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Subsurface Utility Engineering is an application that has been somewhat neglected in this country to date. It's a long-standing joke that, as soon as the engineer from the electricity company fills in his crater, tamps down the soil and re-tarmacs the bit of road where his hole was, then along comes the gas company to dig up the same spot.

Compound that with a couple of hundred years of infrastructure development, long lost maps, faulty surveys, re-routed roads and rapidly expanding towns and you can understand why the task of co-ordinating the location and precise specifications of underground utility networks has been largely ignored.

The information is there, of sorts, but in a diverse mixture of formats used by different utility companies over time. The task is now to collect all of that information together and make it available for everything from installing a new water metre to multi-discipline civil engineering projects - which is why Bentley Systems has introduced Bentley Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE).

Based on Bentley’s comprehensive BIM oriented civil engineering, 3D modelling, water modelling and mapping tools, SUE integrates the engineering management of underground utility networks for water, storm water, gas and electricity and their associated trenches, tunnels, bridges and other constructions.

The software allows project managers to bring together data from a number of sources, geolocate it, and produce accurate 3D models of the sub-surface terrain for interactive inspection, utility conflict detection and clash resolution.

OPENROADS TECHNOLOGY
Built on OpenRoads technology, Bentley's collaborative BIM solution for civil engineering, SUE provides a high fidelity 3D modelling tool using MicroStation technology, with smart features to automatically model pipes, structures and other sub-surface equipment and constructions, together with an analysis tool for fully describing a network and its links.

Information can come from LIDAR survey information, CAD artefacts, other GIS sources, Excel spreadsheets, Oracle databases - in fact any industry standard data source. SUE also maintains a relationship between CAD and GIS sources to ensure data is always up to date. It basically allows users to merge legacy data with new design information.

SUE is based around a digital terrain model of the project site, using its data sources to automatically create a 3D model of the site. Civil engineers can then view the model, annotate it for collaboration with engineers in other disciplines, add model features such as valves, pipe junctions etc., and add other subsurface feature. Clash detection can be run, and the model edited or parametrically adjusted in real time.

Users can view models simultaneously in 2D and 3D, with filters for grouping features. It also uses context-sensitive editing tools that enable users to edit or assign attributes to an object. Because of the diversity of data sources, ranging from the most basic level - a line on a map - to something exposed and measured, SUE assigns a confidence level to each object, A to D, denoting how accurate the data is, with A being the highest level. Level B could refer to objects detected by ground-penetrating radar. Level C infers that something is underground because of associated surface objects. Level D would appear to be “your guess is as good as mine”!

CONTROLLING RISK
The end result is a geospatial asset database. Once created and synchronised with its data sources in a two-way exchange, the synched database becomes a valuable tool for managing and controlling the risk of any subsurface engineering project within the terrain’s boundaries. No longer will it be a hit and miss operation when engineers descend on a road, nor will they arrive minus the right sort of equipment to do the job, which can now be visualised in its entirety before they set out.

With a greater degree of certainty comes a more accurate assessment of required time scales and estimated costs - quite apart from other and more important types of risks which can range from project delays due to damaged subsurface utilities or even to explosions from unforeseen hazards that could threaten human life .

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