According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) missing or inaccurate\u00a0location information about underground utilities<\/a>\u00a0is a major source of highway construction project delays and budget overruns.\u00a0 Some jurisdictions have taken advantage of their legal right to control what goes into public right-of-ways.\u00a0 I have previously blogged about\u00a0Calgary, Alberta<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Las Vegas, Nevada<\/a>\u00a0as two examples in North America, which have attempted to control the accuracy of location information about underground utilities including telecom.\u00a0 The chief challenges they faced have been finding a solution to address this issue cost-effectively all the while providing survey-grade accuracy and creating QA\/QC processes for ensuring that this information is accurate, up-to-date and secure.\u00a0 In general this requires a multi-pronged approach involving government legislation and regulation, modern technology and partnerships between different levels of government, utilities and telecoms, and the construction companies and contractors.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||0px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”62px|||||” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n I had a chance to chat recently with Rob Martindale, Utility Program Manager at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and Chairman of the GIS and Data Management Technical Committee for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and Page Tucker, CEO and founder of\u00a0<\/span>Prostar Geocorp<\/a>. Rob told me that in Colorado the legislative framework for managing and sharing utility information about underground infrastructure has been developed and implemented.\u00a0 Using a Cloud and mobile solution developed by ProStar Geocorp, CDOT has implemented ProStar\u2019s Precision Mapping Solution \u2122 to be used by CDOT as well as all of the utilities, telecoms, contractors and other stakeholders in Colorado to capture, display and share the location of utility infrastructure that lies below the earth\u2019s surface.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n According to Page Tucker, ProStar\u2019s Precision Mapping Solution leverages\u00a0<\/span>Open Geospatial Consortium<\/a>\u00a0(OGC) standards including Web Mapping Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS) and is also designed to support quality standards such as ASCE 38-02 in the US and\u00a0<\/span>CSA S250<\/a>\u00a0in Canada. The ProStar Solution is natively built to be open source using GeoServer and seamlessly integrates with other modern technologies and legacy systems of record including Bentley, ESRI and GE Smallworld.\u00a0 It also uses standard map services such as Google Maps, Bing, and OpenStreetMap for base mapping as well as LiDAR and drone imagery when higher levels of precision are required.\u00a0 The Prostar Solution even integrates with One Call centers allowing the State One Call center to provide One Call tickets in real-time, so that it is possible to display the location of all open tickets and their status on a PC or mobile device such as a tablet or smart phone. The solution can even auto-populate digital locate forms based on the new One Call tickets.\u00a0 The Prostar solution is also secure. Page Tucker told me that the ProStar Solution is SOC2 compliant and can use roles and privileges in the settings as well as geo-fencing to restrict views of operator networks, which is a key requirement for telecom operators.\u00a0 Century Link is one of several key beta testers on the Colorado state implementation and many other utility owners including Zayo Communications have also expressed an interest in participating.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”2px||0px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”21px|||||” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n There are two components to the ProStar Solution. Transparent Earth\u00ae which is the Cloud platform and PointMan\u00ae which is the mobile application. PointMan runs on both Android and iOS and can use the device\u2019s internal GPS for mapping grade data collection as well as external GPS and RTK to identify the location of exposed or newly installed underground infrastructure in the field with precision levels that can range from a foot to centimeter accuracy without requiring a survey team.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n The PointMan application according to Mr. Martindale is both intuitive and very easy for field crews to use.\u00a0 Furthermore, construction contractors that have adopted the solution report that it does not add to their current workload and is already saving them time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n At this point the shared database does not include utility and telecom as-built data but Prostar incorporates support for bidirectional inclusion of this data with notifications to utilities when any of this data is changed so that it can be used for maintaining and improving utility as-builts.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n This is a ground-breaking initiative involving legislation, regulation and new technology to address one of the chief causes of highway construction delays and cost overruns. CDOT\u2019s adoption of the ProStar Solution is now getting the attention from other State DOTs as well as several Federal agencies.\u00a0 Utah DOT for example followed CDOT and has also implemented the ProStar Solution.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ground-breaking initiative by Colorado DOT for capturing and sharing location of underground utilities According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) missing or inaccurate\u00a0location information about underground utilities\u00a0is a major source of highway construction project delays and budget overruns.\u00a0 Some jurisdictions have taken advantage of their legal right to control what goes into public right-of-ways.\u00a0 I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16863,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","content-type":"","iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16861"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25960,"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16861\/revisions\/25960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pointman.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Colorado](\"https:\/\/www.prostarcorp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/GeoffArticleA.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
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