Sign Your Deliverables With Confidence: A New Way to QA

Utility mapping: the key to performing due diligence and QA on your deliverables.

So you can sign with peace of mind.

Good utility information is the basis for interacting safely and successfully with buried infrastructure, whether that means planning and designing a new project, constructing or maintaining utilities or the areas around them, or managing or assessing sites in the public right of way or private ownership.

So how can you get good utility information?

Most projects include a variety of utility locating processes by different stakeholders throughout the project timeline. Utility verification or quality assurance is a way to ensure that utility information derived from different sources is accurate, consistent, and comprehensive.

Every form of utility locating can bring more information to your project, but each method has advantages and limitations.

• As-builts and other utility records may not be properly geo-referenced or contain significant inaccuracies or deviations from real installations.
• Aboveground surveys can miss key information that would show installations of utilities below ground.
• Utility designating through geophysics methods may be conducted or interpreted incorrectly for the soil conditions and the material and energy properties of the various utilities.
• Utility locating through exposure is limited to the specific points where it is carried out and restricted by accessibility, cost, and time implications.

Utility mapping adds another technique to verify and confirm any data you have.

Why Utility Mapping is the Perfect Tool for QA

Until now, getting good utility data at all has been difficult—much less acquiring multiple forms of independently collected data for the same site, in order to cross-verify results and ensure quality results.

Utility mapping is a perfect tool to QA and confirm traditional boots-on-the-ground SUE deliverables, because it brings into play additional data sources and verification methods:

Remote utility mapping uses satellite imagery, available records, and computer vision to gather comprehensive data and verify visual evidence.

Cost-effective, high-impact tool for due diligence.

Utility mapping enables stakeholders to conduct QA for boots-on-the-ground utility location services. In particular, it adds value to SUE surveys by providing comparative results through remote sensing technologies.

Data validation, correction, and augmentation.

Utility mapping gives stakeholders the broader context and precise georeferenced findings. Mapping results can be used to validate existing knowledge of utilities, as well as correct deviations on linear paths and add missing information.

Increased likelihood of finding abandoned utilities.

When a utility is abandoned, inactive, nonconductive, or uninsulated, it may be difficult to detect with boots-on-the-ground teams, even with the latest geophysics technology. But remote utility mapping provides a new tool to your arsenal by finding visual evidence for abandoned lines by conflating available records and visual evidence from satellite imagery.

Interested in seeing how utility mapping can complement your designating and locating work? Contact us!