Going Underground

GOING UNDERGROUND

Accidental strikes on underground pipes and cables can cause expensive and timeconsuming hold-ups to projects, including meaning roads need to be closed for longer. A new digital ‘National Underground Asset Register’ will allow contractors, including those working within lighting and highways, to know better what to expect before breaking ground

By Nic Paton

It is estimated the economic cost of accidental strikes on underground pipes and cables is, staggeringly, in the region of £2.4bn a year.

Lighting is, of course, an industry that regularly needs to ‘get down and dirty’ underground, whether that be laying or accessing cables, excavating sites or installing fixtures and fittings.

The fact the government is building a new ‘National Underground Asset Register’ (NUAR), essentially a digital map to help contractors and operators make sense of our subterranean infrastructure before breaking ground, is therefore potentially good news.

The development of the register is being led by the Geospatial Commission, an expert committee located within the Cabinet Office.

The plan is that the first iteration of the register – covering Wales, north east England and London – will go live from next month (March). Northern Ireland and the rest of England will then follow from September 2024.

As the commission has said: ‘NUAR will improve the efficiency and safety of underground works by creating a secure, auditable, trusted and sustainable platform.

‘It will provide a consistent, interactive digital map of buried asset data, accessible when, where and how it is needed by those planning and executing excavations on behalf of underground asset owners. It will also lead to enhanced communication between parties and improve data quality.’

DATABASE RESTRICTED TO STATUTORY UNDERTAKERS

So, how will it work in practice? The first thing to make clear is this register isn’t going to be some sort of open-source Google Maps-style tool anyone can simply pull up on their phone.

For fairly self-evident security reasons, access to the service will be restricted to ‘statutory undertakers’ and their supply chains, the commission has said.

This means, in other words, only companies (or their contractors) who are legally allowed to undertake work in or under the highway network, including electricity, gas, telecommunications, water and other utilities. Included within this, given their role on the electricity side, should be lighting engineers and contractors.

Login will be through a two-factor authentication process, with users able to navigate via a map and see contextual information about the above-ground information.

Users will be able to navigate by street name, unique property or street reference number (UPRN and USRN), and postcode. They’ll be able to specify and edit an area of interest by a circle or polygon, display and query asset data, and share locations with other users.

One caveat, however, is going to be the accuracy of the information they’re pulling up. Creating the register has been a complex process, not least because it has meant combining datasets from around 650 asset owners into a single, uniform database, often from datasets that are themselves not necessarily 100% accurate.

IMPORTANT FEEDBACK MECHANISM

Therefore, even when the map is ‘finished’ a key element will be an ongoing feedback mechanism. Utility firms and others will be encouraged to report back into the dataset and share what they’ve learned when they actually dig, especially any missing or erroneous data.

As of October last year, more than 250 asset owners in the three initial regions had been engaged, with 161 data exploration agreements signed. These enable the NUAR team to explore asset owner data without publishing it on the live platform.

A total of 97 organisations had uploaded their data to be explored and 58 data distribution agreements had been signed, which enable asset owner data to be published on the live platform.

A public consultation was also held last summer on the register, with the findings being fed into the development process.

As to the benefits of doing all this, in an update published by the commission in October, it argued that taking a national approach to digitalising underground asset data will create estimated benefits of £3.4bn over ten years, or £30 worth of benefits for every £1 invested.

These benefits, it said, could be broken down into:

• Savings from reduced utility strikes (£240m per year)

• Reduced cost of sharing data (£91m per year)

• On-site efficiency improvements for projects (£16m per year)

Just on reducing utility strikes, utility strikes can lead to both direct costs (for example the need to repair damages) and indirect costs (for example project delays and extended road closures), the commission pointed out.

‘Whilst there is some variation by sector the average direct cost per strike is £3,371. Indirect costs are estimated as, on average, 29 times larger than direct costs,’ it added.

When it came to on-site efficiencies, projects can be delayed or abandoned because of unexpected underground assets being found on site. ‘This includes assets which are not on record or recorded incorrectly. Through user interviews, we found that per year 20,000 excavations are abandoned and 38,500 excavations face delays and resumption costs due to unexpected assets,’ the commission said.

‘The NUAR platform is expected to reduce these instances by providing a fuller picture of known underground assets whilst also improving orienteering on-site. It will also improve data accuracy over time through a function which allows workers to report inaccuracies,’ it continued.

‘There are also non-monetised benefits, such as more strategic improvements to street works coordination and subsurface planning, which are not currently quantifiable. Therefore, there is a very high level of overall confidence that the NUAR programme provides value for money,’ the commission report added.

Finally, the commission is encouraging asset owners across England and Northern Ireland to engage with the project and/or share their underground asset data, via email at: nuaronboarding@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

IN NUMBERS

£2.4bn

Estimated economic cost of accidental strikes on underground pipes and cables

4 million

Estimated length (in km) of buried pipes and cables in the UK

4 million

Estimated number of holes dug every year

60,000

Estimated number of accidental strikes per year

£345m

What the Geospatial Commission has calculated will be the economic benefits of the National Underground Asset Register per year

March 2023

Platform set to be operational for Wales, north east of England, London

September 2024

Platform set to be operational in Northern Ireland and the rest of England