Subsurface Utility Engineering

Back in the old days, almost all utility lines were located above ground and that the concept of non destructive excavation was found nowhere in the vocabulary of contractors and utility engineers. After all, who will need the service if all of utility lines were exposed and that building new lines and repairing existing ones were reachable anytime? A few decades later, utility engineers started to bury lines underground, and the practice is more gaining ground as it has shifted from just being a trend into becoming a norm.

Burying utilities underground have numerous advantages aside from helping a place improve their aesthetic appeal through the elimination of unsightly and messy web-like connections of cables overhead. Utilities are also more protected from destruction by man-made errors and natural calamities, thereby contributing to more consistent and stable utility services as disruption and repairs will be significantly reduced. However, burying utility lines underground is not a foolproof method, as they are also open to destruction due to improper notification, poor underground asset location techniques and ineffective excavation equipment and practices. In order to avoid dangers to subsurface assets and contractors, the concept of subsurface utility engineering or SUE was created.

Subsurface utility engineering encompasses modern line electronic tracking techniques for accurate identification and designation of buried lines, non destructive digging for the exposure of utilities, and survey mapping techniques for data management into one discipline. All of these processes will give property owners and contractors a three dimensional approach that will help document the existence, design, position and interconnection of underground assets for future project use.

Tighter budgets have prompted many utility companies to find ways to minimize their operating costs and performance delays at all stages of their projects. Without an accurate blueprint of the situation and location of underground lines, risk for their accidental damage will be increased, further delaying the completion of their jobs and increasing costs. What’s worse is that past information obtained by utility companies are rarely accurate enough to really depict their exact locations and become useful for design purposes. In addition to that, past work that has been done on them may have never been documented, making it difficult to trace contractors responsible for the work and ask them some necessary work-related queries.

Fortunately, with the advent of subsurface utility engineering, it is now possible for underground utilities to be mapped precisely. Aside from assisting contractors with the exact location and conditions of underground assets, dreaded unknown variables and contingencies faced by them daily will be avoided. If you want to make sure that you will be able to save time, costs and avoid accidents related to your projects’ underground activities, it will be very helpful to hire a subsurface utility engineer to assist you in your project’s planning stages.

Although there are newer technologies that are utilized in subsurface utility engineering like trenchless methods, contractors cannot deny the fact that potholing using non destructive excavation is still an indispensable method and will never run out of fashion as certain buried utilities may not be known to the driller. You know the drill when a contractor works blindly: time and resources are lost while the subsurface utilities and contractor’s safety are put at high risk.

Yunz Contracting is a trusted civil contractor company that has fleets of vacuum excavators to assist you with your projects’ non destructive excavation requirements. If you are looking for a contractor who provides cost-efficient, quick and safe excavation services, visit our website to know how to hire us.