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ONSITE
UNDERGROUND
NETWORKS
8 WET NEWS FEBRUARY 2019 | wwtonline.co.uk
can unlock through this sprint
are mind-blowing and this
could turn on its head the way
infrastructure companies work
together in this country
forever."
Geospatial data and map-
ping company Ordnance Survey
led the sprint, which saw
involvement from a wide range
of practitioners including field
Northumbrian Water expects to
gain significant efficiency svings
through the digital mapping system
Digital digging
• Ordnance
Survey helped
pioneer an idea
for a new
digital mapping
system for
underground
utilities at
Northumbrian
Water's 2018
Innovation
Festival. Robin
Hackett finds
out how the
project is
developing
W
hen preparing to carry
out streetworks, com-
prehensive planning is
vital if risks are to be minimised,
but putting together a map of
underground utilities can be an
arduous task.
Asset owners are entitled to
take up to 28 days to provide
their information, which they
might supply digitally or by
delays, spiralling costs and even
injuries or deaths.
At Northumbrian Water's
Innovation Festival in July, a
five-day hackathon was held to
find a solution that could deliver
significant improvements on the
status quo. As NWG operations
solutions manager Clive Sur-
man-Wells said at the outset:
"The possibilities of what we
post, and that data must then be
standardised and collated into a
workable map. If the work needs
to be carried out quickly, prepa-
rations can suffer, and even
exhaustive CAT and genny
searches can fail to reveal
everything that lies beneath the
surface. Should workers make
unexpected discoveries while
digging, the result can be
A 'sandbox' phase began in December
