MD2564 Infrastructure Data and Innovation – future developments

Infrastructure Data and Innovation is a growing area of work at the GLA within the Infrastructure Team. Supported by external funding, it consists of a number of digital tools and data feeds that underpin the Infrastructure Coordination service being piloted by the GLA. Infrastructure providers and highways authorities require the right data and analysis in order to change their ways of working and engage in coordination.

There are opportunities currently for two projects within the Infrastructure Data and Innovation portfolio—London’s Underground Asset Register and the London Infrastructure Mapping Application—to progress to the next stage of work.
London’s Underground Asset Register – next phase

The GLA has successfully undertaken a £2.43 million pilot project funded by Government’s Geospatial Commission to digitally map underground assets across six London boroughs – creating the London’s Underground Asset Register (LUAR) pilot. LUAR has been managed by the GLA’s Infrastructure Team since its launch in May 2019, bringing together data from all asset owners operating in the areas into a digital tool. The LUAR pilot is near completion, ending in March 2020.

As a result of learnings gathered through the LUAR pilot and a similar pilot undertaken in the Northeast, the Geospatial Commission has chosen to move forward with ambitions to create a National Underground Asset Register (NUAR). The Government has requested that the GLA continue this partnership working in preparation for establishing the national register.

The LUAR pilot was undertaken because underground asset owners (including infrastructure providers and boroughs) across London have limited visibility of one another’s asset type and location underground. Information is often contained in formats that make digital sharing difficult and inefficient. This lack of information sharing can, at worst, lead to injury and loss of life through utility strikes. It also causes delays for providers and can incur additional costs for local authorities as infrastructure providers undertake numerous ‘test digs’ to ascertain the location of an asset. Local authorities and the GLA likewise lack visibility on this asset information - making coordination, improved infrastructure planning and delivery difficult and more expensive. Creating a digital map where providers and the public sector can access information on underground assets is expected to have significant impacts on safety (avoiding utility strikes) and efficiency of works (reducing road network disruption), as well as creating other benefits such as reducing the costs of projects.

With the LUAR pilot’s initial delivery period from May 2019 to March 2020 now nearly complete, it has successfully demonstrated that infrastructure providers’ existing datasets on underground assets can be brought together into a single system and has begun to show the benefits of doing so.

The Geospatial Commission recognises the GLA’s extensive work during the pilot phase to create buy-in among over 20 utilities, transport providers, local authorities and telecommunications companies, and the technical work required to prepare their data. The Geospatial Commission wants to ensure that access is maintained for project partners after March 2020 to the data that the GLA has already collected, and that momentum is maintained.

There is a significant amount of work required to move from the pilot phase to a national platform, particularly to incorporate new data from additional local authorities and infrastructure providers into the platform. There is also further substantial testing and other preparation work required to inform the national roll out.

Undertaking the next phase of LUAR would allow the GLA to remain at the forefront of innovation, demonstrating the GLA’s commitment to data sharing and digital transformation in a challenging sector.

It should be noted that receipt of the next phase of funding is subject to the GLA agreeing a Grant Agreement with the Cabinet Office, which will be approved under the General Delegation / Signatory Permission (as per Mayoral Decision-Making in the GLA) by the Assistant Director for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity.

London Infrastructure Mapping Application – additional development

Separately, the London Infrastructure Mapping Application (IMA) is also progressing to the next stage of development. The IMA, first created by the GLA in 2015, is an online and interactive GIS-based tool that integrates infrastructure and development data, along with contextual information, to facilitate coordination and strategic planning across Greater London. The GLA has recently completed development on Version 3 with funding from the Lane Rental Surplus Revenue.

The IMA details the location and timing of planned and speculatively planned streetworks programmes in London. The Collaboration Tool, released as part of Version 3, allows private users (utilities, transport providers, TfL and local authorities who have signed a multi-party non-disclosure agreement) to identify opportunities for coordinated streetworks based on overlaps in location and timing of various asset owners’ proposed works. The tool has identified a series of coordination opportunities that are currently being evaluated and progressed by infrastructure providers in collaboration with the Infrastructure Coordination service being piloted by the GLA. Version 3 also includes a number of features that allow infrastructure providers to more effectively plan for growth, including: a Probability of Development Tool that predicts the likelihood of each residential planning permission coming forward as development; a Dormancy Filter that removes inactive residential sites; and an Area Summarisation Tool that captures expected development and infrastructure delivery in any area of interest.

The Lane Rental Surplus Revenue has made available an additional £290,500 in grant funding (including contingency) beyond the original amount approved by MD2162 for further improvements to the IMA.

Both LUAR and the IMA support the Mayor’s commitments to minimise streetworks disruption and are expected also to reduce infrastructure project delivery issues and related costs. The IMA also supports improved planning for growth, enabling housing delivery by allowing infrastructure providers to proactively prepare for coming development rather than becoming blockers to delivery.

The Mayor’s London Infrastructure Group, comprising London’s leading infrastructure providers, regulators, Government and industry organisations support both projects and have already shared data to enable their development.

London’s Underground Asset Register – next phase

The next phase of work will result in an up-to-date digital map of underground assets covering the area of at least 16 London boroughs by March 2022, including the six delivered during the LUAR pilot. This map will be accessible to all data providers and the GLA.

The project will continue to test Government’s four use cases for an underground asset register that were tested during the LUAR pilot, in addition to the GLA-specific use case supporting Infrastructure Coordination:

• Safe digging – to avoid utility strikes;
• On-site efficiency – to create project efficiency savings;
• Site planning – to create project efficiency savings;
• Data exchange – to create data efficiency savings; and
• Improved coordination – to support collaborative streetworks (GLA specific).

The next phase of work will also allow the GLA to investigate two further use cases:

• Developer advising – to facilitate coordinated gas, water, and electricity connections and any other activity that requires excavation through boroughs; and
• Resilience planning – to identify infrastructure interdependencies and capacity challenges as well as proactively plan around constraints.

The pilot platform will be used by a range of stakeholders at various stages of infrastructure planning and delivery. The tool will be used by infrastructure providers’ operational teams in planning capital works programmes and by their staff and contractors while digging onsite. Local authorities will use the tool to improve streetworks planning and facilitate coordination.

Selection of the ten additional boroughs that the project will cover will be primarily based on asset owners’ data quality and formats in each borough. We will choose boroughs where we can demonstrate the use-cases put forward by the Geospatial Commission and the GLA in the time provided and that align with existing GLA infrastructure planning and delivery initiatives.

The GLA will take on four workstreams in the next phase of work. These are:

• Maintenance: The GLA will maintain the existing LUAR platform while preparations are underway for a national system, so that it can be used by data providers. To do this, the GLA will source regular data updates, transform the data for inclusion in the platform and ensure proper uploading. The GLA will also refine data transformation to improve existing datasets.
• Expansion and wider engagement: The GLA will source additional datasets from existing partners, as well as expanding partners to include at least ten new boroughs and additional infrastructure providers operating there. The GLA will support vectorisation as needed to facilitate wide participation and establish automated data feeds wherever possible. The GLA will convene regular LUAR workshops where all partners can ask questions and share insights.
• Preparation for a national system: In collaboration with the Geospatial Commission, the GLA will offer strategic advice to help Government prepare for the launch of NUAR. This includes offering recommendations to improve the existing data model so that it is fit for purpose and aligned with existing standards and asset management systems, as well as undertaking additional research to understand the barriers to NUAR replacing business as usual in London.
• New use-cases: The GLA will facilitate use of the platform on the ground and measure outcomes against the new use cases it has identified, in addition to Government’s existing use cases.

LUAR’s next phase of work will result in coverage of 16 London local authorities, with data for these areas fully integrated into the platform.
London Infrastructure Mapping Application – additional development

Additional improvements to the London Infrastructure Mapping Application will result in new functionality to support the Infrastructure Coordination service being piloted by the GLA, as well as improved data.

These will include

• Benefits calculator: The GLA will develop a tool to identify, for any given collaboration opportunity, the expected benefit in time savings and cost savings that a particular joint streetworks scheme might bring in comparison to others. Significant research and scoping is required to implement this functionality.
• Improved analysis: The GLA will refine existing analysis functionality, such as the Probability of Development Tool, to include additional variables and more complex modelling so that they cover additional types of development at different stages within the planning system, in order to support better planning for growth.
• Integration: The GLA will improve technical integration with data providers and other digital tools, focusing on machine-to-machine connections to facilitate automated data updates wherever possible.
• User refinements: The GLA will implement longstanding requests for user experience improvements, sourced from user interviews and workshops.

Hiring and procurement

London’s Underground Asset Register

LUAR’s next phase of work will require establishing three externally funded two-year fixed-term members of staff to deliver the project, focusing on stakeholder engagement and data management. During the LUAR pilot, two roles were filled using agency workers given the short duration of the pilot and uncertainty around future steps. To address capacity challenges that arose during the LUAR pilot and the increased volume of work in the next phase, we have agreed with the Geospatial Commission the need for one additional post to provide support. The three posts will be recruited in accordance with all GLA staffing protocols.

Certain elements of the above LUAR workstreams within the project will be put out to tender, following the Contracts and Funding Code and GLA’s and TfL’s procurement guidelines. Services will be procured through TfL Commercial. These include:

• Procuring technical expertise to support data transformation and integration, as well as data modelling refinement;
• Procuring research expertise to support use case testing; and
• Procuring legal expertise to agree data sharing agreements for the next phase of work.

To ensure that all relevant data is digitised within the necessary time period, the GLA will contribute grant funding to relevant boroughs. This will allow them to locate data and upgrade its format for use within the LUAR pilot platform.

The GLA will also provide grant funding to asset owners to assist in data vectorisation. The amount of funding to be contributed per asset owner will be determined in the initial planning stage of the project. An umbrella budget has been committed by the Geospatial Commission.

London Infrastructure Mapping Application

There are already three members of staff working on London’s Infrastructure Mapping Application and they will undertake the next phase of work. Technical expertise will be required and so elements of the project will be put out to tender, following the Contracts and Funding Code and GLA’s and TfL’s procurement guidelines. Services will be procured through TfL Commercial. These will include web development, data science and research to inform the new functionality.

The public-sector equality duty (PSED) under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 requires the identification and evaluation of the likely potential impacts, both positive and negative, of this decision on those with relevant protected characteristics. The Mayor is required to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation, as well as to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not. This may involve, in particular, removing or minimising any disadvantage suffered by those who share a relevant protected characteristic, and taking steps to meet the needs of such people. In certain circumstances, compliance with the Act may involve treating people with a protected characteristic more favourably than those without it.

The GLA’s equality, diversity and inclusion objectives were considered when the recommendations set out in this MD were put together. The benefits of these two digital tools will have direct and indirect positive impacts for all Londoners.

In line with the GLA’s Recruitment and Selection policy, for the new LUAR posts, we will welcome applications from everyone, including those with protected characteristics.

Links to Mayoral Strategies and Priorities

1. The below table captures links to Mayoral Strategies and Roadmaps:

Key Risks and Issues

1. The following key risks have been identified for LUAR:

1. The following key risks have been identified for the London Infrastructure Mapping Application’s ongoing development:

1. No one involved in the drafting or clearance of this form has any conflicts of interest to declare.

Approval is being sought for the receipt and expenditure of £3.33 million grant funding from the Geospatial Commission and up to £290,500 from the Lane Rental Surplus Revenue.

​​​​​​​Both grants will be claimed retrospectively upon submission of eligible expenditure. The budgeted expenditures for these grants are as follows:

London’s Underground Asset Register

London Infrastructure Mapping Application

​​​​​​​Proposals have been put forward to convert the three IMA fixed term posts into permanent posts. These posts will continue to be funded from the grant received from the Lane Rental Surplus Revenue up until 2021. In the instance where further funding has not been secured, the costs of these posts will need to be absorbed by the Authority.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The income and expenditure for the London’s Underground Asset Register programme will take place over two financial years: 2020/21 and 2021/22 whilst the London Infrastructure Mapping programme will occur between April 2020 – October 2020 only. The indicative profile of expenditure for the former will be 50:50 over the stated duration, however, this could be subject to change. Both programmes will be contained within the Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity budget.

The GLA’s receipt of funds and participation in the LUAR Pilot was approved by the Mayor under cover of MD2469. Authority is now sought to continue and expand upon the work done during the Pilot for a further period, pending a national roll-out. The GLA has wide powers under section 30 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (GLA Act) to promote economic development and wealth creation, promote social development, and promote the improvement of the environment, all in Greater London. These powers are sufficiently broad to cover the proposed use of funds to continue GLA involvement in the LUAR for a further period. The section 30 powers are also sufficiently broad to cover the proposed development of the London Infrastructure Mapping Application.

There are restrictions under section 31 of the GLA Act on the GLA incurring expenditure on doing anything which may be done by Transport for London (TfL). There is some potential overlap between this project and activities within TfL’s powers, and/or within (for example) the powers of TfL’s subsidiary company London Underground Limited (LUL), in respect of assets in highways under TfL’s control as highway or traffic authority, and underground railway assets operated by LUL. The proposed activities of the LUAR Pilot however extend across London and embrace roads in respect of which TfL is neither traffic authority nor highway authority, and other assets which are not owned or operated by TfL or LUL (or any other subsidiary or associated company of TfL). The same principle applies to the London Infrastructure Mapping Application. To the extent that anything proposed in this decision might be done by TfL, under section 31(6) of the GLA Act the restrictions imposed by section 31 do not prevent the GLA co-operating with, or facilitating or co-ordinating the activities of, TfL, or any other public body.

In taking the decisions requested, the Mayor must have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty; under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, that is, the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010 and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic (race, disability, sex, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment) and persons who do not share it. To this end, the Mayor should have particular regard to section 3 (above) of this report.

The Mayor can approve the receipt of the Government’s Geospatial Commission funding and London’s Lane Rental Surplus Revenue in principle. However, this will be subject to an appropriate GLA officer approving the terms of the funding and seeking further legal advice where necessary.

Once the terms of the funding are understood, the appropriate GLA officer must ensure that they are content that the GLA can comply with any conditions to which the funding is subject and also must take into account the role of the functional bodies in enabling compliance. In any event no reliance should be placed upon such funding until there is a legally binding commitment from the Government’s Geospatial Commission and London’s Lane Rental Governance Committee to provide the same.

Services required to deliver the next phases of these two projects must be procured by Transport for London Procurement who will determine the detail of the procurement strategy to be adopted in accordance with the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code.

Officers must ensure that appropriate contract documentation is put in place and executed by the successful bidder(s) and the GLA before the commencement of the services.

Paragraphs 2.14 and 2.15 above indicate that the contribution of funding to local authorities and infrastructure providers amounts to the provision of grant funding and not payment for services. Officers must ensure that the funding is distributed fairly, transparently, in accordance with the GLA’s equalities and in a manner which affords value for money in accordance with the Contracts and Funding Code.

Officers must ensure that appropriate funding agreements are put in place between and executed by the GLA and recipients before any commitment to fund is made.

Officers have indicated that three fixed-term posts will be created to help deliver the next phase of London’s Underground Asset Register. Under the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (as amended), the Head of Paid Service (the “HoPS”) may, after consultation with the Mayor and the Assembly and having regard to the resources available and priorities of the Authority:

• appoint such staff as the HoPS considers necessary for the proper discharge of the functions of the Authority (section 67(2)); and
• make such appointments on such terms and conditions as the HoPS thinks fit (section 70(2)).

Therefore, should this budget be approved, the matter should be referred to the HoPS in order that the HoPS may consider creating the posts referred to above.

As the proposals concern arrangements which extend beyond the GLA election in May 2020, officers must ensure that the arrangements proposed can be terminated by the GLA at its option so as not to fetter the discretion of the Mayor after the election.

An initial project plan has been prepared to secure funding for the next phases of both LUAR and the Infrastructure Mapping Application development; detailed plans are forthcoming. Working groups for both projects will continue, consisting of representatives from each external participating organisation/company to support delivery, including representatives from the Geospatial Commission and the Lane Rental Governance Committee.

Both projects will be overseen corporately by the Assistant Director for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity. The Deputy Mayor for Planning, Regeneration and Skills and the Chief Digital Officer will also provide direction. Officers will regularly update key stakeholders – including the Mayor’s London Infrastructure Group, the Geospatial Commission, and the Lane Rental Governance Committee.