Striking underground utility lines can be deadly.
With over 400 deaths and 2,000 injuries over the last two decades as a direct result of utility line strikes, it doesn’t matter if you’re excavating at your facility for a new building, directional drilling to install a fiber line, or performing a soil boring for an environmental remediation project, you need to be safe when breaking ground. If you break ground without the proper knowledge of current lines underneath your job site it can result in a disastrous situation for you and your team. Not only does it pose significant safety risks that can result in worker injury or death, but striking a buried utility line can also lead to costly project delays of up to six weeks, budget overruns of $56,000 per strike, and damage to a company's reputation that goes beyond a dollar amount.
As technology advances, and number of strikes reported each year continues to grow as reported by the Common Ground Alliance’s 2022 DIRT Report, the importance of safe and efficient ground disturbance practices paired with an accurate utility mapping application such as SiteMap® cannot be overstated.
What Is Underground Utility Mapping & How Does It Work?
Underground utility mapping is a critical component of any excavation, drilling, or soil boring project. It involves accurately locating and digitally mapping the location of underground utility lines on a job site and storing the data within an underground utility mapping application.
For the team at GPRS, during the process of underground utility mapping, multiple forms of technology including ground penetrating radar (GPR), electromagnetic (EM) utility locators, CCTV robotic crawlers with a sonde for certain sewer line inspections, and either a GNSS Geode or GPRS' proprietary GeNiuSS iQ device are used to accurately inspect, map, and collect data points of underground utility locations. This data is then uploaded to the cloud, usually within five minutes of being collected in the field by GPRS Project Managers, and displayed within our new underground utility mapping app, SiteMap®.
Real-Time Data at Your Fingertips
Data collected and securely stored within the SiteMap® mobile app is used to provide a comprehensive record of all the subsurface utilities and above ground infrastructure of the facility or site where the locate was performed within the application’s Map Viewer to help support subsurface damage prevention efforts.
These include but are not limited to, underground utility mapping, NASSCO certified CCTV video pipe inspection sewer line reports, industry leading concrete scan markings collected with 3D Photogrammetry and stored within the platform, as well as underground leak detection data. SiteMap® also houses existing condition documentation data such as accurate 3D BIM Models, 2D CAD drawings, 3D mesh models, digital twins, point clouds, and more, all accurately collected in the field by GPRS Project Managers and beautiful constructed by our in house mapping and modeling team to help ensure your facility and project management goes forward smoothly. This data can be viewed on the go from your tablet or mobile device, eliminating your need to carry around outdated paper plans or reference three or four different GIS systems to try to determine the location of the underground utilities on your job site. This helps ensure that excavation, drilling, and soil boring can move forward safely, and virtually eliminate the reworks or downtime that can occur due to accidentally striking an existing underground line.
With SiteMap's layered utility mapping data, you can experience accurate, detailed, and precise information for every project. SiteMap® provides not only the location of utilities but also approximate depth and size on one an easy-to-use platform, so you can break ground with confidence.
Site Safety Supervisor at Power Construction, Bryant Drechsel, shared how the data and details provided within the SiteMap® App help keep his projects moving forward damage free.
“I got questioned about a communications line that GPRS had scanned for us, and the excavating company was just like, ‘so how deep is this?’ I was able to go into the mobile app of SiteMap®, click on it, and say, ‘Hey it's three to four feet down’… And it was literally at three foot six inches, directly under the line that you guys provided.”
By ensuring accuracy, SiteMap® helps you to mitigate risk and enhance project success every time. The data provided within SiteMap® also enhances communication and effective relationship building between contractors and owners for Bryan and his team at Power Construction.
"What we want to strive for is to keep that owner-contractor relationship strong and by utilizing GPRS we are able to do that because we are confident with the data that [SiteMap®] gives us."
He also shares that utilizing an underground utility mapping app like SiteMap® Mobile helps keep his team aware of what utilities are near their proposed work zone in real time.
"With SiteMap®, being able to upload those things to a mobile app just brings it real time for all the workers on site so they know what they're working for and what they're getting themselves into."
The Precision of SiteMap®
Key Benefits of Using SiteMap® (Powered by GPRS)
• Ease of Use: Navigating SiteMap® is intuitive, making it a seamless addition to your workflow with access to your accurate data only taking a few clicks after upload to the cloud from the field.
• Security: Rest assured, knowing that your utility data is stored securely in the cloud.
• Efficiency: By eliminating reworks due to outdated data, you stay on schedule and reduce unexpected costs.
• Accessibility: Critical utility information is accessible whenever you need it, from any location any time.
• Safety: Keeping workers safe is our #1 priority—SiteMap® greatly reduces the risk of accidental utility strikes on site.
Why SiteMap®?
By harnessing the capabilities of SiteMap® GPRS' Underground Utility Mapping App, you can do more than stay on top of your projects; you're safeguarding your most valuable assets—your people and your reputation. Take advantage of an underground utility mapping app that brings together the ease-of-use, security, and reliability you need to tackle any construction or facility project confidently.
For more information about how SiteMap® can keep your project on budget, on time, and safe, schedule a free demo with one of our SiteMap® experts today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is utility mapping worth the cost?
Yes. With utility strikes occurring every 62 seconds in the U.S. and being cause for over 400 deaths, and more than 2,000 injuries in the past 20 years, mapping out your underground lines before digging can quite literally be the difference of life and death for you and your team. In the world of construction and facility management, controlling the data that is collected from your job site with utility mapping can not only help control job site damages but also help ensure your team goes home safely to their families at the end of the day.
What’s the difference between SiteMap® and ArcGIS?
It isn't ArcGIS. It won't ever be. While SiteMap® isn’t ArcGIS, it is an application that allows GPRS customers to view, share, and print their infrastructure data, and it’s difference is in the accuracy of the data provided by GPRS Project Managers to our customers. While SiteMap® and ArcGIS are different, data within SiteMap® can be portable to a platform such as ArcGIS, with the potential for data to work together in different applications. Utility mapping in GIS systems such as ArcGIS FieldMaps are used by some underground utility locators and GIS professionals to store their utility data after their locate has been completed. The issue that threatens this GIS utility mapping platform, and others like it, is that the data displayed within is only as accurate as the locate that was performed and uploaded by the technician in the field or provided via as-built data. Our data has the controlled variable of always being collected by GPRS SIM-certified Project Managers, who receive the industries best training, use the industry’s leading and repeatable methodology on every locate performed in the field and utilize multiple forms of cutting-edge technology to provide the 99.8+% accurate data within SiteMap®.