Between the Poles

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

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

Infrastructure digital twin

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

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

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

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

Dynamic view of your assets

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

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

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

Managing asset budgeting

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

Main conclusion

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

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

Facilities/asset management is still lagging in BIM adoption

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

Canadian government's approach to managing underground infrastructure on federal land

Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) is responsible for procurement and real property management for federal departments and agencies. There are about a hundred departments and agencies in the Federal government, of which 23 are custodians of real property assets.  PSPC, National Defense and Parks Canada are the largest. PAPC's responsibilities includes underground infrastructure on federal property. PSPC's strategy is a bottom-up approach in which the federal government is working within the framework of existing provincial legislation. In the past two year PSPC has joined all provincial one call centres across the country within that framework is responding to requests for information about underground infrastructure on federal property. PSPC has undertaken the task of creating a PSPC Directive, Standard and Guidelines for the protection of underground infrastructure. Ultimately the intention is to submit these documents to Treasury Board to encourage other agencies that are custodians of real property assets as well as regulatory agencies to adopt a common approach to managing information about underground infrastructure.

In the national capital region PSPC initiated a pilot project with Ontario One Call to see how the one call notification system would work with national and crown owned properties within the National Capital Area (NCA). The first stage of the PSPC requires compiling maps of existing Federal underground infrastructure enabling the government to respond to information requests. To do that required determining what information it intends to share taking into consideration Government of Canada security requirements. Secondly it required that PSPC and other federal agencies register with Ontario One Call. The NCA pilot has made it possible to identify underground infrastructure that would not have been seen without going through the process. As a result PSPC is gaining a better understanding of the relationship with contractors and excavator which is helping build a more robust system and business procedures for collecting location information about underground infrastructure on federal property. The experience that has been gained in the NCA is being passed down to the PSPC regional organizations to enable them to develop similar capacities for managing location data about underground infrastructure.

The challenge is to capture comprehensive data not only about the accurate location of underground infrastructure, but  other properties of the facilities, such as diameter of pipe, cable capacity, type of material, its condition, when it was last inspected, and so on. In each region PSPC is carrying out an inventory of existing underground assets and based on that conducting a gap analysis. The many gaps that were found which were not just missing data, but data that was only available in the form of paper documents. This has motivated a drive within PSPC to get away from paper documents and move to a completely digital environment based on standards that allow this data to be shared easily within the government and with external entities such as utility and telecom operators, contractors and excavators. For example, the Parliamentary Precinct is the responsibility of three or four different government departments each with its own staff. Underground infrastructure on Parliament Hill is already very congested and with the amount of construction and development planned and underway it is essential to know reliably where things are underground and be able to identify clashes with new designs and to be able to hare this data interoperability among the several agencies involved.

PSPC has undertaken the task of creating a PSPC Directive, Standard and Guidelines for the protection of underground infrastructure. This requires engaging with provincial and territorial one call centres, developing the capability to respond to requests for information, and developing business processes to improve the accuracy, timeliness, and comprehensiveness of the data about underground infrastructure that is maintained by the Federal Geomatics group.  The longer term goal is for Treasury Board to encourage custodians of real property asets assets such as National Defense and Parks Canada, as well as regulatory agencies including Transport Canada, Canada Energy Regulator and Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) to adopt similar policies so that this approach to damage prevention becomes pervasive in the Federal government.

Currently this initiative is a bottom-up effort that encourages people to participate voluntarily because of the benefits it provides to them in their work. The goal is develop a concrete, feasible solution that does not disrupt current operations and that will demonstrate the value of the underground information that is being collected and shared with stakeholders. In the future it is expected that the awareness of the significant benefits from better management of underground assets will reach higher levels within government and engender a discussion on ways to collaborate on underground infrastructure throughout the federal government.

Background

In 2015 CSA Z247 the first Damage Prevention Standard in Canada was released. It describes the damage prevention process and elements would reduce damages to Canada's underground infrastructure improving public, worker and community safety and preserving the environment,  It was sponsored by the National Energy Board, Natural Resources Canada, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and the Canadian Gas Association. 

In 2014 the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment, and Natural Resources completed two studies; Moving Energy Safely: A Study of the Safe Transport of Hydrocarbons by Pipelines, Takers and Railcars and Digging Safely - One Call Notification Systems and the Prevention of Damage to Canada's Buried Infrastructure.  The Senate Standing Committee followed this with specific recommendations;

• That the federal government reference the CSA Z247 standard for protection and prevention of damage to buried infrastructure and encourage provinces and territories to reference the standard in legislation.
• That buried facilities on federal land be registered with a provincial or territorial one-call services and that the federal government require anyone undertaking excavation on federal land to call the local one-call centre.
• That the federal government require all owners of federally regulated buried infrastructure to become members of a provincial or territorial one-call service.

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

Canadian Underground Forum begins tomorrow

You can see the program for April 29 and 30 and register here.

Speaker lineup

One of the early innovators in applying LiDAR to mapping underground pipelines, Joseph Hlady, President at Lux Modus in Calgary, Alberta will explain n his keynote the benefits that his technology has brought to the oil and gas pipeline industry. Another early innovator is Otto Ballintijn, CEO of Reduct who has developed inertial or gyro technology for mapping underground pipe networks. In his keynote he will explain the evolution of the technology including the concept, operational method, and data output of gyro mapping technology. A number of jurisdictions around the world are developing digital twins at the urban, regional and even national level. Alex Shalash of UEVO will discuss creating a city subsurface infrastructure map which unifies fragmented information and produces an intelligent digital twin. Danny Petrecca of Locusview, an early leader in capturing and managing underground data in the gas industry, will review why as-builting still remains paper-based and discuss a digital construction solution that stitches together existing technologies to create the reliable digital twin that utilities need in the age of the smart grid.

Our chief guest speaker is Jim Anspach, Chair of the ASCE 38 standards group, who will bring us up to date on the imminent 38-21 utility as-built standard. Carsten Roensdorf and Neil Brammall will introduce the Open Geospatial Consortium's work in progress, the MUDDI standard for exchanging location data about underground infrastructure. Lawrence Arcand, who has led Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE) investigations on a national level since 2003, will provide an overview of the Canadian standard CSA S250:20 Mapping of underground utility infrastructure.

Rob Martindale, Program Manager - Utilities/Railroads at the Colorado Department of Transportation, will present an overview on how a mix of legislation and regulation has enabled Colorado to revolutionize the capture and sharing of accurate underground utility location data. Page Tucker, President & CEO at ProStar which implemented the mobile and cloud solution adopted by the Colorado DoT will speak about how the partnership between Colorado DoT and Prostar made this successful. One of the remarkable new technologies applied to mapping underground infrastructure was developed by 4M-Analytics. Harel Dan, Head of GIS and Remote Sensing, and Ophir Wainer, Director of North America Business Development, will explain how 4M-Analytics uses satellite and aerial imagery to map underground infrastructure. Leica Geosystems' IDS Georadar was one of the early innovators in ground penetrating radar. Simon Pedley, Detection Ambassador at Leica Geosystems will talk about some of the innovations in hardware and software that Leica Geosystems has developed in the last couple of years.

Government has a crucial role to play in locating and mapping underground infrastructure. Gord Reynolds and Alon Gat will discuss how Infrastructure Ontario partnered with Metrolinx and the Ministry of Transportation to establish the Utility Coordination Program (UCP), a new initiative which oversees the development of utility relocation standards and the supporting process to improve the location, treatment and relocation of utility infrastructure. Gordon McElravy, of buildingSMART Canada, will discuss buildingSMART's efforts in implementing the Municipal Infrastructure Council Program to encourage building information model (BIM) initiatives at the municipal level. Capping the first day of CUF Prashant Shukle, who was responsible for mapping and earth observation in the Canadian government for many years, will moderate a panel discussion on the role of government in underground infrastructure with panelists from the State of Colorado, the U.K. Government's Geospatial Commission, Public Services and Procurement Canada, and Infrastructure Ontario.

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.

Federal initiatives in Canada to improve subsurface locating to reduce damage during construction

A remarkable initiative within the Federal government in Canada to improve mapping of Federally regulated underground infrastructure and infrastructure on Federal lands was presented at the Ontario Regional Common Ground Alliance (ORCGA) 2020 Symposium in Ottawa.  This initiative is being driven by Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC).  It is intended to become a model for Federal agencies with real property assets such as PSPC, National Defense and Parks Canada, to implement damage prevention programs and Federal regulatory agencies including Transport Canada, Canada Energy Regulator and Innovation, and Science and Economic Development (ISED) to develop a damage prevention mandates.

Background

At the Ontario Regional Common Ground Alliance (ORCGA) 2020 meeting in Ottawa Mike Sullivan, President of the Canadian Common Ground Alliance (CCGA), provided an overview of the efforts at the federal level to implement federal damage prevention mandates. In 2012 the CCGA released a white paper, Damage Prevention Legislation Elements Required for Canada, articulating a series of principles and specific elements for effective legislation that would result in greater protection of underground infrastructure and community safety.  In the same year Bill 8, the Ontario Underground Infrastructure Notification System Act 2012, was passed in the Ontario Legislature.  In 2015 CSA Z247 the first Damage Prevention Standard in Canada was released. It describes the damage prevention process and elements would reduce damages to Canada's underground infrastructure improving public, worker and community safety and preserving the environment,  It was sponsored by the National Energy Board, Natural Resources Canada, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and the Canadian Gas Association.  In 2014 the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment, and Natural Resources completed two studies; Moving Energy Safely: A Study of the Safe Transport of Hydrocarbons by Pipelines, Takers and Railcars and Digging Safely - One Call Notification Systems and the Prevention of Damage to Canada's Buried Infrastructure.  The Senate Standing Committee followed this with specific recommendations;

1 That the federal government reference the CSA Z247 standard for protection and prevention of damage to buried infrastructure and encourage provinces and territories to reference the standard in legislation.

2 That buried facilities on federal land be registered with a provincial or territorial one-call services and that the federal government require anyone undertaking excavation on federal land to call the local one-call centre.
3 That the federal government require all owners of federally regulated buried infrastructure to become members of a provincial or territorial one-call service.

In its 2016 report on the state of our knowledge about the location of underground infrastructure in Canada, the Professional Surveyors Canada working group concluded that underground infrastructure in Canada is often not surveyed or mapped accurately, if at all. Currently the systems in Canada dealing with underground infrastructure are a patchwork of regulatory and voluntary regimes. They range from the City of Edmonton which maintains a database of underground infrastructure and the City of Calgary that mandates that information about underground infrastructure be shared among utilities and communications firms operating within city limits, through to one-call centres operating in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec, and others. 

The Professional Surveyors Canada working group is very clear about the problems with the current regulatory regimes and business practices in Canada; creates loss of use situations to critical infrastructure such as telecommunications; creates hazards for workers; creates inefficiencies in locates for customers; reduces efficiencies and productivity of one call systems; increases cost for new development; increases cost for each new installation of underground infrastructure; greatly increases the amount of redundant locates being done; increases risk to the public; and increases risk to the environment.

Several provinces have on call centres similar to many states in the U.S. Howerer, there are some significant differences.  In Ontario a utility operator is required to mark on the ground the location of its underground infrastructure and provide a written document containing information describing the location of the underground infrastructure.  This differs from many state one-call centres in the U.S. where a written document is not required.

British Columbia is the only jurisdiction in North America that I know of where it is not mandatory for each member (network operator) identified by the one call centre to visit the site of a proposed excavation. In response to a request from British Columbia One Call, within three business days each network operator is required either (1) provide plans (paper or digitally, typically a PDF or paper) of their underground services showing the location of their facilities on or near the excavation site or (2) visit the site to physically mark the location of their facilities, or (3) provide digging instructions and other safety information. This can be very efficient for network operators because, similar to the Flanders KLIP and Dutch KLIC systems, it is not mandatory for each network operator maintain a large fleet of locate vans to visit the sites of all proposed excavations. On the other hand, it puts the onus on the excavator for validating the information provided on paper or digitally by network operators by an onsite locate.

At the federal level Senate Bill S-229, which was introduced in 2015 and passed third reading in the Senate in May 2017, aimed to create a notification mechanism for underground infrastructure on federal lands and for federally regulated underground infrastructure.  It would have required that federal agencies register with provincial or territorial one-call centres and develop the capacity to respond to requests for information from one-call centres.   Furthermore it would have required that federal regulators of buried infrastructure to develop a damage prevention mandate. But at the time, there was not an appetite in the Government to act on this bill and it died on the order sheet in the House of Commons and never became law. 

Initiative to implement the spirit of S-229 in the Federal government

However, it turns out that the objectives of S-229 did not die there.  At the Ontario Regional Common Ground Alliance (ORCGA) meeting Ravi Sundararaj, who is leading a Protection of Underground Infrastructure initiative in the Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), provided an overview of many of the provisions of S-229 are actually being implemented by PSPC.  Two years ago the Minister of Public Services and Procurement (PSPC) decided to implement the provisions of S-229. PSPC is responsible for all infrastructure on Federal land and saw this as a way of doing a better job at what it is mandated to do.

The plan was for the PSPC implementation to become a model for other government departments which would see the benefits of this approach to reducing damage to underground utilities and implements similar measures.  There are about a hundred departments and agencies in the Federal government, of which 23 are custodians of real property assets.  PSPC, National Defense and Parks Canada are the largest.

Under this initiative implementing protection for buried assets through the existing operational framework for federal custodial assets requires that buried assets on federal land be registered with a provincial or territorial one-call services; and that the federal government require anyone undertaking construction or excavation on federal land to call the local one-call or damage prevention service.  Secondly, the federal government requires all owners of federally regulated buried infrastructure become members of a provincial or territorial one-call or damage prevention service.

To be able to respond to request for information requires the Federal government to develop and maintain maps of its underground infrastructure through its Geomatics capacity. To do that requires determining what information it intends to share taking into consideration Government of Canada security requirements.

The first stage of the PSPC initiative is the National Capital Area (NCA). It requires first of all compiling maps of existing Federal underground infrastructure enabling the government to respond to information requests.  Secondly it requires that Federal agencies and owners of Federally regulated infrastructure to register with provincial and territorial one-call centres. In the case of the initial NCA project this means registering with Ontario One Call.

When Ontario One Call receives a request for information about underground utilities for a proposed excavation, PSPC as the custodian is notified. In the case of a proposed excavation PSPC then does one of the following

1. Provides a digital or paper map of underground infrastructure in the area of the proposed excavation
2. Carries out a subsurface survey and marks the ground
3. Confirms that there is no infrastructure in the area

In the case of a request relating to a planning activity PSPC sprovide a digital or paper map of underground infrastructure in the area of the proposed excavation or confirms that there is no known infrastructure in the area.  It is interesting that this process requires that if information about the underground infrastructure in the area is missing or incomplete, the PSPC is required to conduct a subsurface survey of the area with the resulting map provided to the Federal Geomatics site.  This enables PSPC to respond with accurate maps of the area the next time an information request as received.  Over time this process would lead to comprehensive geospatial data on underground infrastructure on the Federal Geospatial site.

The immediate goal is to develop a PSPC Directive, Standard and Guidelines for the protection of underground infrastructure. This requires engaging with provincial and territorial one call centres, developing the capability to respond to requests for information, and developing business processes to improve the accuracy, timeliness, and comprehensiveness of the data about underground infrastructure that is maintained by the Federal Geomatics group.

The longer term goal is for Treasury Board to encourage custodians of real property asets assets such as National Defense and Parks Canada, as well as regulatory agencies including Transport Canada, Canada Energy Regulator and Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) to adopt similar policies so that this approach to damage prevention becomes pervasive in the Federal government.

This is an important initiative that provides a model for other Federal departments, agencies, and regulatory bodies. As a  federal initiative it also provides a model for provincial, territorial and municipal governments, and regulatory agencies and network operators.  Perhaps more importantly it signals just how important this is for public safety and for the Canadian economy.

BIM and geospatial for facilities management is penetrating construction

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

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

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

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

Why:

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

What:

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

Coordinate systems

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

How:

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

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

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

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

Progress toward a unified model for underground infrastructure and geology

TNO, Geological Survey of the Netherlands

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

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

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

Use cases

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

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

Reference standards

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

Next steps

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

Firm realizes ROI of 203% by integrating CAD and GIS for fiber network management

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 this year iForte Solusi Infotek presented concrete benefits of a records management system that has been in operation for several years for managing their fiber optic networks in Jakarta and on the rest of Java.

I began working in the utility and telecom sector in 1993, specifically in developing software for records management (called network documentation outside of North America).  At that time the magnitude of the AEC+geospatial cultural mismatch problem was just beginning to be appreciated by utilities and telecoms.  Planners tend to use GIS tools, engineers and designers CAD tools, construction folks in the field paper CAD drawings, and asset managers GIS integrated with their FM tools. Fashioning engineering and geospatial data into an efficient data flow from planning through design and construction to operations and maintenance represented a challenge that remains a problem for utilities and telecom companies. The Between The Poles blog is over ten years old and one of the persistent themes from the very beginning in 2006 was the challenge of integrating CAD and GIS data and applications in an efficient workflow (some examples; 2006, 2007, 2008 ).

The winner of this year's Year in Infrastructure Award for Communications Networks was a project of iForte Solusi Infotek.   iForte is a fast-growing fiber network operator with many large corporate customers all over Java island including Jakarta.  From this base it plans to expand into the rest of Indonesia.  iForte was facing many of the problems associated with paper-based records management in a fast-growing network operator. Prior to implementing the new system, their business processes were characterized by a plethora of paper-based manual processes. The data available for network planning was continually out of date making it difficult to compile an accurate situational assessment. Maintenance crews in the field had to rely on their own hand written notes on paper records. When sales staff met with a prospective customer it took an hour or more to collect the required information to determine the availability of fiber optic capacity at the customer's location requiring subsequent exchanges of emails to get the requisite information to the customer by which time the customer may have contacted a competitor.

The primary benefits of the new system were realized in planning, network maintenance and sales. 

• Maintenance crews could redline existing as-builts in the field so that engineering could see immediately where a problem had occurred and any temporary infrastructure the maintenance team had put in place to address the problem.
• Planning could see real-time cable utilization to identify congested networks. When there was an outage they could see the total capacity that was at risk.  It also enabled them to find alternatives for re-routing the network.  It was also found that network expansion planning could be completed four times faster. They were also able to use less fiber, saving on material costs and CAPEX. For example in one case, by looking at available capacity and utilization, it was possible to reduce new cable requirements from 1,400 meter to 100.
• For sales prior to implementing the records management system, determining fibre availability for a customer required on average of 60 minutes necessitating telephone calls to records. After implementing the new system, they were able to determine availability in six minutes and automatically generate a bill of materials and a job estimate.

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, but there were intangible benefits as well.  Management was able to see the status of the network in real-time, review progress in building out the network on a map with demographics, assess the status of their network assets, and identify regions for network expansion.  The intangible value to the company achieved with the new system was operational excellence and improved strategic planning which provided for better performance and growth compared to competitors.

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