If there’s one thing the people who work at Miller Pipeline know, it’s that nothing stands in the way of progress. Throughout the 65 years the company has been in business, Miller Pipeline has been at the forefront of building and maintaining America’s infrastructure — performing everything from pipeline construction to rehabilitation services for natural gas, liquids, water and wastewater. The need to build, expand, repair and relocate utilities has led to Miller Pipeline growing from a small family-owned business to a company of 3,000 employees with offices in over 20 states. And, the key driver of that growth is their customers’ pursuit of progress.
In Miller Pipeline’s early days, the installation of gas transmission pipelines drove the business. While gas transmission is still a significant part of the work the company does, helping natural gas customers maintain their underground network of pipelines represents a substantial portion of their business now.
“As pipelines age and cities expand, there is a tremendous amount of work to be done to support our natural gas utility customers,” said John Gregor, horizontal directional drilling manager for Miller Pipeline. “I believe a major reason why our customers choose to work with us is that we’re a company that embraces and expects progress. We’ve demonstrated that by the machinery and methods of installation that we perform, the tools we use to assist crews and the way we work with customers to plan for future growth of their own.”
What Gregor is referring to is Miller Pipeline’s commitment to being an early-adopter with many of the latest industry technologies and making investments to better understand how new technology can benefit their customers. “We got into horizontal directional drilling early because we recognized the immediate benefits,” he said. “Now, we operate an extensive network of horizontal directional drilling crews. And, as the HDD market has matured, we’ve been quick to embrace many of the tools that can help us plan better and avoid other buried utilities.”
Adopting HDD planning tools
Gregor and his team initially started bore planning many years ago using the Vermeer Atlas Bore Planner® computer software system. Also, when Vermeer Projects Suite was introduced, Miller Pipeline was one of the first to try out the system. “Bore planning software and hardware have come a long way from those early days,” said Gregor. “The tools available today not only simplify the process of planning a bore, but it also makes it much easier to give a customer as-built information when a job is complete.”
Many of Miller Pipeline’s gas distribution teams use the Vermeer Projects productivity tools in the field for planning and for creating as-built bore profiles for customers. “A significant amount of our customers are required to keep as-built information on file, which means our team is required to create bore profiles,” Gregor said. “The old way of doing it with a measuring wheel and record book, and then having to input into a CAD program — it was time-consuming and not as accurate as this technology.”
“With a mobile phone or tablet running the Vermeer Projects app and the Trimble R1 GNSS receiver, our guys can walk the bore path, insert tie-down points of reference, insert depth information and mark the location of other utilities in the fraction of that time. Then they can give our customers as-built information in any format requested,” continued Gregor.
Bore planning
Gregor estimates that his team has created hundreds of as-built bore profiles since starting to use Vermeer Projects productivity tools.
He also personally uses Vermeer Projects during the bore planning process. “Most of the time, our utility customers will provide us with a bore plan before a project starts, but there are a few customers that rely on my team to create the plan,” he explained. “In either case, Vermeer Projects comes in handy because we can walk the bore path with either a locator equipped with GPS and a smartphone or tablet with the app to map the bore. During that process, we verify rod-by-rod radius and mark any located utilities. From there, if a plan has to change, we can provide detailed information about why a plan needs to be adjusted. Also, it helps our bore crews because they have easy-to-read rod-by-rod information to help them as they execute the bore.”
As-built documentation process
Hunter Miller is a construction assistant with Miller Pipeline working out of the company’s Denver, North Carolina, office, and it’s his job to assist several major natural gas utility companies in the area and drill supervisors overseeing installation work. Miller has been with the company for just over three years, and in that time has been one of the primary people, along with co-worker Greg Moore, documenting as-built bore profile information.
“It’s our policy to capture data for any bore over 100 feet (30.5 m) or any bore that crosses a state road,” said Miller. “As of now about half of our natural gas utility companies are asking for the information, but we expect that number to increase as more become aware of the capabilities of technology we use, like Vermeer Projects.”
With more than 25 crews working out of the Denver, North Carolina, location and many more Miller Pipeline teams working around the region, Miller and Moore are responsible for documenting a lot of bores. “We like to try to get to a site before a bore is complete, but that’s not always possible,” explained Miller. “So, we will often stop by a jobsite soon afterward to document the information. The process is pretty straightforward. We use a tablet and a Trimble R1 receiver to walk the path and insert utility depths for the bore profile. We will also make notes where a bore intersects with another utility and the depth of the existing utility.”
Using the captured GPS information, Miller will then use Google topography to create as-built bore profiles. From there, the bore profiles are stored in Miller Pipeline’s system and provided to the customer.
Resources for future planning
“Having the GPS location of the pipelines for our customers is a huge benefit for them and other utility contractors,” explained Miller. “Utility strikes involving natural gas lines, high-voltage power and even fiberoptics can be disastrous. Having the ability to locate buried utilities using GPS will help avoid strikes in the future. It will also help when a line needs to be relocated or repaired.”
On the topic of relocating utilities, Miller said their crews in the area have recently seen a lot of gas lines being moved because of expanding roadways. On one recent project in Concord, North Carolina, he was called out to create the as-built bore profile as gas lines were being moved for a road-widening project. “The area around the local hospital will likely continue to see growth, so to help crews working in the area in the future we also included tie-down information in our as-built documents,” he explained. “We try to do this in areas where there are several utilities and future growth is expected. With that information, they can measure the distance from a tie-down to find the location of the buried utility. It’s easy to enter this type of information into the Vermeer Projects app, and we know it will either help us or another utility contractor in the future.”
Future of bore mapping
As an early adopter of the latest industry technology, Gregor and Miller both agree that the usage of bore planning and mapping tools like Vermeer Projects productivity tools can be extremely useful for utility contractors to integrate into their operations. To help streamline the way their company is collecting GPS information, Miller Pipeline is in the process of upgrading its crews to HDD locating equipment to the Falcon F5® locating system with built-in GPS. Soon, crews will be able to transmit GPS coordinates, depths, tie-downs and the specific coordinates of nearby utilities while the job is happening. The captured information can then be uploaded into Vermeer Projects where it can be altered and shared with a customer either from a computer, smartphone or tablet.
“As more utility companies incorporate this type of technology into their business, there’s just no telling what the future of the underground construction market can look like,” said Miller. “We’ll be able to do a better job of planning for new projects, be able to better track the age and condition of existing utility and reduce the risks of hitting buried utilities.”
This article contains third-party observations, advice or experiences that do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Vermeer Corporation, its affiliates or its dealers. Testimonials and/or endorsements by contractors in specific circumstances may not be representative of normal circumstances experienced by all customers.
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