Providing A Concrete Implementation Of National Metadata As-Built Standards

The New Zealand government has released the new national infrastructure meta-data standards. The new national standards, like any set of standards are a group of documents that need to be interpreted and understood by all stakeholders before they can be implemented successfully. Different interpretations between the council and as-built creators concerning what information is actually required and acceptable can lead to misunderstandings and confusion.

The adoption of the new national standards may lead to increased processing cost and risk:

Councils and as-built creators require time and experience to learn what is required in regards to data collected and formatting requirements.

Increased rates of omissions and errors in submitted as-built information will lead to costly submission redo’s if errors found of potentially bad data entered into council systems if not discovered.

Database systems may need updating to handle the new required information.

This paper discusses how the as-built industry in New Zealand need to embrace as-built information systems that allow for an easy to understand, standardized, concrete view of the national infrastructure meta-data standard requirements. A standardised view of the as-built requirements will minimize misunderstandings and simplify the communication between as-built creators and councils of what those new requirements are and how well the information supplied meets those requirements. This in-turn minimises the likelihood of submitting and accepting as-built documents which contain errors and omissions.

Additionally, councils who adopt the new national infrastructure meta-data standards often will need to incorporate changes to their back-end Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Asset Management Systems (AMS) to allow for the recording and storage of the information contained in the new standards. This paper will also discuss how as-built information systems that have the ability to output GIS and AMS data files give councils the ability to map changes in the data collected in the as-built to existing tables and fields in council’s backend GIS and AMS systems. Potentially, providing options to allow incorporating the new standards without necessitating costly and difficult changes to those council’s back-end data systems.

This paper will discuss the empirical evidence and feedback supplied from councils in New Zealand who have experienced adapting to the use of as-built information systems. How after receiving validated, formatted and standardized as-builts in the form of GIS and AMS data files, these councils have saved valuable time, effort and resources in processing those as-builts. This paper will also discuss how the many benefits of incorporating as-built information systems for councils also extends to the consultant/developer submitting the as-built. This paper will discuss how they can more easily understand exactly what information is expected in the as-built, the information they enter is validated and formatted by the as-built software. Additionally, the paper

discusses how using as-built information systems has saved the consultant/developer time and effort while eliminating costly as-built redo’s.