CCTV inspection technology development

It's #TechnicalTuesday so Gosia Druzkowska, a Consultant Engineer in our Technical Consulting team, is discussing developments in CCTV inspection technology and the newly released Sewer Condition Inspection Specification and Guidance document. 

CCTV sewer inspections are a key tool in the management of sewer systems, with water companies in the UK spending over £10 million on CCTV inspection each year. The CCTV dataset is an essential asset to a water and sewerage company worth millions in value and is used by a number of different user communities in water and sewerage companies including: operations – to diagnose problems and carry out quality control on sewer cleaning work; developer services – in quality control of new assets prior to adoption; capital planners – to target sewer renovation work; capital delivery – in the delivery of sewer renovation projects and quality control and business planners – to identify the overall condition of the sewerage assets and estimate deterioration rates.

The technology has changed rapidly over the last few years, and this has prompted the need for a new CCTV inspection specification to be developed. The previous Model Contract Document specification for CCTV inspection was last updated in 2005 when the industry was still transitioning from tungsten lighting systems to LED and from video tape recording to MPEG encoding on computer. Since that time, these technologies have become mainstream and there have been other significant changes and increased capabilities in the CCTV technology now in use by CCTV contractors. More recently, these advancements include automatic recognition of defects.

Over the past two years, WRc has worked collaboratively with six water and sewerage companies and key industry stakeholders to identify the specific requirements for each of the different user communities. This specification goes beyond the traditional asset inspection to identify structural defects but increasingly to assess the operational serviceability of the drain or sewer. This helps to reduce customer impacts from blockage whilst capturing key information on the location of the asset to improve operational efficiency and provide greater value for money. The guidance provides recommendations for an improved CCTV inspection across a range of activities to enable the greater adoption and procurement of new technologies to provide a technology springboard for the UK CCTV inspection sector.

The new Specification is available to purchase through our Knowledge Store here