Save the date: WinCan will be exhibiting in booth 4142 at the WWETT Show in Indianapolis, February 21-23. Stop by to see the latest additions to the industry-leading sewer inspection reporting and asset management platform, including:

Every wastewater system is unique: Age, geography, pipe materials, rehab methods, and climate all shape infrastructure over time. But even in the diverse landscape of American utilities, some systems stand out.

Every two years, IFAT—the world’s largest trade show for water, sewer and waste—descends on Munich, Germany for five days. The show draws more than 141,000 attendees and 3,300 exhibitors from 58 countries. This year, WinCan moved to Hall C3, where it exhibited prominently among manufacturers dedicated to the construction, maintenance and rehabilitation of water supply and sewerage systems. WinCan’s latest products and features were highlighted at this year’s event.

Save the date: WinCan will be at the WWETT Show in Indianapolis, February 22-24, booth 6132. We’ll be showing off the latest additions to our industry-leading sewer inspection reporting and asset management platform, including:

What is longer than two soccer fields and weighs more than 19 African elephants? A fatberg that was recently found in east London, that’s what. The fatberg, coined ‘total monster’ by The Guardian, weighs 130 tons and is 820 feet (250 meters) long. Thames Water and Lanes Group, WinCan Web sewer asset management software users, found this massive deposit of fats, oils, grease, wipes and other household waste during a routine inspection in Whitechapel, in London’s East End. Sources say it will take sewer workers three weeks to break up the fatberg and restore the sewer pipe. Once broken up, the waste will be sucked up and taken for disposal at a local recycling plant.

As cloud-based storage becomes more popular, municipalities, utilities and contractors must consider the benefits cloud-based solutions provide, particularly for sewer inspection data management.

A cross bore occurs when one underground utility line intersects another. Cross bores are particularly dangerous when a gas line intersects a sewer line. This happens during horizontal directional drilling (HDD), a technique for installing a gas line using a remotely piloted drill head. During HDD, installers must rely on city asset maps to avoid existing sewer pipes. Erroneous or incomplete map data can create the potential for a cross bore. When a cross bore occurs, the intersecting gas line can snag debris in sewer effluent, causing a clog. If that clog is forcibly cleared, the gas line may rupture and leak into adjoining buildings, where it presents a serious potential for explosion.

Not only is precise mapping of a municipality’s underground assets important for maintenance and inspection purposes, it can help avoid cross-bores from directional drilling. The challenge is that municipalities can’t count on as-built plans for accurate mapping of underground assets. In the past, municipalities have relied on locators or on digging up pipes to get a visual. Both of these solutions can prove inefficient and sometimes inaccurate. Increasingly, municipalities are deploying geospatial probes, special sensors that are capable of tracking their position in 3D space using a technology called inertial navigation. The data provided by these sensors can be read by WinCan’s 3DGS Scan module to create in real-time a virtual 3D computer model of underground assets.

As UK Water Companies have taken on increasing responsibility for wastewater networks, the need to ensure easy, clear and speedy access to pipeline condition survey data has become ever-more important. This has been very much one of the drivers behind the adoption by Southern Water of the WinCan Web system recently launched by industry-leading CCTV reporting software provider, WinCan.

Southern Water has for some years utilised an alternative document management system for the compilation and storage of its pipeline survey data. The system whilst useful was by current standards somewhat cumbersome and not very user-friendly. With survey data being provided largely on DVD, the method of electronic storage meant that should engineers wish to view a survey, first the data file had to be retrieved and then the whole video had to be watched to find the location of interest as the system could not utilise effectively location selection.