground distribution infrastructure. Among the new requirements: as-built locations had to be accurate to ± 0.2 feet (± 6 cm).   One of VPI's major concerns was the cost of keeping a professional survey crew on-site at all times to capture the location of infrastructure to survey accuracy.

VPI looked for an alternative that would lower costs and provide the flexibility of not having to coordinate with outside survey crews.  VPI's main concerns were how to efficiently meet the high accuracy requirements, how to optimize the training and education of field staff, and avoiding adding to the work load of their field crews.

Locusview implemented their solution for VPI to meet the new high-accuracy GPS as-builting requirement that included the mobile app, web app and additional RTK base station coverage. The mobile app was found to be easy-to-use after only four hours of training for field crews. Most importantly using the mobile app instead of a traditional survey crew did not add to field crew workload and was able to be implemented without impact to schedule. Remarkably for this type of project the process only required 10 days from first contact to beginning data collection. 

It enabled 16,362 feet of linear electric power assets to be mapped with a median accuracy ± 0.14 feet (4 cm).  Nearly 5,000 photos were captured for future reference. With the web application crew foremen were able to monitor construction progress in real-time to ensure data collection was complete and met their requirements before back filling trenches.  Avoiding the need to coordinate with outside survey crews resulted in a time savings of ~20% in project management for closeouts and reduced time in the field. Overall VPI realized cost savings of ~50% from reduced man-hours.

Conclusion

This remarkable application provides a solution to the decade-old challenge of efficiently capturing high accuracy as-builts in real-time and eliminating the problem of as-built backlogs.  Gas is the most dangerous underground utility and it is not surprising that the development of the Locusview solution was fostered and heavily adopted by the gas distribution industry.  Jurisdictions are beginning to require high accuracy as-builts from energy companies, electric power utilities, water utilities and telecom as a basis for a digital twin. To capture accurate as-builts efficiently is the challenge that Locusview addresses. The VPI case study shows that Locusview is able to provide efficient solutions for capturing accurate as-builts without adding to field crew workload and without impact to project schedules. This solution offers important benefits for any field constructed linear asset.

Geospatial+BIM are a major contributor transforming construction

Geospatial and BIM have been identified as key technologies in the digital transformation of the global construction sector which has been underperforming for decades.  A recent report estimates the size of the contribution of geospatial+BIM technologies to the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector.

The $10 trillion global construction industry is facing a crisis. For many of the world's advanced economies including Japan, Germany, U.S., South Korea, and U.K. construction productivity has been stagnant or even declining for decades. Virtually all of the funding for infrastructure was sourced from government who were looking for a social return on the investment. Since the mid 2000s, an increasing proportion of investment in infrastructure has come from private sources; pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds which together manage over $60 trillion. These sources of investment are expecting a financial return and that is driving a growing investment in construction technology to improve productivity. A McKinsey report, Imagining construction’s digital future, presents data that shows 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. The report finds that construction has been slow to adopt process and technological innovations. R&D spending in construction lags 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. A McKinsey Global Institute study compared the degree of digitalization of nearly 30 industries and concluded that construction ranked right at the bottom with hunting.

But there are signs of a change. 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.Venture capital investment in technology startups in the construction sector is growing. 2018 was an inflection point with venture capital investment in the construction sector quadrupling. Two of the technology sectors that McKinsey & Company suggest will be key in the digital transformation of construction are geospatial and BIM.

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 and analytics that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.

A recent study by Geospatial Media Analysis, GeoBIM Market in AEC Industry: Technology Trends, Value Propositions, Market Size, Readiness Index, and Maturity Model, has estimated the market size of geospatial+BIM technology in the global AEC sector which contributes about US$11 trillion to the global GDP.  It is estimated that the cumulative geospatial industry's value in the AEC sector is US$71.28 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach US$117.59 by 2023. The cumulative BIM market size is estimated to be US$7.9 billion in 2019 and growing at a CAGR of 11.06%.  The impact of geospatial+BIM technolgies on construction are significant.  For example, it is estimated that geospatial+BIM solutions reduce average design time by 22.2% contributing to overall savings of 5.9% on small scale construction projects. For large scale construction projects GEOBIM solutions are estimated to contribute approximately 13.1 % in overall project savings.

To make the key GEOBIM technologies concrete the report describes a GEOBIM Maturity Model that makes it possible to evaluate and assess the ability of an AEC firm to operate in an integrated geospatial+BIM environment. The GEOBIM Maturity Model extends across the entire construction lifecycle from planning, through design and construction to operations and maintenance.  The levels of the GEOBIM Maturity Model increase as more innovation takes place in digital GEOBIM technology and the importance of the integration of geospatial and BIM technologies is recognized. For example, for surveying traditional theodolite and chain is characteristic of Level 0 in the maturity model.  As more modern digital technologies are adopted levels rise; total stations (Level 1), laser scanning and GNSS, (Level 2) to mobile scanning, drones, ground penetrating radar and other underground locating and mapping technologies (Level 3).  For planning and design, the increasing use of digital technologies compared to drawings and paper maps (Level 0), include CAD and digital maps (Level 1), BIM and 3D point clouds (Level 2) to digital twins of both above and below ground infrastructure and mixed reality (Level 3). For construction, traditional constuction machinery and paper drawings are being replaced by BIM models, digital geospatial maps and automated construction with GNSS, and prefab and additive building.

A survey 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. Evidence suggests that full lifecyle construction including FM is gaining traction in the construction industry. 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.

In conclusion real world data and analytics are now revealing the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.

Thank you to Ananya Narain for bringing the GEOBIM Market in AEC Industry report to my attention.

Above and underground infrastructure comprise Rotterdam's open digital twin

The City of Rotterdam is developing a digital twin of the city.  3D vector and image data of the above- and underground infrastructure, zoning regulations and city by-laws, data streams from real-time sensors, applications and simulations will comprise Rotterdam's digital twin. It is envisaged that the digital twin will enable the city to assess the impact of proposed changes in bylaws and regulations by simulating them before they are implemented. Rotterdam, and in fact the whole of the Netherlands have adopted transparency and open data as a pillar of government and are basing 3D models on open national and international standards, intend for the 3D data to be open and accessible to the public, and intend to use open source software wherever possible.

Many cities have 3D models of their aboveground infrastructure; buildings, transportation networks, parks, and other infrastructure typically captured in 2D or 3D imagery from overflights or in 2D GIS maps.  Imagery is not very smart and extracting 3D vector objects such as building footprints, heights, profiles and transportation networks requires sophisticated post-processing.  Even more importantly, underground infrastructure is usually neglected, even though it is recognized that water and wastewater, energy (gas, electric power, and district heating),  and communications (fibre and copper) networks provide the life blood of the city.

Rotterdam has been developing its 3D model, which underpins the digital twin, for several years.  Currently it contains street furniture such as street lights, trees and underground parts of street furniture, a large scale basemap, a complete map of underground networks of cables and pipes, buildings, and non-physical content such as zoning regulations and  bylaws.  The 3D model is kept in sync with data repositories maintained by city departments and others.  In the future it will also include real-time data streams from a variety of sensors. 

The 3D model is open, based on open standards and many of the applications that have been developed for it are open source projects. For example, visualizations rely on Cesium, an open source initiative which has just announced support for visualizing underground utilities, mines, and geological layers. The rationale for the data being based on open standards is that an standards-based environment creates an open data commons where developers can devote their time to developing innovative applications rather than spending time converting data from one format to another.

The Dutch 3D standard is an integration of CityGML Application Domain Extension (ADE) and the existing national IMGeo standard for large-scale representations of roads, water bodies, and land use. The Dutch Kadaster, Geonovum, the Netherlands Geodetic Commission and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment initiated a "3D Pilot NL" to develop a national 3D standard.  Existing intnernational standards including CityGML(Open Geospatial Consortium), IFC (buildingSMART), and others were investigated. The findings of the pilot  resulted in a national 3D standard implemented as a CityGML Application Domain Extension (ADE) that integrates the latest version of the existing Dutch national standard IMGeo 2.0. 

Current applications (virtualcitySYSTEMS, ESRI, IMAGEM and Unity) use the 3D model as input for analytics and visualization. One can imagine many use cases for the data in the Rotterdam 3D model. Among these three use cases have been identified as low-hanging fruit; climate adaptation, viewsheds and energy performance of buildings. 

Much of Rotterdam is below sea level and managing rain water accumulation during heavy rainfalls is a major issue. which affects building basements, subway entrances, low-lying roads, electrical transformers, and other infrastructure.  To address this problem, the concept of "water squares" has been developed and the 3D model used to determine the optimum location for these..  Water squares are open areas where water can safely be allowed to accumulate during heavy rainfalls to avoid overstressing storm sewers. 

In another application of the 3D model data, building data can be filtered and streamed to energy performance applications that provide insights into how buildings perform.

Open standards and open data also enables the sharing of data among cities in the Netherlands.  The Dutch Kadaster has developed an open 3D map of the whole of the Netherlands, with scales ranging from 1:500 to 1:25,000 in collaboration with academic, private sector, and public sector partners.  All data in the 3D map is built on the basis of open standards.  The map was created by combining existing 2D data with the Elevation Model of the Netherlands resulting from a LiDAR survey which covers the whole of the Netherlands with a resolution of eight elevation points per square meter.

Open data and open standards also relate to a critical issue that is of growing importance. Many governments have adopted transparency and open data as a cornerstone of democratic policy.  But often digital twins for smart cities are being developed by private-sector firms or by public-private initiatives.  As William Davies points out in Nervous States, "the IT infrastructure used to build e-geovernment projects or "smart cities" comes from the commercial sector, and the companies that provide it often retain control over the data that results." 

For example, recently a joint Alphabet/Google/Sidewalk Labs and City of Toronto initiative to develop a smart city on Toronto's waterfront foundered and was cancelled.  One of the reasons, it is argued, is that a technology giant such as Google (or Facebook, Amazon, ...) is not a vendor in the traditional sense, but a "surveillance capitalist" that collects and analyzes behavioural data captured from users for its own economic imperatives.  In the context of a smart city the opportunities for data collection from citizens and from systems such as water and wastewater, transit, waste removal, traffic management, and others are immense.  If this data is appropriated and becomes proprietary, it puts a private entity in a position to supplant democratic government, which doesn't have access to this huge volume of data and the analytics which extracts information from it.  Relying on open standards and ensuring that data is open and accessible to the public are essential to avoid citizens' and municipal data becoming proprietary.  Furthermore, using open source software and, I would add, open training data for machine learning applications helps avoid the problem of the analytics also becoming proprietary.

Based on a Webinar by Christian Veldhuis, Advisor City of Rotterdam, Rick Klooster, CCO, FUTURE INSIGHT and Antje Kunze, Director Sales & Marketing, virtualcitySYSTEMS.

New OpenGround product for sharing underground geotechnical data achieves over 500,000 boreholes

Unforeseen ground conditions are a major cause of delays in construction projects.  This year at the Year in Infrastructure event Bentley announced OpenGround a collection of applications for collecting, sharing, visualizing, analyzing, and accessing geotechnical information about the underground. It has already amassed a database of over 500 thousand boreholes. 

Reports from the National Economic Development Office (NEDO) found that 50% of commercial buildings and 37% of industrial buildings experienced delay due to unforeseen ground conditions.  There are two aspects to the problems associated with the subsurface.  One is geotechnics, soil, ground water, and geology conditions.  The other is the location of underground infrastructure, utilities, telecommunications and other cables and pipes.

Every construction project devotes considerable effort to discovering subsurface geotechnical conditions, but this data is used for the current project and rarely shared.  In the Netherlands an attempt is being made to address the problem by the Key Registry for the Subsurface (BRO) which came into force in January, 2018. The BRO registry ultimately will record 26 data types.  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.

In the UK the Dig to Share project, supported by Atkins, British Geological Survey (BGS) and Morgan Sindall, is addressing this problem. Its aim is to develop a fully digital workflow, which is accessible to the whole industry, to upload and access data from the BGS web-based system. This will be developed on top of the existing system hosted and maintained by BGS. 

Last year Bentley announced the acquisition of Keynetix, a UK-based provider of cloud-based software for capturing, visualizing, modeling, and sharing geotechnical data. This added to Bentley's products for the subsurface including borehole report management (gINT and HoleBASE) and geotechnical analysis applications (PLAXIS 3D and SoilVision) with which Bentley plans to enable a digital twin of the underground.

This year at the Year in Infrastructure 2019 event in Singapore Roger Chandler, Director of Product Management, GeoTechnical Information Management, announced a new product OpenGround (based on Keynetix.cloud).  OpenGround is a cloud-based SaaS application with a web API that supports real-time logging of subsurface geotechnical data and enables sharing this data over the web.  In the very short time since OpenGround became available it has already amassed a database of over 500 thousand boreholes. 

Developing a roadmap for a reliable map of underground utilities in Singapore

In 2017, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), Singapore-ETH Centre, and the Geomatics Department of the City of Zürich started the Digital Underground project as a first step toward achieving an accurate, current, and complete map of subsurface utilities in Singapore. I had a chance to chat with Rob van Son, of the  Singapore-ETH Centre and Project Lead of the DU project, and in this article we describe progress to date and the next steps toward developing a reliable map of underground utilities in Singapore.

A number of years ago Singapore recognized the urgency for a map of its underground utilities for a number of purposes; planning, design, construction, ownership and maintenance of underground infrastructure. Recently the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Singapore unveiled its Draft Master Plan 2019 to guide Singapore's development for the next 10 to 15 years which identified increased use of underground space as one of its strategies to create more space for Singapore's growing needs. In 2017 the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) started the Digital Underground project. The project aims to establish a reliable map of underground utilities in Singapore. Part of the first phase of the project was an experiment which applied a combined LiDAR and ground penetrating radar array to capture above and below-scans of various areas in Singapore. The experiment contributed to an assessment of the quality of Singapore's underground infrastructure information and the feasibility of large area utility mapping techniques. The first phase of the project resulted in a set of recommendations for moving forward toward a reliable digital twin of Singapore's underground utilities. These represent a comprehensive checklist of how at a national and city level we can begin to address the pressing problem of creating a reliable digital twin of underground utilities.

Singapore has recognized that insufficient quality of information about the subsurface can lead to poor decisions, unnecessarily lengthy planning processes, increased cost of construction, more litigation and missed business opportunities.

When designing and building new utilities and other facilities underground, a reliable map is needed to plan for the optimal use of scarce and often already congested space and avoid utility damage causing loss of service and creating delays in the construction process. Land ownership regulations require an accurate record of the alignment of subsurface utilities in order to minimize conflicts in the use of underground space.

Although professionals from land development agencies, utility owners, and engineers in Singapore are able to access various sources of utility information, this information cannot be considered reliable. It lacks accuracy, does not always represent the latest and current situation, and may not be complete, lacking information on legacy utilities. Furthermore, data quality itself is a largely unmanaged and unknown aspect, leading to uncertainty. Recently in Singapore, important steps have been taken to ensure that all newly built utilities are captured according to the same standard and exclusively by qualified persons. However, the lack of quality of existing information remains to be reconciled. Similar to the U.S. and the UK, in Singapore the contractor has full liability for damage to underground infrastructure, which means there is little motivation from the perspective of liabilities for network operators to improve the quality of their location information about underground utilities.

Since its release in 2017, the Standard and Specifications for Utility Survey in Singapore has progressively been mandated for all newly built utilities by utility regulatory authorities. The standard is for open trench cases only. It covers the techniques to be employed, the data to be captured, and the requirement for a qualified professional (a Registered Surveyor at the Land Surveyors Board of Singapore) to do the job.

In 2017, the Singapore Land Authority, Singapore-ETH Centre, and the Geomatics Department of the City of Zürich started the Digital Underground project with an initial objective of developing a road map for achieving a reliable map of subsurface utilities. One of the first activities was to assess the state of the art for reality data capture technologies and how these might be used to improve the accuracy of underground data for both new and existing buried utilities. The DU project is looking at the whole workflow relating to underground infrastructure from data capture to application which is a different approach from most of the rest of the world which takes a bury and find it approach.

For new infrastructure, non-conventional reality capture techniques were documented. For open trench utilities, this included the use of handheld laser scanners. For trenchless construction, a technique for determining location by pulling a gyroscopic mapping device through pipes was investigated.

For existing utilities the latest ground penetrating radar (GPR) technology was assessed to determine the effectiveness of GPR as a mapping technique with Singapore's soil conditions. Singapore soils are not particularly good for GPR, which is able to penetrate down to 2 meters. The DU project collaborated with Leica Geosystems and IDS GeoRadar to deploy the Pegasus:Stream, a combined LiDAR and ground penetrating radar array, for the first time in Southeast Asia. It was used to capture above and below-scans of nine distinct areas in Singapore. In the Toa Payoh estate, which has undergone continuous development since the 1960s, data was captured along a 1.8 kilometre four-lane road at a speed of 15 kilometres per hour. Scanning of the entire area took five hours. Post-processing of the data back in the office required three weeks. A total of 109 subsurface pipes and ducts were detected in the area. By comparing the detected utilities to available information on existing utilities, it was found that in older areas the location of a lot of underground infrastructure was not recorded or does not have an accurate location. Only around 30% of detected utilities could be identified using the existing information. For newer areas, this figure was higher, but many detected utilities linking to new developments were not mapped yet.

Data modeling was a second key objective of the first part of the project. The goal was to develop a data model that enables the captured subsurface infrastructure data to meet the requirements of end users use cases. With the data collected with LiDAR and GPR, the Digital Underground team explored how available map data and the subsurface utilities detected during the pilot could be combined to create a 3D model that could be fused with Singapore's cadastral maps. The results were showcased in a demonstrator application highlighting the value of reliable 3d information subsurface utilities for land administration purposes.

The invaluable results of the first part of the project resulted in a set of recommendations for moving forward toward a reliable digital twin of Singapore's underground utilities. These provide a set of high level requirements with which at a national level we can begin to address the pressing problem of accurately mapping underground utilities. The first main recommendation is to establish a single, consolidated national map of subsurface utilities that enables data quality management. This is underway in the UK and is part of a national strategy for a national infrastructure map that has been initiated in the U.S. Secondly a national mapping strategy for accurate mapping of subsurface utilities was proposed that is supported by two pillars. The first is to ensure that all newly built utilities are captured accurately. The second is to capitalize on data capture opportunities during the life cycle of existing utilities. For example, capital construction projects are expected to benefit directly from utility mapping in the design phase, and the captured information can be consolidated for use beyond their scope and timeline. Other events, such as visibility or accessibility of utilities during trial trench, maintenance and rehabilitation works may provide suitable data capture opportunities that can each be matched with the appropriate data capture technique. Another key requirement is accessibility, that this data is available to the people that need it, i.e. land administrators, planners, designers, utilities and telecoms, construction contractors, and emergency responders, but in a way that protects privacy, does not reveal information about networks that could be used competitively, and prevents misuse.

The first part of the Digital Underground project was just completed 2 months ago. Funding has been approved for Part 2 of the project. Over the next two years, SLA and its partners intend to further develop the foundations of an ecosystem that supports and enables a reliable map of subsurface utilities. The project will cover a wide array of themes such as governance, legislation, capacity development, data capture standards, and a prototype platform for quality control and consolidation of 3D utility information for planning and land administration applications. One of its early results is the launch of Digital Underground Connect: a community of practice for subsurface utility mapping together with Bentley Digital Advancement Academies.

 

Is legacy GIS failing network infrastructure operating companies ?

I thought it would be worthwhile to include here an expanded version of my contribution to a webinar that IQGeo presented last week with a provocative title that I think goes right to the nub of the challenge that telecom and utility companies are facing in developing digital twins of their network assets.  In this new world there is an exponentially increasing volume of real-time data and less and less time to conduct analyses and make decisions.  Telecoms and utilities and finding that their legacy GISs are simply not up to the task.  The webinar aimed to shed some light on the problems that telecoms and utilities are facing with their legacy GISs.  The webinar speakers were Linda Stevens, Managing Partner at 51by1, Peter Batty, Chief Technology Officer at IQGeo, and myself. It was moderated by Steve Tongish of IQGeo.  The full webinar is available on demand here.

Geoff Zeiss opening comments

Common symptoms of the failure of legacy GIS include as-built backlogs stretching into months, inaccurate as-builts submitted by contractors, limited updates from the field, frequent underground infrastructure damage during construction, inability to connect customers to transformers or feeders, and repeats (multiple truck rolls because of inaccurate information about field assets).

As-built backlogs are the result of a construction information flow involving different organizations with different tools.  Engineering uses CAD, construction relies on paper drawings, and records management manages data in a GIS.  The major factor contributing to as-built backlogs is the decades old lack of interoperability between CAD and GIS. The result is that the GIS is inaccurate and permanently out-of-date.

During the webinar there was a poll Poll asking webinar participants how long is their average as-built update backlog time?
8 % Less than 1 week
8 % Less than 1 month
21% Less than 3 months
25% More than 3 months
38% Don’t know or not relevant

It is indicative of the problem that of those from utilities or telecoms only a quarter had a backlog of less than a week.  (There were a significant number of people participating in session who were vendors or service organizations for whom the question did not apply hence the 38% response to the last option.)

Another problem relating to as-builts is lack of quality control. Construction contractors often submit as-designeds rather than what was actually constructed.  Contractors may also red-line as-builts to indicate the difference between the design and what was constructed, but these are often sketches rather than accurately surveyed data.  The result is that sometimes it is uncertain on which side of a street a cable or pipe has been installed or whether it was actually installed on private property instead of on the public right-of-way.

If there was an effective feedback mechanism these problems might be ameliorated over time, but getting updates from the field into the GIS in a timely fashion is a challenge for many utilities and telecoms.  I have encountered telecoms and utilities where updates from field staff did not get into the GIS at all or were seriously backlogged. Not seeing updates reflected in the GIS in a timely manner discourages field staff from reporting changes and errors.  The result is that over time the quality of GIS data degrades.

Inaccurate GIS data is responsible for 400,000 incidents of underground infrastructure damage every year in the U.S.  This represents a serious risk for workers and the public. Just a week ago there was an explosion in Murrieta, Los Angeles which left one person dead and fifteen injured.  In the last few months there have been explosions in downtown San Francisco, Durham NC, and I could go on.  It is also a multi billion dollar drag on the economy and is responsible for many construction projects running over budget and over schedule.

Missing or incomplete connectivity linking customers to transformers and feeders directly affects outage duration.  It is not uncommon for a utility not to know the correct connectivity for 15-20 % of its customers ( I would add that knowing the phase for each customer is often a bigger problem).  Not being able to identify a damaged upstream device when a customer reports an outage or being able to identify which customers are affected by a failed device directly impacts outage duration and restoration (SAIDI and CAIDI).

Inaccurate GIS data is also responsible for "repeats", where more than one crew trip is required to maintain a piece of equipment or fix a problem.  Typically it involves one trip to determine where an asset is and its details and another to return with the required equipment to resolve the problem.  This also impacts outage duration statistics.

Other symptoms include redundant data where the same information is maintained simultaneously in different GISs by different groups within a utility and difficulty in reporting accurate situation assessments of network assets to management and regulators.

Question: - Utilities devote huge resources to maintaining redundant geospatial data in different systems, much of which is inaccurate and out of date. This unreliable GIS data directly affects outage statistics, field staff efficiency, the reliability of reporting to regulators, and the ability of management to get an accurate perspective on operations. Why has this situation persisted for decades?

There are several reasons for this problem persisting as long as it has.  Among the top technical reasons is the incompatibility between CAD and GIS data. An important contributing factor is that multiple organizations and departments are involved in the workflow.  A fundamental problem is procurement practices that don't treat data as important as the physical assets themselves. An enlightened procurement policy can resolve this problem. I worked with a large Brazilian telecom that enforced a policy that contractors were only paid when as-builts were in the GIS and verified.  Another fundamental problem is that many regulators have not recognized the value of accurate, up-to-date GIS data.  I only know of a few that recognized how important this is for utility operations.  For example, about a decade ago ANEEL, the electric power regulator in Brazil, imposed a rule that all utility GISs had to be 95% accurate or better.  This was enforced by requiring frequent audits of utility GISs with penalties imposed if 95% was achieved.

Another important reason that this problem has persisted is that in some countries including the U.S. and the U.K. there is a liability structure that invariably assigns responsibility to the construction contractor for damage to underground infrastructure during construction.  This provides little motivation for telecom and utility network operators to improve the reliability of their GIS data.  In some countries such as France liability is shared between the telecom or utility operator and the contractor.  For example, if a contractor hits a utility facility that is shown accurately on utility GIS maps, it is the contractor's liability.  Conversely if a contractor hits a utility facility that placed incorrectly on utility GIS maps, it becomes the utility's liability.

Question: What is the impact of reality capture on how we create and maintain geospatial data? Can capture of network connectivity be fully automated ?

I have seen estimates of telecom and utility GIS accuracy of 70-80 % or even lower.  With recent advances in reality capture a question that utilities are asking themselves is whether it is more cost effective to conduct a complete reinventory of its network assets, to recapture the location and attributes of its field equipment, or to try to correct the existing GIS data.  Recently a very interesting pilot was carried out by Duquesne Light in western Pennsylvania.  It compared the network model derived from a standard walking inventory with a model derived from LiDAR/photo data captured with a truck and post-processed in the office.  It found that the model based on LiDAR scans was just as reliable as the walking inventory and much safer.  In addition the LiDAR scan provided significant side benefits. For example, It could be used for a joint-use audit. The LiDAR data also allowed clearances between poles and cables to buildings and structures to be accurately measured to ensure regulatory clearances and to verify third party attachment heights. 

In a related development machine learning is being applied to automatically recognize different types of telecom and utility equipment in LiDAR and photo imagery including high resolution satellite imagery and to automate inspections for maintenance issues such as corrosion, vegetation encroachment, and other issues. To support this application of AI, EPRI is collecting training data sets for utility applications of machine learning.  A startup SiteSee claims that it can inspect telecommunications towers with a UAV and automatically analyze the resulting imagery for problems with antennas. I don't think that we are quite at the stage of network connectivity being routinely determined using these techniques, but I suspect that the day is fast approaching when this will be possible.

Question: Poor GIS data quality for underground assets within the utility industry can have direct and very serious consequences in injuries and lost lives, not to mention the huge financial impact in damages and fines [400 lives, thousands of injuries and a $50 billion drag on the U.S. economy arising from 400,000 cases of utility damage every year]. Can new tools for underground asset capture and the sharing of this data begin to mitigate these risks?

There are two major challenges in improving the reliability of our maps of underground utilities, remote sensing technology to detect them without excavation and sharing the information that is captured everyday about utilities exposed during construction excavation.  In the last few years there have been important advances in both areas.

One of the most versatile technologies for detecting underground utilities is ground penetrating radar (GPR).  It can detect underground objects that electromagnetic techniques can't and it is better at estimating depth than other technologies.  This makes it possible to generate 3D maps of underground utilities from GPR scans.  However, until now it has required a trained geotechnologist to interpret the radar scans. GPR arrays have typically been mounted on a pushcart making scans slow to acquire and hazardous for the operator.  In the last year or two new technologies have been developed that allow GPR scans to be acquired much faster using a vehicle.  With this approach there are no boots on the pavement making it much safer for the operator.  It is also much faster.  The most recent technology advance makes it possible to capture GPR scans using a vehicle travelling at up to 135 km/hour. Another advance is combining a GPR array with a LiDAR scanner on the same vehicle to capture below- and above-ground scans simultaneously.  A major advance is new GPR software processes multiple GPR scans to present a view of the underground that enables non-geotechnical professionals to interpret GPR scans.  These are very important advances in the detection technology and in democratizing its use.

In North America every state and most provinces have a government mandated one-call centre which requires anyone planning to excavate to call 811.  It requires all utilities and telecoms with services in the area of the excavation to paint the ground indicating the probable location of their cables and pipes. In the U.S. the locate industry is estimated to amount to billions of dollars annually.  But in general this information is not shared and the same underground assets may be located over and over again.  Recently there are initiatives at the city, regional, and national levels to share information about the underground.  The most recent is the National Underground Asset Registry (NUAR) in the U.K., supported by the Geospatial Commission, that is currently running two pilots in the Northeast of England and in central London.  In Belgium the KLIP initiative which has been running for a number of years was motivated by the 2003 gas explosion which caused multiple fatalities.  In the Netherlands a similar initiative KLIC for sharing the location of underground utilities was augmented in 2018 by a "key registry of the underground" (BRO) which mandates sharing geotechnical information discovered during drilling and construction excavation.  There has also been a pilot by the City of Chicago to share information captured during excavation with contractors.  An interesting experiment by Bentley placed low cost consumer cameras on a backhoe to photograph exposed utilities and used software to identify and georeference underground utilities exposed during excavation.  In another experiment exposed underground infrastructure together with accurately surveyed control points were photographed with smart phones and the images processed to identify and georeference underground utilities.

When viewed together the technical advances in GPR and the initiatives to share information about the underground are evidence of accelerating vendor investment in remote sensing hardware and software. In addition governments are beginning to show serious interest in finding ways to encourage the sharing of information about the location of underground assets.

Question: Why has there been so little change in the GIS industry in utilities and communications over the past twenty years? Why have there been no new entrants in this space?

A fundamental problem is that data has been valued less than the physical infrastructure itself.  The challenge of changing traditional construction practices is another.  I also believe that there has not been an awareness of the cost of unreliable GIS data among utilities and regulators. But with the growing interest in developing digital twins of network assets there is a growing awareness of the importance of accurate, real-time GIS data among regulators and utilities and telecoms.  The example of ANEEL in Brazil is evidence of how regulators can contribute to changing this.  As I have mentioned previously enlightened procurement policies can also have an important impact. Another factor that is harder to change is a liability structure relating to utility damage during construction that provides little motivation for telecoms and utilities to improve the quality of their location information about their underground assets.

Audience question: What are the principle differences between the GIS requirements for telecom and utility network operators? What can these different industries learn from each other?

In the U.S. since the breakup of AT&T, the development of cell technologies and the rise of the internet, telecom (including cable) has become extremely competitive.  This has engendered a focus on the customer that is still rare among electric power and gas utilities, and even more so among water utilities. This has led to the explosion in smart phone capabilities and smart phone apps. It also means that telecoms are reluctant to share information about the location of their network infrastructure.  This makes them reluctant to share information about their underground networks without assurance that this no more of this information is shared than is necessary.  Electric and gas utilities are generally more cooperative and more willing to share data.  Another major technical difference is that large telecom companies have led most industries in the development of IT technologies - remember the developments at Bell Labs.  Most electric power, gas and water utilities have not had much IT capability in-house, which is why there is high level of interest among small to medium sized utilities in software as a service (SaaS).  Another technical difference is that telecom data models are more much complex than utility models.  My rule of thumb has been, telecom data models involve hundreds of classes, electric maybe a maximum of 150, and gas and water less than 50.  This is changing with the rise of the smart grid with utility networks evolving to something closer to communications networks.

This suggests that utilities can learn a lot from the IT expertise of telecoms and in particular with the growth of smart grid from the complex data models and supporting applications developed by telecom firms.  They can also learn from the consumer-oriented focus represented by smart phones and smart phone apps.  Telecoms could learn from utilities about the benefits of sharing data, especially about the underground.

Audience question: What is the role of governments to improve the accessibility and interoperability of utility

As I have mentioned there is a growing awareness of the social and economic cost of not knowing where network assets are located or their condition.  Collecting and sharing this information does not necessarily require government involvement, but there are reasons why governments should be involved.  As I mentioned this is a sensitive issue for the very competitive telecom industry.  Any policy has to protect critical competitive information.  Secondly it can't simply push all the cost off on construction firms who already suffer from very low margins.  In the U.S. an important additional reason for government involvement is the Critical Infrastructure Protection act which restricts access to location and other information about network assets.  As I have mentioned a growing number of governments have gotten or are getting involved in encouraging or mandating the sharing of information about network assets. Furthermore in some countries there is discussion underway about a national infrastructure map (U.S.) or a national digital twin (U.K., Singapore and others).

Key takeaways

• There are important technology innovations among them reality capture for above and below ground and machine learning to detect and assess network assets that are poised to dramatically change the utility operating business.
• Governments are recognizing the economic and social costs of not knowing the location of network assets and are implementing policies to encourage or require the sharing of location information about network assets.

Improving and sharing geospatial information about the subsurface in England

NEDO estimates that about 50% of time over-runs on commercial building projects are caused by unforeseen ground conditions.* There are two aspects to the problems associated with the subsurface.  One is geotechnics, soil, ground water, and geology conditions.  The other is the location of underground infrastructure, utilities, telecommunications and other cables and pipes. There are growing government, private sector and standards initiatives in both of these areas in the U.K. to improve the information and sharing of information about the subsurface.

Social driver: Public safety

Public safety is an important social driver for improving knowledge about the underground.  I remember attending a Pipeline Industries Guild (PIG) conference in Birmingham, U.K. in 2005 where the focus of the entire event was to motivate the pipeline operators industry in England to voluntarily participate in a call-before-you-dig centre that would reduce the risk of damage to underground infrastructure during excavation.  There had been a near major disaster in Birmingham (Hunton Hill) when a gas company crew had attempted what was supposed to be a routine tap into a gas main to connect a new customer.  Three drill bits later, the crew knocked off.  Fortunately an ESSO contractor just happened to pass by and recognized that the gas crew had been attempting to tap into a high pressure fuel line.  At the conference the section of pipe with dimple caused by the gas crew was shown.  A number of experts described the the extent of the disaster that would have followed if the crew had tapped into the line.  The 2003 gas explosion in Belgium would have paled by comparison.  In just the last month in the Americas, there has been an explosion in downtown San Francisco, another one in Durham, North Carolina, one in downtown Sao Paulo, and an evacuation of a neighbourhood in Calgary, Canada when a 6" gas main was ruptured during excavation.

Economic driver: construction productivity

UK construction productivity compared to other sectors

The major problem facing the construction industry in advanced economies is productivity which has plateaued or even declined over the past 40 years. With the growth of private investment in infrastructure, improved productivity has become urgent. McKinsey has made the case that BIM and geospatial are key technologies in transforming construction.  The U.K. has been a leader in the digitalization of the construction industry, mandating that from 2016 all public construction in the U.K. must use a BIM Level 2 process.  The subsurface has been for the most part ignored in the application of digital technology to construction, but there are signs now that this is changing in the U.K., as people recognize the drag on construction projects and the broader national economy that this represents.  Improving the reliability of and sharing location information about the underground can be seen as 'low hanging fruit' in the quest to improve construction productivity. 

Sharing subsurface geotechnical information

One of the problems is that every construction project involves considerable effort to discover subsurface geotechnical conditions and the location of underground infrastructure in the area to be excavated, but a large proportion of the data generated by the UK ground engineering industry is used for one project and not shared.  In the Netherlands the problem is being addressed by the Key Registry for the Subsurface (BRO) which came into force in January, 2018. 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.

In the UK the Dig to Share project, supported by Atkins, British Geological Survey (BGS) and Morgan Sindall, is addressing this problem. Its aim is to develop a fully digital workflow, which is accessible to the whole industry, to upload and access data from the BGS web-based system. This will be developed on top of the existing system hosted and maintained by BGS. 

I should add that in the domain of geotechnics Keynetix is a UK-based provider of cloud-based software for capturing, visualizing, modeling, and sharing of geotechnical data. Bentley Systems has just announced the acquisition of Keynetix which adds to Bentley's products for the subsurface including borehole report management (gINT) and geotechnical analysis applications (PLAXIS and SoilVision) with which Bentley is targeting enabling a digital twin of the underground. 

Sharing information about the location of underground infrastructure

The Geospatial Commission has just announced its intention to create an Underground Assets Register.  The intention is to show where electricity and telecom cables, and gas and water pipes are buried to help 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.

Pipes and cables beneath a road crossing in North East England - Thanks to Holger Kessler for sharing.

Related to this is the North East Underground Infrastructure Hub (NEUIH) , the Ordnance Survey's and Northumbrian Water's project to create a ‘Common Infrastructure Map’ in Newcastle.  The current phase of the 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.

Collecting underground utility damage statistics

The U.K. has not had access to good statistics on underground utility strikes similar to the Common Ground Alliance in North America.  Since 2014 the Utility Strike Avoidance Group (USAG) has begun collecting statistics on underground utility damage. USAG currently operates on a voluntary basis with no direct funding other than the support offered by member organizations.  Its 2015/2016 report includes over 2700 utility strikes across the UK during 2015 & 16 from 32 participants.  For comparison in the U.S. there were 316,422 incidents of damage to underground infrastructure reported to the Common Ground Alliance in 2017.  According to the Japan Construction Industry Association (Edson Enohi personal communication), in all of Japan in 2016 there were 134 incidents.

One-call centre for England

England does not have legislation mandating a one-call centre as just about every state and province in North America does.  This puts the onus on excavators to track down and contact utilities and others who may have infrastructure in the area of the planned excavation.  To fill the gap a private company LinesearchbeforeUdig (LSBUD) offers something similar to a North American one-call centre. I had the opportunity to chat with Richard Broome, Managing Director of LSBUD.  LSBUD offers a voluntary free to use service which anyone planning excavation can use to check for underground utility assets that LSBUD's 75 members (network operators) have in the area of the planned excavation.

The way this works has some similarities with a North American one-call centre.  The excavator provides details of the planned excavation to an online system.  The system immediately responds with a list of LSBUD members that have assets near where the excavation is planned.  Subsequently each member sends plans of their infrastructure assets in the area of the planned excavation.

LSBUD is owned by Fisher German LLP and PelicanCorp, an Australian company that runs one-call centres in Indiana, Kentucky, Alberta, British Columbia, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Singapore in addition to the UK. The assets that LSBUD's member manage include hundreds of thousands of kilometers of underground and overhead electricity, gas, high pressure fuel, water and fibre optic pipes and cables.  LSBUD is supported by its members which include all fuel transmission companies, 60-70% of electric power network operators, and some water and telecom operators in England. The benefits that the members derive from LSBUD are improved safety and reduced utility damage costs. The public also benefits from fewer outages.  The LSBUD service processes over 2.5 million inquiries per annum.

There are risks of sharing information for both commercial (competitive) or security purposes. To manage this balance, the Member always controls who accesses their data. Members always controls who accesses their data. Users can get very high level information about a Member’s network through the LSBUD oce call process, but members are in full control of the access rights to their detailed information. They also have a live view of those requesting and receiving their information together with a detailed audit trail.

Much of the liability is on the contractor to locate the assets on site. In terms of the accuracy/ validity of the data, the asset owner carries that themselves with relevant disclaimers. The asset owner determines both the Area of Interest (AOI) on the service, as well as any guidance/literature/disclaimers that are sent with their responses.

Coordinating street works

One area that would directly benefit from shared location information about the subsurface is street works. In 2004 the UK Parliament passed the Traffic Management Act, which gave highway authorities greater power to manage traffic disruption caused by 2.5 million roadworks that take place in England each year.  In particular it requires excavators to apply for a permit (as Bern has done) for road work providing information about the location and timing of the proposed road work.  Late last year the Department for Transport announced an investment of £10 million in Street Manager, a digital planning service that will generate real time data about street construction.  It will be free for technology companies and app developers to use. This will allow services like Waze (whose vision is to eliminate traffic congestion) and startups to build app that help motorists avoid congestion caused by road construction.

The Traffic Management Act also enables local councils to charge a fee for permitting road work.  One way of using this power is referred to as lane rental.  Pilots have been carried out in several location in England and have been found to reduce congestion by half on busy roads.  For this to be used effectively requires accurate locate information about underground utilities and communications infrastructure.

Standard relating to the underground

A process to update the 2014 Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 128, has just been initiated.  PAS 128, developed under the auspices of the British Standards Institution (BSI) and sponsored by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and others, is one of the few that reflects the advances in underground detection technology - hardware and software - that have occurred in the last few years.  That it is now being updated suggests that PAS128 will continue to stay current with the underground detection technology curve.

The Open Geospatial Consortium MUDDI initiative to develop a standard for sharing information about the subsurface, including both geotechnics and underground infrastructure, is supported by the Ordnance Survey and includes several U.K. and INSPIRE standards.

Together these government, private sector and standards initiatives reflect the accelerating recognition in the UK of the importance of sharing information about subsurface geotechnics and infrastructure for public safety and construction productivity.

Reference

* N.M.H. Alhalaby and I.L.Whyte, The impact of ground risks in construction on project finance in Risk and reliability in ground engineering, Edited by B.O.Skipp, Proceedings of the conference organised by the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, 1993.

"A statistical review of projects revealed that 50% of commercial buildings and 37% of industrial buildings experienced delay due to unforeseen ground conditions. Reports from NEDO state that the most frequent origin of overruns and long delays (greater than 10 weeks) are unforeseen obstacles in the ground."

NEDO Faster building for industry. National Economic Development Office London 1983

NEDO Faster building for commerce. National Economic Development Office London 1988

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.

Autodesk signals commitment to BIM + geospatial integration for improving construction productivity

We are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer tangible evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.  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.  Recently Autodesk, arguably the market leader in BIM design software, has been signaling its commitment to geospatial + BIM integration, joining other firms in the construction software industry in improving construction workflows involving BIM and geospatial data and applications.

The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector.  Fashioning AEC and geospatial data into an efficient data flow from planning through design and construction to operations and maintenance has been an ongoing challenge for owners for decades.  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 into efficient workflows (some examples; 2006, 2007, 2008 ).

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. It has been shown that BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance. A leader in this procurement 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. 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.   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 including the external campus of Denver International Airport, and to lease management at Orlando, Hong Kong, and South West Florida international airports.

Major firms in the construction software industry such as Hexagon, Trimble, and Bentley have integrated geospatial + BIM to varying degrees in their approach to construction for years.  For example, Bentley decided fifteen years ago to support real-world coordinate systems in all of their products including Microstation. Bentley calls this capability geo-coordination and it provides a location-aware foundation which facilitates workflows that require integrated engineering and geospatial data and applications. According to Bentley geo-coordination adds value for asset performance with a very high return on that investment.  Integrating CAD and GIS into an efficient workflow for records management (aka network documentation) has been a challenge for utility and telecom operators for decades. While utility and telecom operators have found ways to address this problem, it is rare to find the benefits for these systems quantified. At Year in Infrastructure 2019 iForte Solusi Infotek presented concrete benefits of a records management system integrating CAD and geospatial worklows that has been in operation for several years for managing their fiber optic networks in Jakarta and on the rest of Java. For these activities iForte estimated that it has realized a return on investment of 203% over three years. The primary benefits of the new system were realized in planning, network maintenance and sales, and there were a number of intangible other benefits.

Over a year ago Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost announced a partnership to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies.  I have reviewed the technical progress that the two companies have made in furthering interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds which suggests that the new relationship between Autodesk and ESRI appears to be being translated into concrete actions. There is a considerable distance to go yet, but there are grounds for optimism that there is a commitment to BIM and geospatial interoperability so that in the future workflows that involve both AEC and geospatial data and software will be able to surmount the CAD+GIS barriers that have represented major inefficiencies for the construction, utility and other sectors for decades. 

Further evidence of a serious commitment to furthering efficient integrated BIM and geospatial workflows is provided in a recent article in Geospatial World by Nicolas Mangon, Vice President of AEC, Business Strategy & Marketing at Autodesk, has acknowledged that "there is a growing recognition in the collective AEC industry that geography provides a common language for collaborating on projects." Furthermore, "bringing GIS technologies and BIM processes together provides a broader and deeper understanding of infrastructure in the larger context of the built and natural environment by integrating information and content."  Expanding on the recently announced Autodesk and ESRI partnership, Mangon says that "Autodesk is bringing that knowledge from manufacturing to AEC and our ESRI partnership allows us to improve the way we create spatially accurate digtial representations of the physical. Our current plan is to expand the integration further into our detailed design applications like Civil3D but also connect GIS data into out cloud BIM platform."   This is an important statement from the market leader in BIM software and suggests that the days when architects, engineers, and construction contractors work with an isolated 0,0 coordinate system are numbered.

This is another signal from a major player in the BIM design space of a serious commitment to overcoming the BIM/geospatial integration challenge and ending the decades long clash of tectonic plates between the AEC and geospatial worlds that has contributed to low productivity in construction, utilities, telecommunications and other industries.  It will also an important first step toward the development of maintainable near real-time digital twins of urban infrastructure.