Beneath every city street, suburban neighbourhood, and rural road lies a network of pipes, cables, and conduits that most people will never see and rarely think about. It runs beneath the foundations of buildings, beneath parks and parking lots, quietly keeping everything above ground functioning. Most of it was built decades ago. A significant portion of it is overdue for replacement. And in many cases, nobody is entirely sure where all of it is anymore.
Built for Another Era
Much of the underground infrastructure in service today across North America and Europe was installed in the post-World War II era, designed to last 75 to 100 years. That lifespan is now up for a significant portion of it. The US has more than two million miles of underground pipes, many of which were installed after World War II and are now at or beyond their projected lifespan. A recent study analyzing nearly 400,000 miles of water main data found that the US and Canada experience around 260,000 water main breaks annually, with repair costs of approximately $2.6 billion per year.
The picture in the UK and Europe is similar. The UK is currently losing around 3 billion litres of water every day through leaking pipes, many of which were laid more than 100 years ago and are in hard-to-reach areas beneath towns and cities. These are symptoms of infrastructure that was built for a different era and has been stretched well beyond its original design life.
The Documentation Gap
The age of the infrastructure is only part of the challenge. The other part is that nobody is entirely sure where all of it is.
Many old utility lines were installed before GPS and modern mapping tools were available, which means locators often have to rely on outdated paper maps or, in some cases, institutional memory, which is prone to error. Decades of repairs, reroutes, and extensions, many of which were never properly documented, have compounded the problem further. The result is that in cities around the world, the official record of what lies underground and the physical reality of what is actually there have gradually drifted apart.
This is not a minor administrative issue. When an aging utility line fails, the repercussions can be significant. A burst water main can flood streets, disrupt traffic, and damage property, while a gas pipeline rupture can lead to fires or explosions. And when emergency crews respond, they are often working from incomplete records, which increases both the risk and the cost of the repair.
A Global Problem with No Easy Fix
The scale of the investment required to address aging infrastructure is significant. A 2024 McKinsey report estimated the US water utility sector faces a funding gap of approximately $110 billion, a figure that could grow to $194 billion by 2030. Similar funding pressures exist across Europe, Australia, and other regions where infrastructure built in the mid-20th century is now due for large-scale renewal.
Governments are beginning to respond. The UK’s National Underground Asset Register, which we covered in a previous article, is one example of a national effort to centralize and standardize underground utility data. Infrastructure investment legislation in the US, Canada, and the European Union has directed significant funding toward renewal programs. But funding alone does not solve the documentation problem. Money can replace a pipe, but it does not automatically produce an accurate record of where the new one went.
Where Technology Comes In
This is where the construction and utilities industries have a real opportunity. The tools now exist to close the gap between what is in the ground and what the records show, and to keep that gap closed as new work is carried out.
GIS platforms allow utility data to be captured, standardized, and centralized in ways that were not practical even a decade ago. AR technology gives field crews the ability to visualize existing utility data spatially on site, making it easier to identify where records do not match reality and flag discrepancies in real time. When these tools are integrated into everyday workflows the cumulative effect on data quality is substantial.
The aging infrastructure problem is real and large, but it is also one that the industry has the tools to get ahead of. The challenge now is building the workflows and habits to use them consistently.
