Dublin, Ohio, and Lee’s Summit, Mo., are two very different cities — the latter more than twice as large. Yet both apply the same basic technologies to inspect and manage their critical underground infrastructure.
Dublin, a northwest suburb of Columbus with 41,000 population, installed its sewer system in 1974. It includes some 220 miles of gravity line, of which 38 percent is clay tile and the rest concrete trunk and plastic. The Streets and Utilities division deals mostly with sewers, but also does some basic stormwater conduit cleaning and inspection. All wastewater is treated at a regional facility in Columbus.
Lee’s Summit, population 93,000, has 518 miles of sewer pipe, 80 percent of it 8-inch lines. About 128 miles are vitrified clay pipe significantly older than 50 years. A private sewerage district plant treats the wastewater.
To meet their specific management requirements, both communities apply three data collection and management software packages:
• Cityworks asset management software (Azteca Systems Inc.)
• The ArcGIS geodatabase package (ESRI)
• Flexidata pipe inspection and survey software (PipeLogix Inc.)
Dublin: Setting goals
Dublin has had an official pipeline inspection program since 1990. “We started off with one cleaner and one TV truck,” recalls William Grubaugh, Streets and Utilities operations administrator. In the last two years, with the acquisition of new equipment, “We started a rotation and have mapped out a goal of cleaning and televising all of our sanitary sewer lines every six years,” he says.
In 2001, the city bought its first custom inspection truck (Pearpoint Inc.), which included flexidata software. “That gave us our first real opportunity to collect very good data about our sewer system, and then help us with databases and using that information in other areas of the city.”
The city holds a full flexidata office license for managing project creation and copying completed inspections up to a master database on the city’s network. The city also has a Light and DVS license for the inspection truck, a full license for managing manhole inspections, two mobile manhole licenses in the Engineering Department, and a full office license and mobile license for the GIS Department to use in engineering.
