Underground Construction - May 2020 - 20

Subsurface Utility Engineering Decade in Review

Past SUE Reviews, Predictions & Accomplishments
To put in perspective just how far SUE has come in 30 years,
here are my previous 10-year summaries.

Subsurface Utility Engineering in 2010 -
A Look Back and Towards the Future
James Anspach

Every 10 years or so, I have the good fortune to be able
to reﬂect back and project forward the trends that I see
happening in the ﬁeld of subsurface utility engineering (SUE).
This year seems like a good time to do so again, with the
re-authorization of ASCE 38 on the imminent horizon. Here's
what I said in an update article in 2001 (Subsurface Utility
Engineering - 2001 in review):
"Although a long time coming, the ASCE is expected to publish
its Standard Guideline for the Collection and Depiction of Existing
Subsurface Utility Data this year. Lawyers on both sides of utility
claims are anxiously awaiting this standard, which will be the ﬁrst
standard of its kind that speciﬁcally assists engineers in recognizing
and managing their utility risks."
This past decade has indeed seen the value of a national standard for utility data collection. Just in the past year, there have
been numerous court cases, large and small, where ASCE 38
has played a signiﬁcant role in determining the outcome of who
pays and how much. A vast majority of these cases settle before
there is an oﬃcial ruling, so it is diﬃcult to determine actual
numbers of cases or damages. That being said, I am personally
aware of ﬁve cases where the total combined damages came
close to $200 million dollars.
This trend is bound to continue, as a history of standards
adoption and use shows us that their impact begins to arrive
about 10 years after initial publication. The second edition of
ASCE 38 will not have many changes from the original. That
may not be the case looking forward to a third edition. An
increasing focus on utility issues research is giving us several
clues as to what the practice of subsurface utility engineering
may look like a decade from now.
Of course, it is not in the court cases that the value of a
standard is best determined. The increasing use of the standard
in procurements, speciﬁcations, legislation, and practice has
beneﬁted project owners, engineers, contractors, utility owners,
and most importantly, the citizen. A recent study of the value
of subsurface utility engineering by Penn State shows how
well we are beginning to leverage this standard as an integral
component and concept of SUE.
Previous studies of the value of SUE showed returns on
investment at 462 percent (Purdue University), 700 percent
(VDOT/FHWA), and 341 percent (University of Toronto). These
studies were all performed while the SUE learning curve was
in its infancy. The 2008 Penn State study showed a whopping
2,200 percent ROI on a mature SUE program of PENNDOT,
with designers trained in how to best use the data. It has
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MAY 2020 | UConOnline.com

been especially gratifying to see state DOTs in Georgia, Utah,
Washington and South Carolina embrace and grow their SUE
programs from an idea to a robust eﬀort.
ASCE 38 is becoming a world standard. Australia recently
licensed it from ASCE for its use. Canada, U.K. and Mexico are
leaning in that direction. This follows the understanding that
the U.S. utility issues are not unique. Just in the past ﬁve years,
there has been an infusion of money into the research of utility
issues and their solutions. It is a worldwide phenomenon. The
European Union funded a study called ORFEUS (Optimising
Radar for Finding Everything Under the Street). The U.K. has an
ongoing series of studies called Mapping the Underworld.
Here in the United States, we have a large program organized
under the direction of the National Academies (Transportation
Research Board, Strategic Highway Program, National
Cooperative Highway Research Program). And many more are
coming from industry groups such as Gas Technology Institute,
American Water Works Research Foundation and the Electric
Power Research Institute, to name but a few. Private companies
such as Caterpillar, Trimble, John Deere, AutoDesk and others
continue to fund their own utility-related research.
Data collection
One large push of the research ﬁeld has been with data
collection techniques. GPR has made tremendous strides this
decade in ease of use, cost reduction, results, and data output/
visualization. It is still (and in my opinion will be so for the
foreseeable future) only one tool in the toolbox, but it is now
becoming a necessary tool, rather than an exotic one.
Fusing data sensors and data interpretation with a multipleplatform device is one area of research that goes beyond the
traditional practice of covering the same ground multiple times
with multiple methods and instruments. We saw the beginnings
of this with Witten Technologies and the continuance through
Underground Imaging Technologies.
Another signiﬁcant area of both research and progress is in
the referencing of utilities' locations. Laser survey methods,
GPS, inertial referencing systems and photo referencing are
lowering the costs and time for accurately documenting utilities.
This presents both opportunities and dangers. We will need to
be diligent and smart in our use of these new technologies.
A third area of research is in utility data management.
Acronyms such as GIS (geographic information systems),
BIM (building information modeling), and BAM (buried
asset management) are now becoming commonplace. We are
learning how to leverage the ability to collect and reference
good data for intelligent and timely project development
and maintenance. Future 3D visualizations of underground
utilities may very well mirror this decade's amazing
development of Google Earth.
As with any industry in its early stages, we are seeing growth,
consolidation and leverage. The recent purchase of TBE by

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Underground Construction - May 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Underground Construction - May 2020