Synopsis_693JJ320R000001.pdf

Federal Highway Administration

Synopsis 693JJ320R000001

Title: Research the availability, feasibility, and reliability of available Nondestructive Evaluation

(NDE) technologies for detecting and locating of buried utilities

This synopsis is issued in accordance with FAR Part 5.203 in response to the mandatory requirement for a 15-day pre-solicitation notification. The purpose of this synopsis is to announce the Federal Highway Administration’s intent to issue a solicitation for a Full and Open

Competition to procure the services of an Offeror for the “Research the availability, feasibility, and reliability of available Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) technologies for detecting and locating of buried utilities” requirement pursuant to FAR Part 19.2.

As a result of this solicitation, the FHWA intends to award one Firm Fixed Price Contract. The anticipated period of performance shall not exceed 22 months. The solicitation will be issued on or about November 2019.

BACKGROUND

An extensive array of utility networks is buried underneath the ground surface, which are vital to society’s daily life. Highway renewal projects and expanding or replacing sections of a road-network depend on the availability of accurate buried utility records and information to support effective planning, design, and delivery of renewal work. In addition, buried utilities have a limited service life and it is crucial to assess their condition throughout their life cycles to avoid potential catastrophic failure due to their deterioration. Thousands of excavations are carried out within the U.S. road network each year to relocate, install or repair buried utility pipes and cables. Additionally, utilities are often exposed as roadway construction occurs in their vicinity.

The precise location of existing buried utilities is mostly unknown to highway agencies. Not knowing the location of buried assets causes practical problems that increase costs and delay projects, but more importantly, it increases the risk of injury to project personnel and damage to, utilities which can have ripple effects far beyond the project boundaries. The problems associated with inaccurate location of buried pipes and cables are serious and are rapidly worsening due to the increasing density of underground infrastructure in major urban areas.

Buried utility conflicts and relocations are one of the largest contributors for project delays during road construction.

Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technologies have great potential in detecting, locating, characterizing and assessing the condition of subsurface utilities to reduce the construction cost, improve the delivery time, increase safety of the construction, and assist with overall management of a construction project. The second Strategic Highway Renewal Program (SHRP

2) Project R01B, Encouraging Innovation in Locating and Characterizing Underground Utilities, focused on geophysical tools and accompanying software for locating and mapping buried utilities. Existing GPR equipment and software systems was used as a platform in this project.

However, the reliability of detection in certain environment or on certain material types (i.e., plastic pipes) have been poor, and it requires extensive expertise to operate the equipment and accurately analyzing data. In addition, the SHRP2 project used an innovative shear wave imaging system to provide detection capabilities similar to GPR for soils where GPR is not an effective tool. However, a practical prototype that incorporates seismic technology was not fully developed.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) conducted research to document issues associated with State transportation departments asserting their responsibility to manage utility installations within the highway right-of-way. Among other topics, the research addressed benefits of having reliable, accurate utility data available during project delivery, and barriers to collecting and managing utility location data as well as strategies to overcome those barriers. The links to the TechBrief and final report from this project are:

• TechBrief: Feasibility of Mapping and Marking Underground Utilities by State

Transportation Departments, FHWA-HRT-18-070

• Report: Feasibility of Mapping and Marking Underground Utilities by State

Transportation Departments, FHWA-HRT-16-019

Additionally, the FHWA’s Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) conducted the robotic subsurface utility mapping and guidance project, a.k.a RUMI. The ultimate goal of this project was to develop a partially-robotic system that simultaneously maps subsurface utility conflicts in 3D and installs new utility conduits in near real time. The intent of this project is to build off of these earlier SHRP2 and FHWA efforts and not duplicate the earlier work.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study is to identify the availability, feasibility, and reliability of available

NDE technologies to locate buried utilities, to identify promising NDE technologies and to develop a suite of innovative applications for existing NDE technologies that can address the complexity of varying utilities, site soil, geology, environmental conditions, pipes sizes and depths, and operation beneath either paved streets, roadways, soils, or backfilled utility trenches.

Varying geologic conditions inhibit the effectiveness of some NDE techniques in different ways;

therefore, a need exists to identify or develop effective NDE methods that can offer subsurface utility engineers and geophysical service providers the best chance to completely and accurately detect and locate buried utilities at any location across the United States.

It is of interest to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to conduct a comprehensive study to investigate and document the reliability of existing and promising NDE technologies for mapping buried underground utilities and to identify and demonstrate innovative applications of existing NDE technologies for mapping buried utilities.

The study shall document potential advantage, limitations, shortcomings, and cost/benefit of using NDE technologies for mapping buried underground utilities as well as issues which could represent new challenges for the future. The study shall document technologies and applications that will lead to the better identification of underground utilities for highway agency purposes.

The results of this project would be useful and valuable to project owners, engineers, and constructors.

DETAILS

The solicitation will be released electronically via this Government Point of Entry (GPE) otherwise known as Federal Business Opportunities or www.fbo.gov. As such, no written, telephonic or other type of request for an advance copy of the solicitation will be entertained at this time. Potential Offerors are encouraged to register on www.fbo.gov to receive any further information in reference to the subject action inclusive of any announcements, and/or amendments to the solicitation after its release.

This requirement is full and open competition pursuant to NAICS code 541330. Any questions regarding this synopsis should be directed to Tamiko Aikens, Contracting Officer, via email at tamiko.aikens@dot.gov.

http://www.fbo.gov/ http://www.fbo.gov/ mailto:tamiko.aikens@dot.gov