July 2024 Vol. 79 No. 7
Editor's Log
Editor’s log: The road to rehab intensifies
By Robert Carpenter, Editor-in-Chief
(UI) — The 1970s proved to be amazing years of technological advancements for the underground infrastructure industry, both in terms of new construction but also in the fledgling field of rehabilitation.
It was in 1971 that UK-based Eric Wood was able to take his designs and materials and successfully apply them to a project. Wide-eyed engineers and municipal personnel helped fan the flames of excitement as word rapidly spread around the world of a technology that could create a new pipe within an existing pipe using an “in situ” process – effectively repairing the problem section of a sewer pipe without digging up the street. Cured-in-place-pipe was born.
Of course, a tremendous amount of development was still needed before the technology was commercially viable, but nonetheless, Insituform was born, and the marketplace embraced the concept of trenchless rehabilitation. It was in that general time that another radical technology, pipe bursting, took rehabilitation interest to new heights. Inventors seized upon the interest and importance of repairing in-place rather than replacing via open-cut miles of leaky or failing pipe.
It didn’t take long before all kinds of technologies began to emerge and both laterals and manhole rehabilitation became a practical application of rehab solutions, as well. In the last 10 years, CIPP for pressure pipe has become a reliable procedure and favored solution. Once thought out of reach for CIPP work, now water pressure pipe rehab is quite common.
Like any groundbreaking technology with a bright future – and especially when the Insituform patents expired in the early 2000s – continued development and perfection of CIPP technologies, along with steadily improving industry trust, drove that technology into what it represents today. It’s a multi-billion-dollar market with a wide variation of products and approaches so that no matter what the condition of a damage pipe, there most likely is a CIPP option.
Other technologies, such as pipe bursting, have followed the same developmental and growth path. Refinement and expansion of bursting for virtually any type and size of pipe material is practical. The same can be said for spray-on coatings, geopolymer lining, lateral reinstatement and a host of other rehab technologies.
To be clear, I’m a big fan of open cut when it’s the best answer – and that’s frequently the case. But as rehab technology grows, the limits to these remarkable technologies are quickly shrinking.
An important consideration in the continued growth of the rehabilitation market is that, as technology is perfected and refined, the volume of projects grows at a high rate until we’ve reached the tipping point: prices reflect economy of scale. Rehabilitation, when properly factored into a project, has long since proved that it is frequently more economical than open-cut procedures.
In fact, rehab has become such a mainstay that America’s sewer and water systems, to some degree, take for granted the wide spectrum of rehab technologies, methods and applications available today.
It wasn’t that long ago that just mentioning the pressing need for a replacement and repair project to a city staffer caused groans up and down office hallways. Such a project meant blocks of torn up streets, all kinds of heavy construction equipment sharing the road with urban traffic, detours and flagmen daring their safety in rush hour.
And then you had to put it all back together again and, too often, the roads were never the same. Such projects, while necessary, were the bane of city utility departments as they struggled to finance and execute this work. My, how times have changed. Now, one of the first things that cities, engineers and contractors for projects aggressively pursue is trenchless rehab options.
Like many markets that have seen rapid growth and market opportunities, consolidation and roll-ups are occurring at a fast pace – to the point where, while we continue to have more technology choices, we have fewer vendors, contractors and engineering players. We have seen this for decades in the telecom and gas distribution industries, and those markets are still a bit unsettled.
Time will tell if this is a good or bad trend for rehab. But the fast pace of technology developments and options will always be a good thing and an essential element in advancing rehab solutions for underground infrastructure. The world’s infrastructure continues to need technology solutions for its financially short-changed and often overlooked underground infrastructure.
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