Multi-Award Winning Asset Protection Solutions from Symology

An Asset Protection Solution provided by Symology for the Scottish Road Works Community has won the following two National Awards:

• Institute of Engineering and Technology Built Environment Award 2012
• National Joint Utilities Group Avoiding Damage Award 2012

The Scottish Community Apparatus Vault is a new way to share and access information on the location of underground pipes and cables. This major new development makes underground pipe and cable information accessible via the Scottish Road Works Register (SRWR) (Scotland's existing national database for the electronic transfer, retention and management of road works data).

Each type of apparatus is held as a separate layer and users can view all plant or a specific type of plant as required. Other information such as on-going and planned works or the locations of bus stops can also be accessed. All information can be interrogated on-line or can be printed as A3 or A4 maps. To date, the records of all electricity cables, gas pipes, drains and sewers are available. The spatial database includes over 8 million assets, over 290,000 km of cables and pipes, with data received from 35 different organisations. Whilst the project is obviously a significant technical achievement it also represents a massive collaborative achievement to get all the Utilities and Road Authorities working together to contribute to the solution.

Prior to the introduction of the Community Apparatus Vault in March 2012, users would have to contact each underground apparatus owner separately, and receive plans in a variety of formats including e-mail, CDs, individual web-sites and even paper copies. The new system provides significant administrative benefits by dramatically reducing this staff intensive process. In addition, with the aid of a mobile device anyone needing to dig in a road can access the records on site and instantly see what pipes and cables they are likely to encounter, providing significant safety benefits.

The National Joint Utilities Group Avoiding Damage Award 2012 was a joint application between the Scottish Road Works Register Management Group (SRWR MG), the Office of the Scottish Road Works Commissioner (OSWRC) and Symology. The award was presented by Louise Ellman MP, Chair of the Commons Transport Select Committee, to Nisha Kharbanda (OSRWC), Andrew Leyden (SRWR MG Chair & Scotland Gas Networks) Mike Bartlett (Symology) at the House of Commons, Members Dining Room.

The Institute of Engineering and Technology Built Environment Award was a joint submission by the following organisations; University of Leeds, Susiephone Ltd, Ordnance Survey, 1Spatial Ltd, ESRI(UK) Ltd, Symology Ltd, UK Water Industry Research Ltd (UKWIR), the VAULT Steering group and the VISTA consortium.

The judging panel commented:

This innovation provides an imaginative solution to the coordination of underground services by supporting the integrated planning and maintenance of underground infrastructure assets and improves the safety of works on and around buried utility services by encouraging a collaborative approach between service providers. Wider benefits include reduced disruption to the public and significant time and cost savings to utility suppliers by accessing a comprehensive asset database.

Further details of the awards are available here:

http://www.njug.org.uk/category/5/pageid/84/

http://conferences.theiet.org/innovation/categories/built/index.cfm

Further information on the Scottish Community Apparatus Vault is available here:

http://www.roadworksscotland.gov.uk/Performance/VAULT/VAULT.aspx

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