AWWA ACE59961

Every year, on average, four million holes are dug in United Kingdom highways and footpaths by utilities in order to install new services or repair and maintain existing ones. Every time a hole is dug in the road it impacts on traffic and the local environment and carries the risk of hitting and damaging other utilities' buried plant and equipment. Information on buried assets, even if it exists is often inaccurate, incomplete or out of date. In many cases, due to the policies of the organization which originally installed the assets, often many decades ago, there is no information at all about the assets. Current location and detection techniques are of limited use, being both unreliable and slow to operate. Utilities are faced with the continuing need for high levels of access to an increasingly congested underground environment, with little or no real knowledge of it, and the inevitable costs. As a society, the impact of this work on people continues to grow, with an increasing recognition of the need to mitigate its effects, evidenced by recent legislation in the United Kingdom such as the introduction of Landfill tax, the Aggregate Levy and new amendments to the Traffic Management Act. A research program was developed by international water industry experts to address identified problems, shortfalls and needs, and will deliver a wide range of benefits that include: significantly reduced direct and indirect costs on a national scale; a more highly-skilled workforce; more sustainable construction; proven new technologies, as the result of cutting edge research, with the potential spinoffs to other applications; and, more positive relationships between the industry and its regulators; improved perception of the utility industry by its customers, society, government and regulators. Includes extended abstract only.