The National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) being created by the Geospatial Commission – part of the Cabinet Office – may be a waste of taxpayer money and lacks rationale, according to an underground asset specialist.
image: Open Government Licence v3.0
… But it has been done before…. It has already mapped over 60% of the UK’s underground assets…
New Civil Engineer writes:
The Geospatial Commission’s NUAR is a project being headed up by Atkins, in collaboration with Ordnance Survey and 1Spatial, that aims to map the entirety of the UK’s underground utility assets. The main purpose is to reduce the number of accidental strikes, which the commission says costs £2.4bn annually.
It has already spent £23M of taxpayer money on hiring Atkins and £4M on pilot programmes. Other associated costs such as staff salaries take this figure above £30M. In an article published on Utility Week, Atkins divisional digital director and NUAR programme director Guy Ledger said “We’ll look back in five or 10 years and think ‘why wasn’t this done before?’”
But it has been done before.
There is a company called Linesearch BeforeUDig (LSBUD) that has been working in the industry for two decades and has 100 members across industries – including Shell, BP, National Grid, SES Water and Gigaclear, to name a handful. It has already mapped over 60% of the UK’s underground assets, including roughly 90% of gas and electricity networks and almost 100% of high pressure pipeline networks. It is also growing consistently, as it carries out 3M searches every year.
It is a wholly scalable offering….
[Richard Broome said]
….“The opportunities are there for a system that’s been adopted by thousands across the industry, and it’s working well, it’s reducing strikes…”.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: …. “It was, and continues to be, co-designed with stakeholders from across the marketplace.
“The costs and benefits set out in the economic case are fully sourced and researched, and it is entirely false to suggest otherwise.”
