There’s a shift occurring in the world of infrastructure construction. It’s a subtle shift, but one backed by stronger currents that are propelling the industry forward. The shift could be described in a number of ways, but we like to think of it as the movement away from “digital as-builts” - the collection of digital information concerning project construction - to the idea of “digital as-is” - a more real-time reflection construction data. This transition is backed by an increasing focus and reliance on GIS-backed location data that can be captured during construction and fed into a variety of systems. In this article, we’ll focus on the specific role GIS data plays in supporting infrastructure asset maintenance.

A Quick Refresher on GIS

GIS - Geographic Information System - is not new technology, but one that is relatively new to construction. The high-level definition, via the U.S. Geological Survey group, is a computer system that analyzes and displays geographically referenced information. Use cases for GIS can range from agricultural planning to weather forecasting. In construction, GIS is used to identify and locate built assets and associated items to support collaboration, data sharing, spatial analysis, site selection, and as we’ll discuss in more detail, infrastructure asset management.

Understanding Infrastructure Asset Management

Infrastructure asset management involves the “systematic and coordinated activities and practices through which an organization optimally and sustainably manages its assets and asset systems, their associated performance, risks and expenditures over their life cycles.”

Simply put, it’s a process collecting information to help make sure the things we build last as long as possible in good working order. For example, it might involve information on how a certain type of asphalt holds up to wear over time, or how different materials will respond to extreme weather.

If you’ve seen any of the U.S. Infrastructure Report Cards (currently boasting a C- grade. Of course, Cs get degrees - they also get catastrophic failures), you know why good asset management practices are increasingly important in conversations around national infrastructure. But effective asset management is often limited by access to quality data, data silos, and inaccurate asset inventories due to manual data entry. GIS can act as a panacea to these asset management process woes.

The Role of GIS in Infrastructure Asset Management

For anyone interested in diving deep into the role of GIS in infrastructure asset management, we recommend checking out this whitepaper from Esri, which outlines the role of GIS in extreme detail, and this Infotech whitepaper on construction data visualization. We’ll summarize the high-level information from each of those resources in this article. According to infrastructure asset management practices that date back to the 1990s, there are seven steps to an effective asset management strategy:

1. Complete an asset inventory. 
2. Complete an inventory of programs.
3. Determine levels of service.
4. Define roles and responsibilities.
5. Identify and calculate risk.
6. Extrapolate a forecast.
7. Adjust the budget accordingly. 

While GIS-enabled construction data is essential throughout this asset management process, it’s easy to see the role it plays in completing an asset inventory. It also highlights the importance of cross-departmental collaboration, because that inventory-building process needs to begin in the construction and inspection phase.

Inspectors who are charged with ensuring that a project is moving forward according to specifications can be outfitted with devices that support GIS data capture, ranging from LiDAR on their phones to GNSS rovers. Asset management may not be an inspector or construction project manager’s priority, but precise and accurate data capture can be folded into their existing process without putting additional weight on their shoulders or adding tasks to their day. That valuable data - the “digital as-is” data - can be shared with other departments who are responsible for asset management, operations, maintenance, and forecasting.

How that data is organized falls to each organization’s definition of asset management, but here’s an example from Esri about how the terms translate across systems and philosophies:

As you can see, different assets can be mapped to broad datasets in a GIS database, then narrowed down to specific details. So if an organization wanted to identify where all of the cast iron water mains were in their district, they could simply select that attribute in a GIS data visualization platform and mark them for replacement. An aside - as someone who has personally dealt with the issues associated with cast iron piping, I wish someone would give my girlfriend’s landlord access to a GIS database for his rental properties.

Once this initial data is captured via GIS-supported tools, there are a variety of ways it can be leveraged for asset management:

• Forecast maintenance costs by identifying items with GIS as well as accurate travel costs
• Use data from the construction process like hazard identification to help calculate risk and assess conditions
• Determine degradation timelines by leveraging materials data from construction