Building the National Underground Asset Register

Pretty much every construction project starts with a hole in the ground. But before you start digging, you need to know what is buried there.

There are estimated to be 4 million kilometres of buried pipes and cables in the UK, including telecoms and internet, gas, water, and electricity. Up until now, there has been no centralized database to show you where all these underground obstructions are, forcing anyone who wishes to safely dig to seek records from every possible asset owner in the area.

Every year there are estimated to be 60,000 utility strikes, where construction and maintenance workers accidently damage underground assets. This is a huge problem: endangering the lives of those digging, delaying construction; disrupting traffic; and causing interruption to essential services such as power, water, gas and telecoms. In fact, the economic cost to the UK of the disruption caused by utility strikes is estimated to be £2.4bn a year.

A window to the world beneath our feet

The National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) has been created to help with the challenges surrounding data sharing, by aggregating England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s underground assets into a single centralized database (Scotland manages their data separately). AtkinsRéalis has been the delivery partner for the build phase of this project following a discovery phase in which the project’s feasibility and economic case were explored and established.

This complex project had three main challenges: to engage with and collect data from over 700 asset owners; to transform and ingest this data into a single comprehensive database; and to develop a secure portal through which users can view and access this information.

With any project of this scale and ambition, some degree of industry scepticism about our ability to deliver was likely. Consequently, we were expecting to see some reluctance to share data. However, NUAR was predicted to reduce the costs of data-sharing by an estimated £91m a year, by reducing the amount of time and resources asset owners and other stakeholders would have to spend making and answering queries. Understanding of this benefit, but also the safety benefits to workers of having all the information instantly and easily available in one place, resulted in great take-up from utility providers - particularly the major ones in the energy, water and telecommunications sectors. This allowed us to launch NUAR across England and Wales. As more asset owners are onboarded, we have also seen a snowball effect, with the value to asset owners of sharing data with NUAR increasing with each provider we have signed up.

From the project onset the system has been developed collaboratively with users. This is an ongoing process, with the team using a combination of user conversations, testing, and focus groups to help develop the bespoke solution. This allows users to securely and efficiently access this critical infrastructure data. Particular focus has gone into making the map mobile friendly, as feedback indicates this will be a significant proportion of the user base.

"The continued updating of the NUAR platform and expansion of the MVP area gives asset owners the confidence that those enquiring about asset locations will have the available tools at their fingertips to plan accordingly".

Colin Sawkins; Assurance and Enabling Specialist, Cadent Gas

A standard format for underground asset data

When we began working on NUAR, there was no standard format for sharing underground asset information in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. As a result, asset owners currently hold their records in a wide variety of different formats, from custom-built databases to non-vectorized PDF files. This posed a significant technical challenge when importing this data.

To build a single harmonized map of underground assets, all data has been converted into a common standard format. This had to be done on a massive scale, with data coming from hundreds of asset owning organizations, and it also had to be easily repeatable, so that when asset owners updated their records these changes could flow through to the NUAR platform. This required efficient and sustainable methods of data transformation.

We brought data transformation specialists 1Spatial into the team to help address this challenge – developing and adapting a range of tools to manage this data transformation and minimize the need for human intervention. We also created an API (or Application Programming Interface) which is being tested by a small subset of early adopter asset owners to enable a more automated way of providing data to NUAR.

Delivering the National Underground Asset Register

NUAR is currently operating as an MVP at the Ordnance Survey and covers all of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Plans are in place to progress to Public Beta in the coming months, enabling asset owners to use NUAR as the sole source of asset data (subject to internal risk assessment).

The project has already seen significant traction, with the platform already including data from over 170 asset owners, including all of the major energy and water providers.

To deliver the project the OneTeam approach was adopted, bringing about the positive team culture required for such a huge challenge. With this way of working, all organisations working on the contract operated together, rapidly addressing barriers as they emerged. We were mission focused with members of each project workstream knowing and empowered to reach their goals. Through respectful challenge we were able to pivot our approach and use novel methods, for example, in engaging and acquiring data from asset owners.

Overall, NUAR is forecast to save the UK an estimated £490m per year, an impressive 36x return on investment. This will be seen through increased efficiency, reduced asset strikes (when underground pipes and cables are accidentally damaged) and reduced disruptions for the public and businesses. It is also hoped that the project will have a positive impact on carbon emissions, though this has not been tested or quantified at this time. Increasing data maturity is also a side benefit as many organisations adopt and/or enhance their data systems and standards.

Most importantly, by providing a reliable map of the world beneath our feet, NUAR will make construction projects safer and reduce the number of injuries and near misses on worksites across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.