Utilities find the future at their fingertips Britain’s utility companies can now plan ahead more confidently thanks to new, highly detailed digital mapping that pinpoints buildings and roads before they are built.
Ordnance Survey’s Pre-Build data is a standardised format for large-scale design plans and site surveys with official planning approval. It already covers hundreds of building projects in different regions of the country, with more coming on-stream every day.
Up to now, utilities and telcos preparing work schedules and operations in a specific area have had to source pre-build information from the individual developers involved. But this has led to different standards in draughting and a variable level of detail, with plans often drawn to a local grid rather than the National Grid as used on Ordnance Survey mapping. Users have had to cut, paste and stretch the data to fit the published specifications of existing large-scale mapping such as Ordnance Survey’s Land-Line product. This in-house georeferencing can be labour intensive.
As Ordnance Survey’s Pre-Build data is already georeferenced to the National Grid and correctly positioned to Land-Line specifications, customers can know it fits their existing applications.
In addition to meeting Land-Line specifications now, work is under way to develop a dedicated Pre-Build layer in Ordnance Survey’s new digital map database and online service, OS MasterMap. This will allow customers to choose data by project rather than by tile as at present, and provide extra design information.
Pre-Build data is available for current Land-Line customers at a price of £45 per tile (500 m by 500 m in urban areas, 1 km by 1 km in rural areas, and 5 km by 5 km in mountain, moorland and other remote areas). There is a £5 per tile discount until March 2002. Customers can order Pre-Build data from their account manager or through the Ordnance Survey web site with delivery on CD-ROM in DXF files.
