Adien Lead the Industry...

For some time now Adien have been a board member of the VISTA project and have been asked to make contributions to the various DTI funded groups who are wrestling with the issue of how to nationally locate and record data regarding buried assets. As a regular contributor to VISTA and MTU (Mapping the Underworld) Adien have been able to give the groups a unique insight into the issues surrounding the location and mapping of underground utilities.

And real progress is being made in this area. Since the mid-eighties in enlightened organisations it has been recognised that there is a need for much better information coordination and exchange firstly between utilities themselves regarding the location of underground assets and then with the highway authorities. The education process to get all bodies involved has been long and difficult even though backed by a legislative framework. Generally new statutes have been introduced with a wish list of objectives and then industry bodies have had to agree how they could be realised with the implementation timetable being dictated by the establishment of consensus on technical issues. The first legislation was the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991, but it took eleven years to introduce a recommended, non-compulsory Code of Practice on record keeping under the provisions of the Street Works (Records) Regulations 2002.

Since then the pace of change has increased with the more enlightened organisations realising that lack of an effective regime is expensive. The Traffic Management Act 2004 included the highway authorities in the process, and gave local traffic authorities, usually the local authority, responsibility to manage the road network including street works to secure the expeditious flow of traffic. As with the earlier Act working groups have had to meet to establish procedures for implementation, which will be incorporated in regulations to be processed by an Order in Council.

The most contentious issues concern utilities and have been addressed by the National Underground Assets Group (NUAG). In September 2006, NUAG produced an extensive report “Capturing, recording, storing and sharing underground asset information – a review of current practice and future requirements”. This document recommends a mandatory Code of Practice for establishing and managing information concerning underground assets.

The recommendations from NUAG, which is a utilities only organisation, now go to the Highways And Utilities Committee (HAUC) for formal drafting of the Code of Practice and new Regulations. This is not generally anticipated to be contentious. All this activity is being carried out under the umbrella of the Department for Transport (DfT), which has indicated that the new Regulations may be placed before Parliament by the end of 2007. This may be optimistic but no major barriers are envisaged.

The other challenge arises in managing the data interchange database which is where activities are being led by the University of Leeds on the VISTA project.