Between the Poles

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

The 2019 estimated national cost of damage to underground utilities estimated by the CGA is approximately $30 billion annually. In a recent report the Infrastructure Protection Coalition estimates that an additional $61 billion in waste, inefficiency, and excess cost is embedded in the system. It has proposed 13 recommendations that would eliminate $40 billion of the combined $90 billion in damage and waste  costs over a 3- to 5-year timeline. The cost of implementing the recommendations is estimated at $1.2 billion. The return on investment (ROI) for implementing these measures is estimated to be $33 for every $1 invested in improving the system.

Background

Underground utility damage is expensive. Several jurisdictions have attempted to estimate the cost of underground utility damage for individual incidents and for entire national economies. Costs can be broken down into direct costs and indirect costs. Direct costs include the costs of sending a crew to repair the damaged pipe or cable. Indirect costs include many factors that are often hard to quantify such as traffic disruption, injuries and fatalities among workers and the public, and the lost custom that local businesses experience. An important conclusion from the research into the cost of underground utility damage is that it represents a major drag on national economies.

Direct costs include the costs of sending a crew to assess and repair the damaged pipe or cable. Indirect costs include the impact of traffic disruption as a result of the strike, any injuries and other impacts on the health of the workers directly involved and the public in the immediate neighbourhood, and the lost custom that businesses experienced as a result of the traffic disruption. Research in the UK estimates that the true cost is about 29 times the direct cost.

In the US the CGA compiles information on the direct cost of damage to underground infrastructure for different types of underground infrastructure based on voluntarily submitted damage reports.  At an average cost of $4000 per hit, the CGA estimates that the direct cost to the U.S. Economy is about $1.5 billion and that the total cost to the US economy is $31 billion annually.

Return on investment (ROI) studies of the benefits of improving the mapping underground infrastructure on highway construction projects conducted since the late 1990s have consistently revealed a large return-on-investment. In 2007, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation commissioned Pennsylvania State University to study the savings on Pennsylvania highway projects and found a return on investment of US$21.00 saved for every US$1.00 spent for Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE).  The UK's Geospatial Commission estimates that the ROI of the National Underground Asset Register, the implementation of which has just kicked off, is £30 for every £ invested by the government.

Inefficiency in states' implementation of damage prevention system

A comprehensive, independent, in-depth examination of every state's one call system including Washington, D.C. and the city of Chicago has concluded that failures in the 811 systems cost $61 billion a year in waste and excess costs and create unnecessary hazards for public safety, particularly in states where the implementation and accountability are most lax. The reasons for the waste and cost overruns found in this study include: utilities and third-party locators sent to locate lines for construction projects that do not happen; poor instructions given to locators, causing wasted time or additional work; locate marks destroyed by construction and then requiring repeat locates; and late locates leading to contractors having to wait and delaying projects.

Thirteen recommendations have been proposed by the Infrastructure Protection Coalition on a state-by-state basis to eliminate and mitigate these costs.  It is estimated that these measures would eliminate $40 billion in damage and waste costs and that these recommendations could be implemented for approximate $1.2 billion over a 3- to 5-year timeline. The ROI for implementing these measures is estimated to be $33 for every $1 invested in improving the system.  Unquantifiable benefits such as severe damage reduction and public safety or societal benefits are not included in these benefits.

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

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

Background

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Return on investment (ROI) studies of the benefits of improving the mapping underground infrastructure on highway construction projects conducted since the late 1990s have consistently revealed a large return-on-investment. A U.S. Department of Transportation sponsored survey conducted by Purdue University in 1999 of quantifiable and qualitative savings estimated a total of US$4.62 in avoided costs for every US$1.00 spent on accurately locating underground infrastructure. Although qualitative savings (for example, avoided impacts on nearby homes and businesses) were not directly measurable, the researchers made the case that those savings were significant, and many times more valuable than the quantifiable savings. In 2007, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation commissioned Pennsylvania State University to study the savings on Pennsylvania highway projects and found a return on investment of US$21.00 saved for every US$1.00 spent for SUE when elevating the quality level of subsurface utility information using SUE. This significantly higher return on investment when compared to Purdue study is the result of maturation of process and a consideration of some of the qualitative savings in the Purdue study.

Overview of Analysis

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

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

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

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

Conclusions

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

Major benefits of accurate location information about underground infrastructure prior to design

Blue bars - Construction spending ($millions). Red line - Reported unique damages. Yellow line - Estimated damages. Dotted lines - error bars. Source CGA 2020 DIRT Report

The stated objectives of many initiatives focussed on locating underground utilities is damage prevention. However, for those cases where reliable multi-year statistics have been compiled, the data reveals that this objective is not being realized - the annual amount of damage, when prorated to a measure of annual construction activity, in many jurisdictions has plateaued or may even be increasing.

But there are other important benefits that are being realized from these underground utility initiatives, chief among them are improved construction efficiency, greater probability of on-time and on-budget project completions, fewer and shorter utility service outages and less traffic disruption and delays for the motoring public.

An area where detailed assessments of the costs and benefits of improved information about the location of underground infrastructure have been conducted is subsurface utility engineering surveys(SUE).  SUE surveys are generally conducted prior to engineering design and in some jurisdictions such as Colorado, are now mandatory on public civil engineering projects.

For a definitive study of twenty-two projects utilizing SUE and eight non-SUE projects from Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) districts, eleven direct and indirect cost/benefit areas were investigated in the analysis; utility relocation, utility damage, emergency restoration, traffic delay, business impact, user service outages, environmental impact, information gathering and verification, legal and litigation, efficient utility design and construction, and other utility related costs and benefits.

On the expense side a SUE survey requires two types of expenditures; the use of geophysical techniques such as electromagnetic(EM), ground penetrating radar(GPR) and other techniques to detect the location of underground infrastructure and potholing to confirm the location of the utilities and objects detected. For this study for the projects utilizing SUE, costs detection and potholing were obtained directly from project accounting. For the projects that did not use SUE, costs were estimated from interviews, historical data, and individual project studies.

For the twenty-two projects where a SUE survey was conducted, all underground utilities and other objects were located to ASCE 38-02 Quality Level A (potholing) or B (EM or GPR). For the eight projects utilized traditional methods, the location of underground networks was estimated to ASCE quality levels C (site visit) and D (as-builts).

The study revealed that for road and highway projects $11.39 can be saved for every $1 spent on SUE. The top benefits realized as a result of conducting SUE surveys were found to be primarily improved construction efficiency and greater probability of on-time and on-budget project completions.

1. 40.33% reduction in project relocation cost by providing accurate underground information in the early stages of design
2. 29.46% reduction in construction and design costs - SUE enables designers to design efficiently and accurately with reliable information, so that design time can be saved and unnecessary construction work can be avoided or reduced.
3. 9.59% reduction in redesign costs
4. 9.08% reduction in delay costs due to relocation
5. 6.81% reduction in delay costs caused by emergencies
6. 1.41% reduction in delay costs caused by unexpected utilities
7. 1.41% reduction in information gathering and verification cost
8. 1.04% reduction in restoration cost

A ratio of 1.65% was determined as the ratio of SUE cost to total project cost. It was concluded that SUE can provide important project benefits at reasonable cost.

A reanalysis of the data collected for a 1999 USDOT Study by Purdue University found that the estimated benefit of conducting a SUE survey was a cost savings of $12.23 for every $1 spent on SUE. The largest contributors to the cost savings derived from SUE were found to be;

1. 37.1% reduced number of utility relocations
2. 19.3% reduced claims and change orders
3. 11.6% reduced accidents and injuries
4. 9.6% reduced project delays
5. 3.5% reduced right-of-way acquisition costs
6. 3.3% savings in risk management and insurance
7. 15.5% other

In Subsurface Utility Engineering for Municipalities, by James H Anspach and C. Paul Scott, the primary quantifiable benefits identified for SUE surveys are fewer and more limited utility relocations and reduced delay claims and change orders. In addition there are many benefits identified during pre-construction and construction and other benefits that accrue to network operators and the public. Important preconstruction benefits include reduced design costs through improved efficiency including avoidance of conflicts and more accurate utility relocation designs where utility conflicts are unavoidable. Construction benefits include better bids and lower bid prices,  reduced project delays resulting from utility relocations, reduced construction delays from unexpected utility conflicts, earlier project completion time, and savings in risk management and insurance. The biggest benefits for utility owners and operators are reduced revenue loss from outages and reduced costs to repair damaged facilities.  The most important benefits to the public are fewer and shorter utility service outages,  less traffic disruption and delays and for business owners reduced loss of custom.

Large ROI from subsurface utility engineering (SUE) for highway construction projects

Return on investment (ROI) studies of subsurface engineering utility engineering (SUE) surveys applied to highway construction projects conducted since the late 1990s have consistently revealed a large return-on-investment from conducting SUE surveys as part of highway construction projects.

One of the first in 1999 by Purdue University and sponsored by the US DOT Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) identified 21 categories of cost savings that could result from including a subsurface utility engineering (SUE) survey in construction projects. Only some of these could be quantified and it was estimated that the qualitative benefits exceeded those that could be quantified. It was estimated that SUE surveys resulted in a construction savings of at least 1.9 percent over the traditional approach of relying on as-builts and (above-ground) site surveys for identifying underground utilities.  Using the national expenditure in 1998 of $51 billion for highway construction (FHWA), it was calculated that requiring SUE on road construction projects could result in a national savings of at least $1 billion per year.

A subsequent reanalysis of the same Purdue data estimated that the ROI was $12.23 for every $1 spent on SUE. Furthermore the cost of conducting a SUE survey was estimated at 1.39% of total project costs. In 2007 a study for PennDOT and USDOT found an ROI of 22.21 : 1. 

The most recent ROI analysis sponsored by PennDOT differed from previous analyses by including both SUE and non-SUE projects. It calculated an ROI of 11.39 : 1. The largest contributor to the cost savings attributed to SUE was a 40.33% reduction in utility relocation costs. Utility relocations were avoided or reduced by providing engineers/designers with accurate underground information in the early stages of design. The second largest savings was 29.46% in reduced construction and design costs. SUE enables designers to design efficiently and accurately with reliable information, so that design time can be saved and unnecessary construction work can be avoided or reduced. The cost of conducting a SUE survey was estimated to be 1.65% of project cost.  

These ROI studies show that SUE can provide accurate utility information with important project benefits at reasonable cost.

Year	ROI	Cost of SUE (% of project cost)	Description	Sponsoring agency	Source
2012	11.39:1	1.65%	Study of 22 SUE and 8 non-SUE projects	PennDOT	Yeun J. Jung, Evaluation of subsurface utility engineering for highway projects: Benefit–cost analysis, pages 111-122 in Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology Volume 27, Issue 1 Pages 1-168 (January 2012)
2012	16:1		Study of one SUE project	Region of Lombardy
2007	22.21:1	0.6 %	Study of 10 SUE projects	PennDOT/USDOT	SUBSURFACE UTILITY ENGINEERING MANUAL PennDOT/MAUTC Partnership, Work Order No. 8 Research Agreement No. 510401 FINAL REPORT August 20, 2007 By S. K. Sinha, H. R. Thomas, M. C. Wang and Y. J. Jung
2004	3.41:1		Study of nine SUE projects	Ontario Sewer and Watermain Contractors Association	Osman, Hesham, El-Diraby, Tamer E., 2005. Subsurface Utility Engineering in Ontario: Challenges & Opportunities. A Report to the Ontario Sewer & Water main Contractors Association, October 2005.
2004	12.23:1	1.39%	Reanalysis of 71 SUE projects	ASCE based on USDOT data	Jeong, H.S., Abraham, D.M., Lew, J.J., 2004. Evaluation of an emerging market in subsurface utility engineering. ASCE, Journal of Construction Engineering and Management 130 (2).
1999	4.62:1	0.5 %	Study of 71 SUE projects	USDOT	Lew, J.J., 2000. Cost Savings on Highway Projects utilizing Subsurface Utility Engineering. Federal Highway Administration, Washington, DC.

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation 2012

A definitive study of twenty-two projects utilizing subsurface utility engineering (SUE) and eight non-SUE projects from Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) districts has revealed that $11.39 can be saved for every $1 spent on SUE. The cost of conducting a SUE survey was estimated at 1.65% of total project cost. Eleven direct and indirect costs where SUE would lead to savings were considered in the analysis; utility relocation cost, utility damage cost, emergency restoration cost, traffic delay cost , business impact cost, user service cost, environmental impact cost, information gathering and verification cost, legal and litigation cost, efficient utility design and construction, and other utility related costs and benefits.

On the expense side two kinds of costs are involved in conducting a SUE survey. One is the use of geophysical techniques such as EMI and GPR to identify the location of underground utilities and other objects. The other is potholing (using safe excavation techniques) to confirm the location of the utilities and objects identified. In this study for the projects utilizing SUE, costs were obtained directly from project accounting. For the projects that did not use SUE, costs are estimated from interviews, historical data, and individual project studies.

For the twenty-two projects where a SUE survey was conducted, all underground utilities and other objects were located to ASCE 38-02 quality level A (potholing) or B (EMI and GPR). For the eight projects utilized traditional methods, the location of underground networks was estimated to ASCE quality levels C (site visit) and D (as-builts).

Previous ROI studies of SUE only used projects where SUE surveys were performed to quantify the cost savings of SUE. In this study, non-SUE projects were used to determine the cost savings of SUE because direct costs incurred by problems that would have been avoided by SUE can be considered as SUE benefits. The results of the study revealed that $11.39 can be saved for every $1 spent on SUE on road projects.

The top cost savings that were found are as follows:

1. 40.33% reduction in project relocation cost by providing accurate underground information in the early stages of design
2. 29.46% reduction in construction and design costs - SUE enables designers to design efficiently and accurately with reliable information, so that design time can be saved and unnecessary construction work can be avoided or reduced.
3. 9.59% reduction in redesign costs
4. 9.08% reduction in delay costs due to relocation
5. 6.81% reduction in delay costs caused by emergencies
6. 1.41% reduction in delay costs caused by unexpected utilities
7. 1.41% reduction in information gathering and verification cost
8. 1.04% reduction in restoration cost

It was concluded that SUE can provide accurate utility information with important project benefits at reasonable cost. A ratio of 1.65% was determined as the ratio of SUE cost to total project cost. The study also showed that the greater the complexity level of buried utilities, the higher the SUE benefits.

Region of Lombardy, Italy 2012

A pilot project was undertaken to map all underground infrastructure on the site of Expo Milano in preparation for the 2015 event in Milan. All underground infrastructure in the project area (230 000 square meters) including electric power, water, sewers, gas, district heating, street lighting, and telecommunication were mapped by combining historical records and IDS GeoRadar ground penetrating radar (GPR) technology. A key objective of the project was an economic analysis of the costs and benefits of applying GPR to detect the location of underground infrastructure. The analysis estimated that the return on investment is about €16 for every euro invested in improving the reliability of information about underground infrastructure. The analysis emphasized that there were other important, but non-quantifiable, benefits including better safety for both workers and the public as well as fewer traffic disruptions.

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation 2007

This study conducted by Penn State and sponsored by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation PennDOT) and the U.S. DoT, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) performed a benefit-cost analysis of 10 SUE highway projects from different PennDOT districts. The case studies were investigated by conducting interviews with utility engineers, SUE consultants, and project engineers. Site visits, analyses of project data, and detailed individual studies of the 10 SUE highway projects were also performed for this research. These projects were selected randomly from a list of projects that utilized SUE quality level A and/or B. The projects investigated in this study involved road construction and bridge replacement in urban, suburban, and rural areas. PennDOT project managers and engineers, utility owners, SUE consultants, designers, and contractors were interviewed. A savings of $22.21 for every $1.00 spent on SUE was estimated based on the analysis of the 10 projects. These projects had a total project cost (including both design and construction cost) in excess of $120 million. The costs of conducting SUE (to ASCE QL A or B) on these 10 projects were less than 0.6 percent of the total project costs. The benefit was cost savings of 15% over traditional approach relying on ASCE QL C and D utility data.

Project costs ranged from $2 million to $63 million. The quality of the utility records for these projects was poor or fair. The cost of conducting SUE ranged from $20,000 to $141,000 for these projects. The ratio of SUE cost to the total project cost ranged from 0.22% to 2.8%, with an average of 1.15%. SUE resulted in cost savings ranging from $65,000 to $4.5 million. The benefit-cost ratio ranged from 3.25 to 33.93, with an average of 22.21. In other words $22.21 can be saved for every $1 spent on SUE. The costs of conducting SUE on these 10 projects were less than 0.6 percent of the total project cost. Furthermore the analysis revealed a strong relationship between benefit of SUE and utility complexity. The benefit derived from performing a SUE survey increases as the underground utility complexity increases.

Ontario Sewer and Watermain Contractors Association 2004

In 2004 in Canada, the Ontario Sewer and Watermain Contractors Association commissioned the University of Toronto to investigate the practice of using SUE on large infrastructure projects in Ontario. Osman and El-Diraby (2005) analyzed nine SUE projects in Ontario, conducting interviews and project case studies. They identified 11 cost saving items from the 21 cost savings items used by 1999 U.S. DOT Purdue Study. The results of Ontario Study showed that the average return-on-investment (ROI) for SUE Osman and El-Diraby (2005) analyzed nine SUE projects in Ontario, conducting interviews and project case studies. They identified 11 cost saving items from the 21 cost savings items used by Purdue Study. The results of Ontario Study showed that the average return-on-investment (ROI) for SUE ranged from $1.98 to $6.59 with an average of $3.41 for each $1 spent.

U.S. DOT Federal Highway Administration 1999

In a study conducted by Purdue University Department of Building Construction Management for the U.S. DOT Federal Highway Administration, a total of seventy-one projects (71) from Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and Ohio were studied. The total construction costs of these road projects were in excess of one billion dollars and involved interstate, arterial, and collector Roads in urban, suburban, and rural settings. DOT project managers, utility owners, constructors, and designers were interviewed.

Based on Interviews and surveys of DOTs, utility owners, SUE consultants, and contractors 21 categories of cost savings were defined to quantify the savings in terms of time, cost, and risk management. The 21 categories of cost savings identified in the study were as follows: reduction in unforeseen utility conflicts and relocations; reduction in project delays due to utility relocates; reduction in claims and change orders; reduction in delays due to utility cuts; reduction in project contingency fees; lower project bids; reduction in costs caused by conflict redesign; reduction in the cost of project design; reduction in travel delays during construction to the motoring public; improvement in contractor productivity and quality; reduction in utility companies' cost to repair damaged facilities; minimization of utility customers' loss of service; minimization of damage to existing pavements; minimization of traffic disruption, increasing DOT public credibility; improvement in working relationships between DOT and utilities; increased efficiency of surveying activities by elimination of duplicate surveys; facilitation of electronic mapping accuracy; minimization of the chance of environmental damage; inducement of savings in risk management and insurance; introduction of the concept of a comprehensive SUE process; and reduction in right-of-way acquisition costs.

The reduction in risk for all of these potential benefits by conducting a SUE survey has been difficult to quantify. Benefits have been categorized as exact costs that can be quantified in a precise manner, for example the cost of potholing or the cost to eliminate utility conflicts; estimated costs that are difficult to quantify, but can be calculated by studying projects in detail, interviewing the personnel involved in the project, and applying historical cost data; qualitative costs that cannot be estimated due to a lack of data, for example, for example, avoided impacts on nearby homes and businesses.

The analysis revealed savings ranging from $0.34 to $206.67 for every dollar invested in SUE with an average of $4.62. The cost of conducting SUE surveys on these projects was less than 0.5 percent of the total construction costs. SUE surveys resulted in a construction savings of 1.9 percent over the traditional approach to underground utilities that relied on ASCE QL C and D. Using this ratio and a national expenditure in 1998 of $51 billion for highway construction (FHWA), requiring SUE on road projects could result in a minimum national savings of approximately $1 billion per year.

The qualitative savings were non-measurable, but it is clear that those savings are also significant and may be many times more valuable than the quantifiable savings. The study concluded that SUE is a viable, cost effective practice that reduced the risks associated with existing subsurface utilities resulted in significant quantifiable and qualitative benefits.

2004 American Society of Civil Engineers

A subsequent reanalysis of the data from the 1999 USDOT Purdue Study found that the estimated benefit of conducting a SUE survey was a cost savings of $12.23 for every $1 spent on SUE. The largest contributors to the cost savings derived from SUE were as follows:

1. 37.1% reduced number of utility relocations
2. 19.3% reduced claims and change orders
3. 11.6% reduced accidents and injuries
4. 9.6% reduced project delays
5. 3.5% reduced right-of-way acquisition costs
6. 3.3% savings in risk management and insurance
7. 15.5% other

The analysis concluded that the average ratio of the cost of SUE to total project cost ranged from 0.02% to 10.76% with an average of 1.39%.

Conclusion

These ROI studies show that SUE can provide accurate utility information with important project benefits at a reasonable cost. While SUE surveys have been shown to reduce the risk of budget overruns and project delays for construction projects, by themselves they are not a silver bullet for reducing the number of incidents of underground utility damage. As Heathrow International Airport and Japan have shown a comprehensive program involving policies, regulations, and construction practices is required.

ROI of $11.39 for every $1 spent on subsurface utility engineering on highway construction projects

A definitive study of twenty-two projects utilizing subsurface utility engineering (SUE) and eight non-SUE projects from Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) districts has revealed that $11.39 can be saved for every $1 spent on SUE.  The cost of conducting a SUE survey was estimated at 1.65% of total project cost.

Eleven main benefit factors were considered in the analysis.

1. Utility relocation cost
2. Utility damage cost
3. Emergency restoration cost
4. Traffic delay cost
5. Business impact cost
6. User service cost
7. Environmental impact cost
8. Information gathering and verification cost
9. Legal and litigation cost
10. Efficient utility design and construction
11. Other utility related costs and benefits

On the cost side two kinds of costs are involved in conducting a SUE survey. One is the use of geophysical techniques such as EMI and GPR to identify the location of underground utilities and other objects.  The other is potholing (using safe excavation techniques) to confirm the location of the utilities and objects identified.  In this study for the projects utilizing SUE, costs are obtained from directly from project accounting. For the projects that did not use SUE, costs are estimated from interviews, historical data, and individual project studies.

For the twenty-two projects where SUE was applied, all underground utilities and other objects were located to ASCE 38-02 quality level A (potholing) or B (EMI and GPR).  For the eight projects utilized traditional methods, the location of underground networks was estimated to ASCE quality levels C (site visit) and D (as-builts).

Previous ROI studies of SUE only used projects where SUE surveys were performed to quantify the cost savings of SUE.  In this study, non-SUE projects were used to determine the cost savings of SUE because direct costs incurred by problems that would have been avoided by SUE can be considered as SUE benefits. The results of the study revealed that $11.39 can be saved for every $1 spent on SUE on road projects. A ratio of 1.65% was determined as the ratio of SUE cost to total project cost. It was concluded that SUE can provide accurate utility information with important project benefits at reasonable cost. Project relocation cost is the most important item to the cost savings, representing 40.33% of total savings. The study also showed that the greater the complexity level of buried utilities, the higher the SUE benefits.

Source

Yeun J. Jung, Evaluation of subsurface utility engineering for highway projects: Benefit–cost analysis, pages 111-122 in Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology Volume 27, Issue 1 Pages 1-168 (January 2012)

Mapping underground utilities prior to design helps highway construction project complete on schedule and below budget

The winner of the Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2019 Roads and Highways award is a remarkable project by Foth Infrastructure and Environment LLC for a $38.9 million highway revitalization project in Cedar Falls, Iowa. This project was unique for several reasons. First of all, before design, a 3D model of all underground infrastructure in the right-of-way was created. This was an important factor enabling the project to complete on-time and 3% under budget. Secondly, Foth projected that innovative design including roundabouts would save the community $32 million over 25 years by reducing the number of accidents, decreasing travel time, lowering fuel usage and emissions, increasing property values, and leading to greater economic growth.

University Avenue was an Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) six-lane, divided highway which the City of Cedar Falls took ownership of in 2014. Built over 60 years ago, the corridor carries 20,000 vehicles per day and was suffering from deteriorated pavement, a crash rate 20% above the state average, a lack of pedestrian and bicycle accommodations, a pedestrian death, and inefficient traffic operations.

Innovative, advanced traffic designs were developed; multi-lane roundabouts, a dogbone interchange, and complete streets – which allowed for a reduction of lanes that still decreased congestion and increased overall traffic flow. Technical innovations included use of drone and mobile scanning utilized for reality modelling, a building information (BIM) for creating 3D modles and fostering collaboration, and 3D visualization and traffic modelling for communicating alternative designs to stakeholders and public.

The project is one of the few of which I am aware in which a 3D model of underground utilities was developed before the start of the design phase. This enabled the detection of 200 utility conflicts during the design phase avoiding utility conflicts during construction and was the primary reason that the project completed on schedule and 3% under bid saving the City $700,000.

The project is also unique in that the design and build contractor estimated the benefits of the proposed innovative design using roundabouts over the 25 year lifetime.  It was projected that the community would recognize $32 million of benefits from fewer accidents, faster travel times, less gas consumption and associated emissions, growing property values, and increasing economic growth.

From a public safety perspective, Foth estimated an 89% reduction in personal injury accidents. As owner of the highway, the City is projected to realize $27 million in benefits from economic growth, corridor improvements, avoided traffic signal maintenance, and reduced lighting costs. Reality modeling including mapping underground utilities prior to design,  innovative highway design, and digital design technology based on BIM saved $521 thousand in project costs by eliminating utility conflicts and the resulting change orders, enhanced public engagement, and design acceleration.

Remarkably, despite facing aggressive schedules, vast information coordination, complex utility coordination, intense public involvement, and a very tight design schedule involving public participation, Foth was able to deliver the project on time and below budget.

GeoIgnite: Evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial approach to construction

I thought it would be worth while to include here the plenary talk I gave at GeoIgnite 2019 in Ottawa about the growing evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM + geospatial approach to full-lifecycle construction. 

The UK government and others have stated clearly that they expect the largest benefits of BIM to flow from a full-lifecycle approach to construction.  As construction companies who have taken on design, build, operate and/or maintain projects have found, for full life-cycle construction projects an approach that combines BIM + geospatial significantly improves outcomes. Until the last year or two evidence of the benefits of BIM + geospatial from real world projects has not been available. Now we are beginning to see substantive data that offer evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.

Some owners have begun procuring using a design, build, maintain, and or operate model.   Engineering and construction companies who have undertaken these projects have reported significant business benefits from adopting an integrated BIM+geospatial approach to construction. Further evidence of the benefits of this approach is provided recently by the owner of a major $1.3 billion PPP construction project.  Nagpur Metro has estimated that it expects total savings in excess of US$225 million over the 25 year lifetime of a design-build-operate-maintain project.

In Canada construction contributes $137 billion, about 7 %, to the GDP annually. Construction in advanced economies have worldwide have a serious problem. 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 will require huge amounts of private investment from pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds. To attract this money will require improvements in construction productivity, but in many of the world's advanced economies, construction productivity has been flat for the past 40 years. McKinsey reports that large construction projects typically take 20 percent longer to finish than scheduled and are up to 80 percent over budget. McKinsey & Company suggests that the construction industry is ripe for disruption and two of the technologies that it believes will be key in that anticipated transformation are geospatial and BIM. 

The UK Government as part of its building information modeling (BIM) initiative has said repeatedly that it expects the big payoff of a digital model will be during operations and maintenance, which typically represents 80% of the cost of a facility.  But to date there has been little uptake of this approach in the facilities management (FM) sector. A recent 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.

The early adopters of a BIM+geospatial approach are companies who take on design, build, and maintain and/or operate projects, variously referred to as DBFM in the Netherlands, BOT in Southeast Asia, and PPP in Canada and India. Among these companies are some well-known names in global construction; Major construction firms have realized that BIM+geospatial integration provide greater value for full lifecycle projects. EllisDon, Parsons Brinckerhoff , Atkins Global , Arcadis , BAM and AECOM.

For example, in Canada In Canada public–private partnership (PPP) have been remarkably successful for building and maintaining infrastructure. 15 years ago EllisDon began taking on PPP projects and quickly recognized that an integrated BIM+geospatial simplified capturing and maintaining data over the full project lifecyle of a project. As a result Integrated BIM + geospatial has become a best practice on P3 projects at EllisDon.

Owners have found that BIM+geospatial integration provides greater value to projects that involve not just design and construction but also operations and maintenance. A leader in this space, Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch transportation authority, began offering design-build-finance-maintain (DBFM) projects a number of years ago which has motivated private Dutch engineering and construction companies to adopt an integrated geospatial+BIM approach to construction. 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. This includes reality capture using LiDAR scanning at the beginning of the project, before design, to capture an acuurate representation of the location where construction will take place. During the design and build phases of the project everything captured is georeferenced so that it can be migrated to an integrated GIS+FM system for maintenance activities. 

The Crossrail project in London which was the largest engineering project in Europe at the time, adopted a full-lifecycle BIM+geospatial approach with targets of 20% savings on design and construction and 40% savings during operations and maintenance.

In Southeast Asia for a BOT (build-operate-transfer) substation expansion project won by Malaysian company PESTECH to design, build and operate the substation for 25 years. PESTECH adopted an integrated BIM+geospatial approach which included reality capture of the existing substation at the beginning of the project using LiDAR and georeferencing everything including engineering drawings, digital photos, point clouds, BIM models, and other construction documents. The benefits that were realized as a result of this apporach included reduced design time, fewer site visits, reduced land requirement and material waste, and most importantly for keeping the project on budgets and on schedule no change orders.

In China a geospatial+BIM approach was adopted for the Miaoshan 220kV Secondary Transformer Substation project. This was a large indoor substation in Dongxihu District, Wuhan City, Hubei Province. The project integrated digital tools for construction, site preparation, mechanical, electrical, and protection. The 3D digital modeling approach enabled collaborative design of an indoor substation with restricted space with multiple voltages in a very congested urban area with minimal impact on the existing buildings and infrastructure and all of this within a tight time frame. One of the important benefits of the approach was that minimized the impact of the substation on the existing infrastructure. Since the transformer substation is located in the downtown of Wuhan where buildings are dense, reality capture (laser scanning) was used to model the area surrounding the substation. This helped to ensure the substation site design did not conflict with surrounding buildings. To enable combining the model, the point cloud data, the digital terrain model and other external data everything was geolocated (Bentley calls this geo-coordinated). Geo-coordination, a term minted by Bentley, enables engineers and facilities managers to find things that are tagged,related, or close to a building element and it makes it possible to navigate the information environment, not only 3D design models (virtual reality), but also 3D models in a real world context (augmented reality). For this project it was fundamental not only for integrating the substation design in its real world context, but also for making it possible to reuse the BIM model and associated data during operation and maintenance.

In the U.S. AECOM, which is a US$18.2 billion a year firm in the construction sector and has been ranked for eight years running #1 in Engineering News Record‘s “Top 500 Design Firms”, uses BIM + GIS on design, build, finance and operate (DBFO) projects around the world. AECOM has applied this approach to the external campus of Denver International Airport, and to lease management at Orlando, Hong Kong, and South West Florida international airports. AECOM has found that the advantage of an integrated BIM+GIS approach based on a centralized integration of information is that it allows the client to make strategic decisions during the design, build and operate phases of the construction life-cycle.

The first project I have come across that has attempted estimate total savings attributable to an integrated BIM+geospatial full life-cycle approach to construction is the Napgur Metro project. This is a US$1.3 billion project underway in Nagpur, and appears to be the first project in Asia to integrate a digital twin with an asset management system to eliminate information loss about assets during design and construction. Since the Nagpur system implements a full-lifecycle approach to project management, the location of each of the 500,000 assets comprising the systems is recorded making it possible to click on an asset in SAP and be shown the location of the asset in a 3D map. Final deliverables are digital models rather than paper drawings providing a basis for digitalizing operations and maintenance. The benefits of a 3D BIM+geospatial approach have been projected based on a 25 year lifetime for the project. It is estimated that this will result in US$400,000 savings during plan, design and build. But the big benefit of an integrated BIM+geospatial approach is expected during the 25 year maintain and operate phase of the project. It is expected that operating manpower requirements will be reduced by 20%. The really big payoff is an estimated savings of US$222 million over the lifetime of the project.

Reflecting this trend toward integrated BIM+geospatial there has been a massive consolidation over the past decade of the major hardware and software vendors providing geospatial, BIM and reality capture equipment and software. Hexagon AB, founded in in 1975, began major acquistions in the 1990s which included Leica Geosystems and Intergraph. It has now reached $3.49 billion annual revenue. Trimble founded in 1978 also embarked on major acquisitions including Sketchup and Tekla and is now a $2.7 billion construction equipment and software company. More recently Topcon (Japan) acquired Sokkia and Clearedge and has achieved $1.2 billion in annual revenue. Perhaps most significantly as an indicator for this trend in the industry, Autodesk ($2.46 billlion) and ESRI ($1.1 billion), the 800 pound gorillas in BIM and GIS, respectively, have announced a partnership to improve interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds. Finally, Bentley ($700 million) + Siemens ($105 billion) are working closely on a number of construction projects.

As a growing number of owners see the advantages of a full life-cycle approach in construction projects and begin to change their procurement practices, construction companies are changing their business processes to optimize facility maintenance and operation.  The leading edge of this trend is AEC companies that have taken on the challenge of design, build, operate and/or maintain projects. They have reported that they have realized significant benefits from an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction. Now it appears that the word is getting out. Standards organizations in both the AEC and geospatial worlds are making progress on BIM+geospatial interoperability. Major software vendors Autodesk and ESRI have announced an agreement to partner for greater interoperability between their products. The open source community is also addressing the issue of BIM+geospatial interoperability. In the past the quantified advantages of an integrated BIM+geospatial approach have remained for the most part company internal, but we are now beginning to see data from real world projects that offer quantitative evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.

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

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

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

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

Integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction

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

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

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

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

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

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

Benefits of Integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle construction

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

BIM+geospatial interoperability

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Open source support for AEC/geospatial interoperability

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

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

Conclusion

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

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.

Towards a digital twin of infrastructure: on the cusp of efficient reality capture of underground utilities

Public safety is at risk whenever the location of underground infrastructure is unknown or inaccurately known. For example, in Belgium workers on a construction project rupture a high pressure gas line they did not know was in the vicinity and the resulting explosion results in fatalities and injuries.   Or a house explodes when a gas line penetrates a sewer line during trenchless horizontal drilling and an attempt is made to clear the resulting obstruction with an augur.  Or it requires hours to identify the source of an explosion in a residential neighbourhood in San Bruno, California which caused fatalities. Similar events have occurred in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Bellingham, Washington, El Paso, Texas, Saudi Arabia and a number of other locations.

Damages and delays connected with underground utilities during construction represent at a minimum a $50 billion drag on the U.S. economy.  For example, a project in Sydney, Australia to extend a light rail transit system encountered many unknown underground utilities during construction which delayed the project by one and half years. In the U.S., a leading cause of highway construction delays is missing or inaccurate information about the location of underground utilities. To address the risk of liabilities associated with unknown or inaccurately located underground utilities, contractors regularly increase bid costs by a minimum of 10-30%. 

A digital twin of the underground would eliminate or ameliorate these issues.  Creating a digital twin requires addressing challenges.  First of all, considerable effort goes into detecting the location of underground utilities in preparation for and during construction on virtually all projects, but this data is rarely shared.  If a way could be found to share this data, not only would contractors not have to rediscover the location of underground utilities over and over again, but over time a 3D map of underground infrastructure would emerge at no significant additional cost to construction contractors.  Secondly, a technological advance is required that enables the efficient, safe and rapid capture and processing of remote sensed data to create accurate 3D maps of the underground.  Recently there have been advances in addressing both of these issues that provide grounds for optimism that we are close to being able to cost-effectively create a digital twin of underground infrastructure. 

Putting this in the context of smart cities, where data in the form of a national digital twin becomes just as important as physical assets, it is essential that a national digital twin include above and below ground assets. Fundamental to this process is rethinking value, not just the value of a finished building or infrastructure asset, but over the entire lifecycle of an infrastructure asset. Furthermore, managing this data cost-effectively requires finding ways to integrate data and services relating to the underground with other city data.

Why a digital twin of underground infrastructure is important

The impact of poor information about the location of underground utilities is exemplified in the Sydney Light Rail Project.  This is a $2.1 billion PPP project for a 12 km of light rail extension in Sydney, Australia to be completed by 2019. In preparation for construction a year was allocated for identifying potentially conflicting utilities in the proposed right of way. About 500 subsurface utilities were identified and scheduled for relocation. During construction a further 400 unmapped utility services were encountered. An economic impact study by an independent consulting firm estimated that the project could have been completed at least one and a half years sooner if a complete and reliable 3D map of underground infrastructure had been available at the project planning stage.

In the U.S. underground utilities are a leading causes of highway construction delays.  Almost all construction projects for buildings or infrastructure contain a design constraint: existing utilities strung overhead on visible structures or hidden underground.  The traditional strategy for the highway designer has been to ignore utilities during design. Prior to construction utilities in the areas were requested to locate any of their underground infrastructure in the proposed right of way. Utilities are routinely relocated, often at great expense, often unnecessarily and often negatively impacting budget and schedule of the construction project. A more cost-effective alternative “design-to-accommodate” is to locate utilities first and then design the highway to avoid them, but that requires reliable information about where the utilities are located. This is rarely available. Between the two alternatives of relocating utilities and designing the highway to avoid utilities whose location is poorly known designers try to find a workable compromise that meets the highway construction scope and mission, while minimizing impacts to utility facilities. If successful, this can result in substantial savings in utility relocation costs and impacts, as well as overall savings to the project budget and timeline.  A survey has found that state departments of transportation (DOTs) overwhelmingly would like to get utilities involved as early as possible to reduce project risk by determining what utility infrastructure is present in the project area and where it is located. The study found that there is a general consensus that this would help make better decisions regarding relocation versus design-to-accommodate. When comprehensive and accurate utility location data is available, better decisions can be made, and the risk of unforeseen problems due to utilities emerging during the construction phase are reduced.

According to the Common Ground Alliance (CGA), in the United States an underground utility line is hit on average every 60 seconds, that is 390,366 hits in 2016. In addition there is always the risk of injuries and fatalities. I have estimated that the total cost to the national economy is over $50 billion. The problem is a location one; we simply don't know where our underground infrastructure is.  In most municipalities in North America underground utility lines have been put in the ground not according to plan but wherever it has been easiest and cheapest to build them. As a result 2D as-builts of underground infrastructure are notoriously unreliable. Neither the local municipality or the utility network owner know the location of underground utilities.

Construction bids routinely include an added cost, which can amount to 10%-30% of the bid cost, to cover the risk associated with underground utilities. In spite of the effort in locating underground infrastructure that is part of virtually every construction project the information is rarely shared and as a result the location of the same underground utilities is often captured over and over again for different construction projects.

As a result locating underground utilities is an essential part of every construction project involving excavation and has become a major industry in the U.S. The Common Ground Alliance (CGA) which is an association of companies and practitioners in North America reports 1700 members in the U.S. and Canada. The last CGA annual conference and exhibition attracted 800 attendees and over a hundred exhibitors which gives a feeling for the size of the locate sector.

In the UK about 4 million excavations are carried out every year on the UK road network to install or repair buried utility pipes and cables. Not knowing the location of buried assets causes practical problems that increase costs and delay projects, but more importantly, it increases the risk of injury for utility owners, contractors and road users. The problems associated with inaccurate location of buried pipes and cables are serious and are rapidly worsening due to the increasing density of underground infrastructure in major urban areas. Research at the University of Birmingham has determined the direct costs of utility strikes in the U.K.

Facility	Avg cost per strike
Electricity	£ 970
Gas	£485
Telecom	£400
Fibre-optic	£2800
Water	£300-980

The researchers have found that the true costs, including indirect and social costs, associated with utility strikes is 29 times the direct cost.

In the U.S. the Common Ground Alliance reports that there were 390,366 documented underground utility hits in 2016. The average costs of the damage for each utility hit were calculated for different types of underground infrastructure.

Facility		Avg cost per damage 2016
Natural gas		$5,914.00
Telecom		$3,022.00
Electric		$4,905.00
Cable TV		$2,190.00
Water		$3,003.00
Sewer		$5,163.00
Liquid pipeline		$7,711.00
Steam		$1,800.00
Average		$4,021.00

At an average cost of $4000 per hit, the CGA estimates that the direct cost to the U.S. Economy was $1.5 billion. The CGA emphasizes that this is a conservative minimum estimate and does not include indirect and social costs such as property damage, evacuations, traffic disruption, road closures, resulting lost business, environmental impacts, lawsuits, injuries, and fatalities. If the ratio of total to direct cost determined by the researchers at the University of Birmingham is applicable to the US, it would mean that the total estimated impact of unknown or poorly located underground infrastructure on the U.S. economy is over $50 billion.

Return-on-investment of accurately mapping underground utilities

University research has put a dollar figure on the benefits of accurate location data for underground utilities.

According to a USDOT sponsored survey conducted by Purdue University in 1999, two broad categories of savings emerged from using SUE — quantifiable and qualitative savings. The Purdue study quantified a total of US$4.62 in avoided costs for every US$1.00 spent on SUE. Although qualitative savings (for example, avoided impacts on nearby homes and businesses) were not directly measurable, the researchers believed those savings were significant, and arguably many times more valuable than the quantifiable savings.

In 2004 in Canada, the Ontario Sewer and Watermain Contractors Association commissioned the University of Toronto to investigate the practice of using SUE on large infrastructure projects in Ontario. This study, entitled Subsurface Utility Engineering in Ontario: Challenges and Opportunities, determined that the average rate of return for each dollar spent on SUE services on those projects that could be quantified was $3.41.

In 2007, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation commissioned Pennsylvania State University to study the savings on Pennsylvania highway projects that used SUE in accordance with the mapping provisions of the American standard. In their unpublished report, Subsurface Utility Engineering Manual, Pennsylvania State University found a return on investment of US$21.00 saved for every US$1.00 spent for SUE when elevating the quality level of subsurface utility information using SUE.

In 2010 researchers at the University of Toronto took an in-depth look at nine large municipal and highway reconstruction projects that developed an enhanced depiction of buried utilities. Based on this analysis, a cost model was proposed that takes into account both tangible and intangible benefits. All projects showed a positive return-on-investment (ROI) that ranged from $2.05 to $6.59 for every dollar spent on improving underground utility location data.

In Europe an economic analysis of a Milan pilot project to map all underground infrastructure using ground penetrating radar for the Expo Milan 2015 site was carried out. The study found a return on investment of €16 for every euro invested in improving the reliability information of underground infrastructure.

In the U.S. the Federal Highway Authority (FHWA) cites studies that have shown that the cost of detecting underground utilities prior to construction typically costs less than 0.5 percent of the total project construction cost, saves more than $4 for every $1 spent, and can reduce project delivery time by as much as 20 percent.

Growing private investment in infrastructure drives technology investment in construction

The need for investment in infrastructure has continued to grow. It has been estimated that some $57 trillion will be required over the next decade and a half, or an estimated $90 trillion if we want to ensure that this infrastructure is sustainable. Increasingly infrastructure projects require private investment because governments simply have less and less money for capital projects. To fill the shortfall requires private capital. Private capital in pension funds, insurance companies, and sovereign investment funds amounts to over $50 trillion. Beginning in 2004 some of this money began to find its way into infrastructure investment and by 2007 private investment in infrastructure had reached $ 40 billion annually before the world financial crisis led to a cutback. Since then private investment in infrastructure has rebounded reaching nearly $80 billion in 2016.

Until recently construction has been at the bottom of the list with hunting and agriculture among industries with respect to investment in research and development.  There are signs that this is changing. In the last few years the number of startups focussed on technological innovation in construction has risen dramatically. Partly this can be ascribed to technological innovation that makes technologies such as reality capture, building information modeling (BIM), and augmented reality more accessible, but this is amplified by growing private investment in infrastructure. Private investment, unlike government investment which aims at social benefits, seeks financial returns. Whether the source of the funds is a pension fund, an insurance company, or a sovereign wealth fund, investments are expected to show a high likelihood of generating a significant financial return. This in turn drives productivity because increasing productivity of construction and operations and maintenance increases the return on investment.

Accelerating R&D into underground detection and modeling

There are indications of increased research and development initiatives related to underground infrastructure. In the U.S. for the first time the Common Ground Alliance (CGA), which represents the utility locate industry in North America, has just released a Technology Report, which describes the current state of underground detection technology including the latest developments and the gaps which CGA has identified in current hardware and software.

In the UK there have been quite a few research initiatives relating to underground infrastructure.  Project Iceberg, a collaborative project between Ordnance Survey (OS), British Geological Survey and Future Cities Catapult, has been created to better capture, collect and share data about underground assets and geological conditions and to find a way of sharing all this information among utility and energy companies, the transport sector, street works planners, building developers, and the construction industry.  The Mayor of London and the Smart London Infrastructure Network, which is composed of utilities responsible for water, energy, telecommunications and waste management in London, sponsored a challenge with the objective of developing digital technologies to accurately locate underground assets, including pipes, cables and joints, and determine their condition. The goal was to improve safety, and to reduce operational downtime, cost and environmental impact, and disruption. A national 10 year academic research program Mapping the Underworld focussed on remote-sensing for locating sub-surface utilities has just completed and been replaced by a follow-on 10 year program Assessing the Underworld. The BIM for the Subsurface (2015-2017) project, funded by Innovate UK, aimed to address issues such as project delays due to unforeseen ground conditions by applying the BIM process directly to ground investigation and subsurface infrastructure design.

Across Europe the SUB-URBAN COST Action (2013-17) aimed at developing relationships between experts who develop urban subsurface knowledge and urban decision makers, practitioners and the wider research community. The Action established a European network across 30 countries of Geological Surveys, Cities and Research Partners.

IDS GeoRadar Stream C

There is evidence of growing investment by major vendors in underground detection technology.  Hexagon, with revenue of $4 billion annually, acquired IDS (Ingegneria dei Sistemi) GeoRadar, an Italian company that has developed a towed multi-channel ground penetrating radar array that can collect data on underground infrastructure at faster speeds than has been possible heretofore. Since the acquisition Leica continues to release important enhancements to the software used to create 3D models of underground from the GPR scans and other information.  Furthermore a major software company, Bentley Geosystems with about $1 billion in annual revenue, has developed software specifically for managing location information about underground infrastructure. Bentley Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE) enables users to develop 3D subsurface utility models from 2D models, resolve subsurface utility clashes, and model, analyze, and design subsurface infrastructure networks.

Recent advances in detecting and sharing location of underground utilities

Currently standard practice requires walking a lawn-mower like GPR array or hand-held EM wand along a road or right of way to detect underground utilities.  This is not only time-consuming and expensive, in traffic it is extremely dangerous.  Recently technical advances in detection were reported that bring rapid, cost-effective and safe collection of location information about underground infrastructure with no boots on the pavement closer to reality. T2 Utility Engineers, based in Whitby, Ontario have reported commercially using a multi-channel ground penetrating radar (GPR) array towed routinely at 10-12 km/hr to capture subsurface data.

Siteco rig with Sensors and Software GPR array and Faro LiDAR scanner

In a separate initiative a successful proof of concept by DGT Associates has been reported in Mississauga, Ontario in which data collected by a rig combining mobile laser scanning and GPR arrays collected data simultaneously above and below ground towed at roadway speeds of 80 to 90 km/hr.  In both cases the data was collected in soil conditions that were less than optimum for GPR. In both cases no boots were required on the pavement which addresses a serious safety issue with traditional GPR and electromagnetic (EM) detection.  However, in both cases significant time was required to post-process the collected scans, combine this information with as-builts, EM scans and other information to create 3D models. Much of the post-processing work remains manual. A rough estimate is that the post-processing requires two weeks per ten kilometers.  Nevertheless, that data can be collected safely at or near roadway speeds overcomes an important hurdle in developing 3D models of underground infrastructure.  In addition improvements in software are helping to speed up the post-processing required to create 3D models.

A significant cost for virtually every construction project is detecting underground utilities prior to and during construction.  This information is rarely shared so that the information about underground utilities collected during construction is effectively lost has to be collected over and over again. There are several initiatives underway to develop ways to share information about underground infrastructure that is captured during construction.

City of Chicago, Univ of Illinois Real-Time and Automated Monitoring and Control Lab (RAAMAC) and CityZenith

The City of Chicago has launched a pilot to deploy a platform for collecting data and creating and sharing a 3D map of underground. It is based on new technology developed by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Real-Time and Automated Monitoring and Control Lab (RAAMAC) and Chicago start-up CityZenith. During excavation a dozen or more pictures are captured with an inexpensive digital camera. RAAMAC's software uses the photos to create a 3D digital model of the underground infrastructure. These models can be securely shared between the City of Chicago and construction contractors to improve project planning and limiting accidents. The advantage of this approach to data collection is that it does not interfere with construction and does not add any significant cost.  In a similar vein Bentley Systems has experimented with a system that equips excavation equipment with four inexpensive digital cameras that are used to collect images of underground infrastructure encountered during excavation. These images can be used to create an accurate georeferenced 3D map of the utilities encountered during excavation. A research project involving Costain and Bentley Systems has found that digital photography during excavation using a consumer grade smartphone can be used to create a 3D model of comparable accuracy to a laser scan survey and at much lower cost.

Recent advances in standards for locating underground utilities

Recently there have been developments that reflect improvements in underground remote sensing technology. Standards for reporting the reliability of the locational information about underground utilities have been in place for decades. In the U.S. the 2003 ASCE 38-02 which has been used for classifying location information about underground infrastructure according to its estimated reliability, is widely seen as being out of date. In France the 2012 presidential decree defines three explicit levels of cartographic accuracy for underground structures; A - less than 40 centimeters, B - 40 centimeters to 1.5 meters, and C - greater than 1.5 meters. In the UK the 2014 Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 128, developed under the auspices of the British Standards Institution (BSI) and sponsored by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and others, not only includes the A,B, C, D quality levels of the U.S. standard, but extends it with explicit precision levels B1 to B3. A process to revise PAS 128 to reflect newer technical developments has just been initiated.

Three organizations have sponsored a concept development study by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for underground information with the main outcome being an Engineering Report. The sponsors of the OGC Underground Concept Development Study were the Fund for the City of New York - Center for Geospatial Innovation, the Singapore Land Authority, and the Ordnance Survey (UK).  The Engineering Report documents the progress made by the OGC and its members to build a complete situation assessment and develop a conceptual framework for action to improve underground infrastructure data interoperability. The report also identifies the most important steps to be taken next in order to develop the necessary data standards.

This led to the development of draft versions of a Model for Underground Data Definition and Interchange ("MUDDI Data Model") and an RoI (return on investment) model Cost Benefit Assessment of Subterranean Information Management. MUDDI is being developed as an interchange and integration model to support a range of critical underground infrastructure and environment information that is currently held in a wide and disparate variety of forms. To review and assess MUDDI through actual implementations, the OGC has issued a call for participation for a MUDDI Workshop to be held July of this year in New York City.

Municipal and regional mapping of underground infrastructure

Some cities and regions have realized the value of knowing where their underground infrastructure is and have required better information about the location of underground utilities.  In most cases this involves legislation requiring and implementation of a system for sharing information about underground utilities between utility and telecom companies and construction contractors.

Many years ago Tokyo developed the mainframe-based Road Administration Information Center (ROADIC) system which was deployed first in Tokyo and then in most major cities in Japan. The ROADIC system provides information about the location of underground infrastructure including telecommunications and utilities.

Sarajevo, in Bosnia, has recorded the location of all utility and telecommunications infrastructure operating in the city on paper maps for over 50 years.  The building permitting process in Sarajevo required contractors working within the city to supply coordinates of all underground infrastructure to the permitting office where they were transcribed onto paper maps.  A decade ago Sarajevo converted these maps to digital format (Oracle Spatial).

Calgary, Alberta has had the JUMP (Joint Utility Mapping Project) for many years.  A city by-law requires that anyone placing cables or pipes undergound within city limits provide 2D maps in electronic form showing the location of the infrastructure.  The maps only show location and type of infrastructure (water, gas, electric power, telecom) and owner.  Anyone excavating in Calgary can access this database.  Edmonton, Alberta also has a shared facilities mapping database. The Instituto de Información Territorial del Estado de Jalisco developed an integrated infrastructure database for the State of Jalisco.

A project of the City of Sao Paulo called GeoCONVIAS which integrates data from 20 to 30 utilities operating in the city of Sao Paulo, which is one of the World's largest cities. The most important objectives  of the ConVIAS project are to organize underground infrastructure, prevent accidents during excavation, reduce inconvenience to the public, and reduce the costs of maintaining underground infrastucture. The utilities in Sao Paulo are not asked to provide detailed information about their underground facilities, just "a simple line" showing the location of their facilities.

Rio de Janeiro has a similar project GeoVias funded by the government of the City of Rio de Janeiro and four utilties.  One of the immediate motivations for this project was "man hole explosions" apparently resulting from the close proximity of underground electrical and gas facilities in Rio.  The objectives of the project in Rio are somewhat different from Sao Paulo, apparently because the network of underground facilities isn Rio is absolutely unique, certainly in Brazil, but maybe even in the world.  The objectives of the Rio project were to reduce the risk of accidents, eliminate hazardous interaction between different networks, for example, electric power and gas and provide information about the location of underground networks for construction projects. It was hoped that the project would also speed up the process of reviewing construction permit applications, which currently can take a year to complete, and emergency repairs to underground infrastructure.

Penang, Malaysia developed an interesting approach for mapping and maintaining a database of underground facilities.  Sutra D'Bank (Penang State Government Subterranean Data Bankis a database that is maintained by a joint venture company Equarater (Penang) Sdn Bhd (EPSB) .  Sutra D' Bank's customers are utilities or any other party undertaking excavations in areas under the jurisdiction of the local government.  The operator of Sutra D'Bank does two things.  They will provide the location of underground facilities in the planned excavation area, using the Sutra D'Bank database of undergound facilities supplemented by an on-site survey using a variety of technologies.  This is similar to the service that many utilities and telcos provide,  but identifies all underground facilities, not just those of one utility or telco.  In addition, the operator of Sutra D'Bank conducts an onsite as-built survey to record the 3D position and all relevant attributes of the new installation which they then upload to the Sutra D' Bank database.  This is unique and addresses a common problem - as-designed vs. as-constructed as-builts - that many utilities and telecoms face who rely on their construction contractors for as-builts.

The remarkable Sydney Down Under project brings together utility infrastructure including water, wastewater, telecommunications, electric power, and transportation infrastructure including rail and subways, and roads and highways, together with buildings (above and below ground) including interior spaces and occupants. It was developed by the Emergency Information Coordination Unit of the New South Wales government. This project involves 200 organizations including local and state governments, utilities and the telecommunications company.  The project is focussed on emergency and disaster management. Since the information is intended for emergency response applications, its availability is restricted.

A major step forward in mapping underground infrastructure was a pilot project carried out using ground penetrating radar (GPR) on the site of the Expo Milano 2015 event in Milan. The total project area is about 230 000 square meters. All underground infrastructure including electric power, water, sewers, gas, district heating, street lighting, and telecommunication, were mapped using ground penetrating radar (GPR) which was compared to historical records.  The comparison revealed major discrepancies in the historic record including thousands of meters of unknown infrastructure. For the known infrastructure large errors of geolocation were recorded.  The other ground breaking part of the pilot project was an economic analysis of the costs and benefits of applying GPR to detect the location of underground infrastructure. The analysis estimated that the return on investment is about €16 for every euro invested in improving the reliability information of underground infrastructure.

Initiatives towards national digital twins of infrastructure

Knowing where things are underground has become important enough that in several countries around the world; France, the Netherlands, Singapore, and the U.K. initiatives to improve our knowledge about the location of underground infrastructure are already underway.

In France a nation-wide multi-billion euro project was initiated to improve the quality of the location information about France's underground utility infrastructure. A 2013 presidential decree mandates that by 2019 the location of critical underground infrastructure in urban areas will be mapped to 40 cm or better. (According to the decree critical infrastructure does not include telecommunications or water and sewers.) Furthermore by 2026 the location of all of the nation's infrastructure will be mapped to 40 cm. The decree also specifies the liability for hitting underground infrastructure that shares the responsibility between the utility owner and the the contractor depending on the precision of the information available about the underground facility.

Underground Netherlands

But more importantly, as a potential model for the cost-efficient sharing of information about the underground, the Netherlands has embarked on a national program supported by legislation and standards to expand the collection and sharing of data about the subsurface. In 2015 a new law was passed by the States General in the Netherlands which created the Basisregistratie Ondergrond (BRO) or Key Registry for the Subsurface which is open and accessible to all citizens of the Netherlands. The law mandates that if you excavate or drill you have to share your data with the BRO registry. In addition if when using the data in the registry you find something is incorrect you have to report it.  The Key Registry for the Subsurface (BRO) 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.  Work is underway to implement data models for the remaining data types including cables and pipes for which the Dutch standard IMKL will be used.  All 26 will become mandatory by 2022. The information model cables and pipes (IMKL) is a Dutch standard data model for the exchange of data about underground infrastructure and is founded on the INSPIRE model for cables and pipes, in which location is specified in the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) GML format.

As a result of the conjunction of the release of three UK government reports, Industrial Strategy Building A Britiain for the Future, Transforming Infrastructure Performance, and Data for the Public Good, the transformation in how infrastructure is built, managed and operated in the UK has made a national digital twin a key concept for the UK government. A national digital twin includes above and below ground assets. It is based on the foundation concept that a digital model is equally important as the physical assets.  Combining above and below-ground information into one national single data model/data exchange framework will allow industry to share business developments and innovation activities.  Project Iceberg is an exploratory project undertaken by the British Geological Survey, Ordnance Survey and the Future Cities Catapult to investigate ways to integrate data and services relating to the underground with other city data. To date two reports Market Research into the Current State of Play and Global Case Studies and Defining the problem space for an integrated data operating system above and below ground have been published and are publicly available.The medium term objective is to take these concepts forward with project partners to develop new digital data demonstrator projects.

Underground Singapore: Straits Times

In Singapore the Urban Redevelopment Authority is planning to have a masterplan of Singapore's underground spaces ready by 2019. It will be released as part of the next Master Plan guiding Singapore's development in the medium term.

In the U.S. an initiative has just been started to create a national infrastructure map which would include subsurface infrastructure. In June of this year a special summit was convened at Arizona State University which included leaders in public administration, infrastructure development, geography, GIS, and data integration/open data. The objective of the meeting was to review the current state of location-based information on national infrastructure including underground, examine efforts to integrate location based data systems across jurisdictions, understand the perspective of stakeholder communities, identify strategies for more systematic access to data at the national scale, and discuss the role of government to implement such strategies.

Summary

Mapping the underground is an essential component of creating a national digital twin. Recent technical development including the ability to collect data at highway speeds that can be used to create a 3D model of underground infrastructure, software that can extract relevant 3D underground information from consumer digital photography and video capture, novel ways to share information about underground infrastructure during construction at no significant additional cost to contractors, and progress on standards for sharing information about the subsurface are bringing us close to being able to cost-effectively create a digital twin of underground infrastructure at the municipal, regional and national levels increasingly feasible.

A key motivation for 3D mapping the subsurface is the risk to construction projects of unknown or poorly mapped underground infrastructure. Every year workers and the members of the public are injured or killed as a result of unforeseen underground utility hits. Underground utilities are the number one cause of delays in highway construction projects. The economic cost to the U.S. economy of not knowing where underground utilities is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars. A number of studies have concluded that the ROI of improving the accuracy of location of underground infrastructure is significant, with estimates of the benefits ranging as high as $21 for every dollar invested.

Singapore, the Netherlands and France have adopted policies leading to the development of accurate digital models of their national underground infrastructure.  Putting this in the context of smart cities, where data in the form of a national digital twin becomes just as important as physical assets, it is essential that a national digital twin include above and below ground assets. Fundamental to this process is rethinking value, not just the value of a finished building or infrastructure asset, but over the entire lifecycle of an infrastructure asset.  The development of a national digital twin has recently been enunciated by the UK government. In the United States an initiative has just been kicked off in March 2018 to develop a national infrastructure map including underground infrastructure.  Taken together - the public awareness of the problem, the technical advancements in underground detection in the last few years that are making cost-efficient 3D mapping of the underground increasingly feasible, and the growing recognition of the the benefits of accurate 3D maps of underground infrastructure – have led to accelerated momentum to create a digital twin of the subsurface at the municipal, regional and national levels.