Jesus Barron is the Lead Wastewater Collections System Worker III at Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District (EVMWD), where he helps oversee field operations, maintenance, emergency response, compliance, and infrastructure projects. With nearly two decades of municipal collections experience, Jesus has advanced data-driven manhole assessment and rehabilitation using LiDAR and 360-degree digital twin technology. He was named CWEA’s 2024-2025 Collection System Person of the Year and also holds CWEA and NASSCO certifications.

Jon Borden is the President of RH Borden and Company, a Salt Lake City-based firm applying advanced sensor technology and data-driven solutions to modernize wastewater and sewer systems across the US. Under his leadership, RH Borden pioneered digital twin and condition-based maintenance strategies, enabling cities to streamline maintenance and deliver the nation’s largest inflow and infiltration study in New York with more than 400 sensors deployed. With a background in Fortune 100 IT program management, Jon brings proven digital transformation expertise to aging infrastructure.

Here’s a Glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:44] Jesus Barron outlines Elsinore Valley’s wastewater system and manhole rehab challenges
• [5:00] Jon Borden explains how digital twin models make manhole assessment safer and more accurate
• [11:10] How Jesus uses LiDAR wall scoring to remove guesswork from manhole prioritization
• [14:42] Why management buy-in and responsible budgeting matter when testing new technology and small pilot programs
• [17:11] How Jesus and Jon use digital twin data to focus rehab dollars on the highest-priority manholes
• [19:40] The importance of building a baseline to track manhole degradation and identify broader system issues
• [22:11] Jesus shares Elsinore Valley’s long-term plan to expand scanning across its sewer system

In this Episode…

LiDAR scans and 360-degree digital twins recreate manholes virtually, scoring wall condition so utilities prioritize rehab by real need instead of guesswork, keeping crews safer.

Wastewater infrastructure is often out of sight, but it cannot afford to be out of mind. When manholes are deteriorating underground, agencies need better ways to know which assets truly need attention and which can wait. How can utilities move from educated guesses to confident, data-driven rehab decisions?

Jesus Barron’s answer is to replace tribal knowledge with measurable, repeatable assessment data. As a wastewater collections leader with nearly two decades of municipal collection system experience, Jesus explains how LiDAR scans, 360-degree imagery, and digital twins can help teams evaluate manhole wall condition, identify degradation, and prioritize repairs based on actual need. Jon Borden adds how digital twin models, point clouds, and VR tools can improve measurement accuracy, reduce confined-space risks, and help agencies communicate hidden infrastructure needs more clearly. Together, they emphasize starting with a small pilot, securing management and engineering buy-in, and using dashboards and baseline data to track degradation over time and focus limited budgets where they matter most.

In this episode of Saving Our Sewers, Kwin Peterson features Jesus Barron, Lead Wastewater Collections System Worker III at Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District, and Jon Borden, President of RH Borden, in a panel discussion about improving manhole rehab decisions using LiDAR and 360-degree digital twins. They discuss starting with a 20-manhole pilot, implementing color-coded scoring to prioritize rehab, and building a long-term baseline for smarter asset management.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• Kwin Peterson on LinkedIn
• Jon Borden on LinkedIn
• RH Borden
• Jesus Barron on LinkedIn
• Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District (EVMWD)
• California Water Environment Association (CWEA)

Quotable Moments: 

• “Digital twins of manholes have some really powerful attributes, primarily for dimensional accuracy.”
• “One of the cool things that we liked about this program was with the LiDAR.”
• “We start small, we make assessments, we pivot if we need to, or we persevere and continue down the line.”
• “Every time data is properly implemented, you get what’s called orders of magnitude improvements.”
• “What we’re doing is we’re creating a virtual world in which we can manage all of our manhole asset infrastructure.”

Action Steps: 

1. Start with a small pilot program: Testing new technology on a limited scale helps teams assess value, reduce risk, and build confidence before expanding.
2. Use data to prioritize infrastructure repairs: Objective scoring helps identify which assets need attention first and ensures limited budgets are spent where they matter most.
3. Secure leadership buy-in early: Support from upper management makes it easier to fund innovation, align departments, and turn pilot results into long-term programs.
4. Create baseline records for future comparison: Capturing current asset conditions allows teams to track degradation over time and make more predictive maintenance decisions.
5. Combine field experience with digital tools: Pairing operator knowledge with LiDAR, dashboards, and digital twins helps agencies make faster, safer, and more accurate rehab decisions.

Sponsor for this Episode.

This episode is brought to you by RH Borden, the leading service provider for innovative technologies that modernize wastewater collection system maintenance.

As Smart Cities evolve, RH Borden empowers communities to leverage data, optimize maintenance resources, and improve system performance. Their digital twin solutions help teams work more efficiently, minimize redundant maintenance, and pinpoint infrastructure issues with precision.

Learn more about how RH Borden is shaping the future of wastewater system management by visiting rhborden.com.

Powered by Rise25 Podcast Production Company

Frequently Asked Questions

How can digital twins improve our manhole rehabilitation planning?

Digital twins give your team a detailed virtual representation of each manhole, allowing you to evaluate asset conditions without relying solely on manual inspections or outdated records. At RH Borden, we use LiDAR scans and 360-degree imagery to create accurate digital models that help municipalities prioritize rehabilitation projects based on measurable data, improving decision-making while making the best use of available budgets.

Is LiDAR technology accurate enough for assessing manhole conditions?

Yes. LiDAR provides highly accurate measurements of manhole dimensions and wall conditions, helping identify deterioration that may be difficult to detect through traditional inspections alone. At RH Borden, we combine LiDAR data with 360-degree digital imaging to deliver objective condition assessments that support more confident rehabilitation planning and long-term asset management.

How can we start using digital twin technology without committing to a large project?

Many municipalities begin with a small pilot program to evaluate the technology before expanding across their collection system. RH Borden works with agencies to develop pilot projects that demonstrate the value of digital twins, LiDAR scanning, and data-driven asset management, allowing stakeholders to see measurable results before making larger investments.

How do digital twins help us prioritize limited rehabilitation budgets?

Instead of relying on age, assumptions, or emergency failures, digital twins provide objective condition data that identifies which manholes require immediate attention and which can continue to perform safely. RH Borden helps municipalities use this information to focus rehabilitation funding on the highest-priority assets, reducing unnecessary repairs while maximizing the impact of capital improvement budgets.

How does RH Borden support municipalities with digital manhole assessments?

RH Borden provides comprehensive digital manhole assessment solutions using LiDAR, 360-degree imagery, and Manhole Virtual Models (MVM) to create detailed digital twins of wastewater infrastructure. Our team helps municipalities establish baseline condition data, monitor asset deterioration over time, improve maintenance planning, and make safer, more informed rehabilitation decisions using actionable, data-driven insights.

Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:03

The US Infrastructure Report card gives the nation’s wastewater systems a grade of D+. Welcome to the Saving Our Sewers podcast, where we feature the practices, tools, technology and ideas that will save our sewers. Let’s get into it.

Kwin Peterson: 00:20

Kwin Peterson here, host of the Saving Our Sewers podcast, where we feature city leaders, innovative engineers, and infrastructure experts who are shaping the future of rapidly growing communities through smarter technology and data-driven solutions. This episode is brought to you by RH Borden, providing data-driven approaches to wastewater collection system maintenance. RH Borden helps collection system operators bridge the gap in funding labor and other resources with technology that eliminates wasted cleaning and CCTV efforts, automates manhole management, and dramatically reduces inflow and infiltration. You can learn more about how RH Borden is shaping the future of wastewater system management by visiting RHborden.com. Now today we’ve got a little bit of a different format.

It’s a panel presentation from the California Water Environment Association, a C26 conference in Sacramento. This panel was on a new approach to manhole maintenance using manhole virtual models, also known as digital Twins. The presenters on this panel are Jesus Barron, who you’ll hear referred to by his nickname Buddha, and Jon Borden, who is Jesus. He is the wastewater operations leader. He has 19 years of experience in the municipal collection system, and he’s currently at the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District.

Jesus is super knowledgeable and a lot of fun to boot. Now, Jon Borden is the president of RH Borden and the inventor of the manhole virtual model approach to manhole maintenance that this episode is discussing. So without further ado, please enjoy this great panel discussion with Jesus and Jon.

Jon Borden: 02:07

Person of the year Award for his leadership and his contributions to the field. He leads daily field operations, prioritizing maintenance, emergency response, and regulatory compliance, while also managing infrastructure projects from planning through completion. Known for leading by example, Jesus builds strong teams and promotes a culture of safety and accountability. He also serves as the incoming Curtis Brooks Chair for the Santa Ana River basin section.

Jesus Barron: 02:44

Good afternoon. Good afternoon everybody. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. My name is Jesus Barron. I work for Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District.

And today we’re going to be talking about improvising manhole rehab decisions with LiDAR and 360 digital twinning and what we did at our district to assist us. So Elsinore Valley is roughly about 415 miles of sewer pipe. We have 36 actual lift stations. We have three treatment facilities that roughly treat about 7.2 million gallons of wastewater daily. We also have the recycled water production assessment and rehab challenges at Elsinore Face, right?

So we have spent between $500 and $1 million in manhole lining each year since 1999. The maintenance team was struggling to identify and prioritize the highest needed manholes. We have roughly about 9600 manholes within our system. And obviously we have to try to do the level one inspection, right? Always try to assess whenever the crews are out there cleaning and as well as when you do as well as CCTV operation.

So like I said, we have usually level one, the assessment training or you know, you’re looking at it, you try to train the operators to look at deterioration within the manhole degradation from the H2S or something that’s maybe foreign within your system. One of the other ways that we’ve done is we had a 360 camera, you know, on a stick. You know, we’ve done different things. We also used our CCTV camera to actually lower the actual camera and try to do a, just turn it around right with the cable. You know, there’s a lot of different techniques as well as there’s a lot of technologies now that are coming out where you can do manhole scanning.

At this time, I would like to present Jon Borden from RH Borden, and he’s going to explain what we were doing with our reporting.

Jon Borden 4:36

Good afternoon. Delighted to be here with Buddha especially, I want to take you back to a little bit of a story that starts three years ago now. So we started doing digital twinning of the collection systems in 2018 by Raise of Hand. Has anyone ever heard of the term digital twin?

Raise em high, raise em high. Look around. This is exciting. There are people who have heard the term digital twin. That is fantastic.

Digital twinning is something that has been around, I want to say, since the 90s, and it’s getting more and more prolific in our day. We live in this day where the name of the game is to find a data harvester, go collect data, beam it to the cloud, run it through an AI algorithm, and dispense knowledge and information and intelligence. That’s the world that we live in right now. And in 2018, we started doing that for the collection systems. And we were specifically working on digital twinning of manholes and also some of the connected infrastructure pipes looking for blockages.

And also we have some technology now that’s pretty exciting for pinpointing exactly where I and I is, in collection systems. This session we’re going to focus on asset management with manholes. So as we started doing digital twinning, we got to some customers who gave us a problem statement. They said, we want to develop this side of town, but unfortunately we don’t know what the dimensions of our pipes are in that part of town. Do you think you could help us measure the dimensions of those pipes?

We said sure. How do you do that today? I said, well, you harness the guy up, you give him a tape measure, you send him down the hall with a clipboard, and he writes down the dimension of the pipe when he measures it with a tape measure. We thought I wouldn’t want to be the guy on the end of the tether. Has anyone ever gone down into a manhole and measured a pipe just by raising their hand?

Bless you, bless you, bless you. That is a heck of a process. It typically takes 4 or 5 people for safety precautions to make sure it all goes well, and it takes a long time. And they said we need to find a better way of doing that. So we investigated, investigated different technologies, and we developed this digital twin model.

And the concept is take a high density LiDAR scanner, send it down the manhole, and send millions of laser points throughout the entirety of that manhole and entirely recreate the manhole in virtual space. What we have here is a point cloud. This is the digital twin, specifically of the manhole that was scanned. Now, what can you do with a digital twin? You can do some pretty cool stuff.

Number one, you can measure the pipes without going into the manhole. That’s nice. What you do is you pull that digital twin up. You have a little measurement tool on the computer. You go in virtually and you measure the pipe, and it’s actually even more accurate than if you went down with a tape measure, because the lasers are within one millimeter, and an operator with a tape measure only measures to the accuracy of a tape measure.

So digital twins of manholes have some really powerful attributes, primarily for dimensional accuracy. The second thing that we can do with Digital Twin is we can create a video. So this is a 360 video that goes along with the point cloud. And in that you can virtually go into the manhole and see what’s going on. Now again, from those who raised your hands, I could tell that there were several of you who have personally been inside of a manhole.

If you had to give a score from 0 to 10 of how enjoyable it is to be inside of a manhole. Where would you score it? We got a thumbs down over here, right? So there’s a lot of hazards, as we all know, going inside of a manhole. We want to keep our staff out of the manhole.

Now, sometimes when there’s physical rehabilitation that has to happen, or manhole replacements, obviously we have to do that physically. But when it comes to assessment, let’s send down a probe. Let’s not go down there ourselves. So what we’re doing is we’re creating a virtual world in which we can manage all of our manhole asset infrastructure. Now, we want to put you in this room, all those who are in this room inside of a manhole.

So what we’ve done is we have a VR headset. What Ami has right here is a VR headset. Simply put it on your face and enjoy the ride. You will be lowered into a virtual manhole, and throughout the remainder of the session, you can get that sensation. Now what?

What does that do for us? We can inhabit the manhole virtually without the hazards, so there’s a lot of safety precautions or safety benefits to doing that, but there’s really two primary use cases for the VR headset. Number one, city councils. If you’ve ever gone in front of a city council and requested a budget where you’re competing with the city park, it can be difficult. If you have a manhole that’s out of sight, out of mind, that needs funding.

Versus the park. A lot of times they will go with the park because they can see it. When crumbling infrastructure is unseen, it’s difficult to fund. So what this does is it helps the city councils actually inhabit the infrastructure that they own without having to send them out into the field. The second one is for training.

So if you have staff that need the experience of going inside of a manhole without going inside the manhole, that’s totally the way to do it. So we’re twinning and getting these different ways to view manholes again dimensionally. And also this, this other with, with the videos. Now, when it came to working with Elsinore Valley, we met with them. They had almost 10,000 manholes.

Now manholes are constantly getting eaten up by hydrogen sulfide. But the question is which manhole is falling apart or which one? Which manhole is getting eaten up and how fast? It’s difficult to quantify the amount of degradation going on inside of a manhole, especially if you’re relying on an operator to go give their opinion. They’ll open up the lid, they’ll look inside, they’ll say, this one doesn’t look too bad.

They’ll open the next one. This one might be bad. So it’s very arbitrary if you’re using an individual. However, if you have a digital twin, you can tell quantifiably the difference between degradation. What we’re showing right up here are three different manholes, one on the left.

You can see not a whole lot of deterioration. The middle is fair and the one on the right definitely needs some review and further investigation. So what we can do now is we can scale programs of manhole asset management so that we can quantify degradation for those programs. So we can put a quantified score at scale. No more operator interpretation.

No more reports to fill out. Just take the scan, run the algorithm, and it’ll score the manholes for you. I want to pass a microphone over to Buddha just to give any commentary at this point. And then we’ll continue on with the technical piece.

Jesus Barron: 11:10

So one of the things that we did in Elsinore and we would rely on is tribal knowledge. And I know that there’s a lot of great operators out there right now. And you guys do the level one inspection, right? You visually look at the manhole, try to assess it. One of the cool things that we liked about this program was with the LiDAR.

It gives you a wall score, right? So it’ll tell you it gives you and take the guesswork actually of being able to say, okay, this man who needs to be on our CIP project or whatever your agency is doing in terms of rehab, right? And you’re able to identify that a lot faster. There’s no guessing work through it, right? So it’s all all that’s removed for you.

So right here. This was our pilot program right here. My superintendent and I identified some manholes that we wanted to get scanned that we had already on a list, a running list that we had. Again, that list was built on just tribal knowledge, just operating knowledge that we’ve gone and we’ve cleaned through the system. You know, one of the things as an operator, right when you’re hydro jetting and the shelves, the channels, you’re just tearing it apart, right?

With the pressure. And we identified those. So those were the ones that we did on this pilot program. By show of hands, how many people have gone through and seen and let your upper management know, hey, we have issues in our system. You know, a good portion of you guys.

So we are trying to eliminate that right now. So the guessing work was taken out by doing this. Okay. So right here we have the pilot. It was 20 manholes, right?

We initially did that. That’s how that’s how we started this. 50% of those that we identified needed a review, like he stated. So they were. The degradation was really bad. And the other thing is obviously we did go back.

We repaired these manholes. Right. We gave them to engineering. They did a replacement on these. And then we actually had them come back and board the arch and rescan that manhole.

And now we have what it started with. And it was actually an excuse for me, not to be replaced. So then we can actually gauge the thickness again, like I stated, the wall thickness, which is very much important.

Jon Borden: 13:22

So I want to just build on something that I think the Elsinore Valley did very well. And that is how do you implement something new as you come to these conferences? Hopefully you’re seeing things that are new because that’s the role of industry is to bring new things to you as the operators and managers of the collection systems. So how do you do something that’s new? And what we’re seeing right here was the very first pilot that Elsinore Valley did, as they found a way to fund a small pilot.

And they said, let’s just give it a try. I. I would just encourage all of you. As the world rolls forward, more and more new stuff is coming faster and faster in order to implement it. We start small, we make assessments, we pivot if we need to, or we persevere and continue down the line.

And what you’re going to see here is Buddha continues with the presentation as their model of implementation. So not only are we looking at the technology for technology’s sake, you’re also seeing how to pivot into something that’s new and foreign and has potential, but you don’t quite know. So there’s a lot of risk to it. So I just want to commend this team for doing that. And I think that’s why he won this great award last week.

One of the reasons, among others, is because we can’t be afraid to implement something new, but we have to know how to do it. And it’s typically pilot small, make assessments and continue on. I just wanted to make that statement.

Jesus Barron: 14:42

All right. One of the things that I want to say is, and add to that is you have to have buy-in from your upper management, right? Which we did. They completely supported it. And as well as you want to make sure you spend your monies as an agency, they are taxpayers, right?

That’s how you get funded. So you want to make sure you put your money correctly and, and address issues within your system. Right. And so that was one of our key reasons why we wanted to try this, to see how it was going to work in our system. All right.

So now, as I stated, we liked what we’ve seen. So we went into phase two. Phase two, we actually, we scanned 100 rentals from the list, 40% of those mantles that we scanned also needed some, some assistance with them. Right. So if you actually see here, there’s actually a neat dashboard.

This is part of it right here. And all the mantles that were scanned and then they’re color coded. So the red ones are really severe and based here. So of the mantles that were scanned within this area that we gave RH Borden in to do 48% needed a review. Right.

And we knew that in a sense. But we wanted to make sure, we wanted to see what their technology could do for us, how it would be beneficial to us as an agency. One of the other things that we actually asked for was we requested for them to insert the diameters for us. So that was upon our request. That was something that my superintendent wanted and they were able to achieve that.

And so what you said, it’s pretty precise.

Jon Borden: 16:15

So having a digital twin opens up a lot of new doors as Buddha is showing right here. Not only do you have the video, you’ve got the point cloud for interpretation, but now we’re doing dimensional analysis. Now what this leads into which we won’t have the chance to talk in this session. But who is here just in the prior session with smart cover by raising of hand Smart cover was talking about this, this technique of discovering I and I using Manning’s formula. Well, in order to get Manning’s formula to work, you need the dimensions.

How do you get the dimensions inside of a manhole right here? So when we start to couple up technologies, these digital twins start to play off of each other. And it makes this huge opportunity for us to develop not only manhole degradation assessment, but also Eni. So this is complementary to that whole trend of data harvesting in the collection system.

Jesus Barron: 17:11

So one of the things that I want to point out is you can see on the left hand side right now this video is playing. You can see what it was visually, it doesn’t look that great. However, the video on the right didn’t score bad. Correct. But visually, if you look at it, it’s like, this needs to get fixed, right?

But it still has wall thickness. So the wall score was actually good on that one. So right now we actually have a program that is now working as an engineer. So we have engineering behind us backing us. And so they budget so much money a year.

Right. And we started on the North End in a community called the Horsethief Canyon area south of Corona off the 15 freeway and we. We scanned 377 manholes this last month. Our boarding team came out and they were here for roughly less than two weeks. They were able to do that.

And then they give us a deliverable. They let us know when it’s available on the internet and on their platform. And then we can go back. And then my superintendent and I will look at them based on the colors, like I showed you earlier, that you know, which ones were really bad. And then we could start building the list off of that.

So now we can focus our money on mammals that truly need to be rehabbed or replaced.

Jon Borden: 18:32

I wanted to just build on that, what Buddha was talking about, that the field work and the data analytics were done as a service. This is, as you can tell, it’s not a simple or an exercise to take point. Clouds beam them to the cloud and then run wall analysis on them. That’s the specialty that we can deliver as a service. But what needs to happen is digesting that and taking action.

So as we look at our industry and the staffing status of the industry, the staffing is under pressure. I think the statistic is that in the next five years, 20% or more of the staffing is going to be retiring? Well, think of all the knowledge that’s going to go away with that and the pressure it’s going to put on everyone who’s left. So our ability to team up together is going to, I think, be very important in successfully managing these systems. So again, the way that Elsinore Valley did that is they leveraged the field work and outsourced, but then they are managing actively, very actively the data.

And that data is what really has the gem and the value inside of it.

Jesus Barron: 19:40

Okay. This is like I was talking about, this is our Horsethief Canyon community that we just scanned, right? It was 373. Excuse me. It was.

We scanned that of those manholes, 96 received a good score. So now we have that data. That data is stored there. They’re all green. And that’s not just green because manholes are identified as that.

For us it’s green because they have a good score. Right. So they’re all good. There’s a couple that are yellow but nothing in red, which is a good thing. And we’ll come back in a couple years and redo this whole area.

It’ll get done. And then you can compare the data from when we did it this year to whenever we decided to do it in that year, and see how much degradation has happened within the manholes and how, how active we have areas with H2S that are attacking the manholes and be able to address, but not just the manhole itself, but see where that why are we getting H2S concentrations in a certain area? Right. Because you might see that it’s close to a park. Why is it somebody dumping stuff in the park or in the track homes so you can take your data and as well as be able to try to find out what, what other issues are you’re finding out within your system, not just what the manholes do in itself.

So like I said, it creates that baseline for you guys or for us, you know, so we can go back and say, hey, for a couple of years we weren’t having this issue. This manhole was really good. What’s happened is that it’s rated lower now.

Jon Borden: 21:14

So I was at the dentist the other day. You’re wondering what this has to do with manholes, right? Did you know that dentists are now doing this? I have a crown right here. Sorry, I do, it’s a little admittance. I have a crown.

It has to be redone. And the dentist said, well, that’s no problem. We can have you in. And before we pull out, we’re just going to run a scan of your tooth and then we will recreate another tooth using that. Oh, and that scan is called a point cloud.

I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. This is very cool. So this is actually very similar to what’s going on in dentistry today. What are dentists looking for? Cavities.

What are we looking for in manholes? Cavities. And not only are they looking for cavities today, they want to put things on a watch list and they want to watch it over time. So essentially this is one giant dental exam for our manholes. And we can take an inventory and we can watch the cavities.

And we can see how that progresses over time. So when you think manholes now maybe dentistry would be in your future.

Jesus Barron: 22:11

Okay. So again, like I’ve stated, Elsinore has started this program and we’re going to get through all we have, I think it’s set roughly about ten years. Hopefully we can get through the whole system, maybe sooner than that. And that’s all based on obviously how much money we can get. So our engineering department right now is actively working with us.

They’re amazing. They’ll budget the money and then based on whatever monies they’re able to secure for us, then they’ll let us know how many mammals we’re able to scan based on pricing. So that is our future right now. So Excited because we want to see what we can, where we can start repairing our system or, and or replacing manholes so that we don’t have that failure and they can last another 50 to 100 years. You know, that’s one of the things we do have in the downtown Lake Elsinore area, which is we still have brick manholes, flat bottoms in that area.

Right. And so, and it’s lasted for a while, but it’s, it’s bad now. So it’s time for us to start going through. And right now they are actively replacing sewer lines in that area. Because back then there was, we didn’t have the standard of eight inch sewer.

Right. And so we’re replacing all the four six inches that we do have in that general area. For us now it’s we’re getting removing the smaller lines.

Jon Borden: 23:29

Okay, my turn for a candy bar, not to eat, but to give.

Jesus Barron: 23:32

He has a cavity already.

Jon Borden: 23:34

That’s right. Sweet tooth. What percentage of the manholes in the pilot needed review. 5050. Right there in the back during phase two.

What percentage is needed? 48. Who said 48? Okay. Right there there’s the 48.

What percentage in phase three were good. Oh, man. It was candy for everybody. Nice job.

Jesus Barron: 24:05

Right there. Right here in the front. He. I heard him yell it out.

Jon Borden: 24:08

So what is this telling us? It’s telling us that we are in this positive spiral. Data does this for us. When it’s properly presented and you take proper action, it actually becomes a positive spiral. You’re able to attack the worst ones first with data, and then the next iteration gets better and the next iteration gets better and better and better.

Every time data is properly implemented, you get what’s called orders of magnitude improvements. And it’s because we’re properly using data. This is a great case study of how we can use data to get those big gains. There are other technologies out there that can help us do that. It’s in the digital world that we get those big, big gains.

So I just wanted to call that out.

Jesus Barron: 24:53

Okay. I would like to open it up for questions. We got a little done, a little early, but it’s okay. We can have open discussion even if you guys have any questions for me, for Jon, I’ll be more than happy to answer those for you guys. What is the point cloud detecting for the classification?

Is it the difference between the ID of the manhole from a certain amount? Or what is what?

Jon Borden: 25:18

Great question. So what we’re doing is, the laser an individual laser point will go and it’ll bounce off the wall and come back. So you’ll know exactly the distance of that one laser. We then take that and compare it to a reference. So in a precast manhole we’re comparing it to 48in.

That’s the typical barrel of that. If it’s off, if it’s degraded, it’ll turn red. If it is sloughing, it’ll turn blue, meaning it’ll come towards the inside. So if you want, go to scan a lined manhole. Typically you have some thickness and it really the whole thing turns blue, but it is going against that reference, that initial reference.

Now that’s on the very first scan. The next time we scan. So Buddha mentioned that we’re going to come back in a couple years and check again. You can use the prior point cloud as the reference and just check your current to the prior. At that point, you’re checking not only the barrel, but you’re checking the cone and the trough and everything.

And that’s where anyway, it is checking a reference. Great question.

Jesus Barron: 26:17

So with that, are you projecting forward then via your asset management plan.

Jon Borden: 26:23

Absolutely. This is now predictive for sure. We are able to get a new term called degradation velocity. It’s the speed at which things are degrading.

Jesus Barron: 26:34

So two questions. Can you get inverts and measurements on that when you’re doing it? Absolutely. That’s big for us. Right.

Especially during new construction. And secondly, are you guys using MCP or how are you guys coding?

Jon Borden: 26:47

That’s a great question. I don’t know. Was that a similar question that you had, gentlemen? So MCP. First question.

How many here are certified with not only CP and CP but MCP as well? Okay, so I’ve been through the class. This is not MCP. We can use the video to generate an MCRP report. Sure.

I and there’s others that can ingest that and they can translate that into a PDF report. One of the reasons why we do this slightly differently is the ability to scale and the deliverable. We want to be able to scan thousands of manholes, have them automatically turn red, yellow or green based off of the algorithm, and then take action. So this in a sense, leapfrogs the MACP, although MACP can be generated if it’s necessary. So MACP can certainly be generated.

I think for this methodology it’s not necessary. So some of the smaller municipalities that may not have certified operators, this can be a great tool for them. But for the larger municipalities that require MACP, we can generate that for sure.

Anonymous: 27:52

Just two questions. How long does it take on average to scan one manhole and then are there any plans to maybe LiDAR scan pipe instead of just manhole?

Jon Borden: 28:02

You can see where that’s going, right. Manhole scan takes about 15 minutes. So it’s a very mobile operation. Scanning the pipe is certainly possible. We’re not currently doing it, but you can see where that’s where things are headed when you’re able to do stuff like this.

Yeah.

Anonymous: 28:21

Quick question. When you did the two week pilot program, how long was the turnaround?

Jesus Barron: 28:26

Turnaround? When we got the deliverable, I think it was about a week total from when they got the information, they got it back to us. So like in two weeks, they scanned and gave us the deliverable and we were able to see it. However, we did hold back because they wanted to come down and show us what the Oculus and everything else. So.

So when we actually saw it took a little bit longer, however, they turned around and they got the stuff done to us fairly quick. It was only 20 manholes, right. The other ones, it’s going to take a little longer, but it’s still very quick. You’re looking, you’re still within. Like I said, we just did the 373 manholes in the Horsethief area recently.

We haven’t received the deliverable, but that’s a little bit more. But again, the beauty of it is being able to use their dashboard and you see all that, all that information and all those manholes that are on there. Good question. Do we have any other questions?

Anonymous: 29:22

You get the color coded rating on the walls. When the LiDAR would get into the channel. You see that kind of grays out. Obviously, you don’t have a consistent dimensional reference to give you that color coded rating. Correct.

So is that where you guys lean on the video? And does that play into how you rate the manhole? Can you put a value in the system that helps you rate that manhole? Because the channel is obviously a massive part.

Jon Borden: 29:48

It is for sure. And yes, that is why the video does come in super handy for assessing those. Yeah. So this is a good example on the right hand side. This is the first time we assess it.

We can compare it to a reference of 48in because all of the troughs are custom based on what’s going on in the trough. We can’t score using the algorithm the first time, but the next time we scan it, we can totally do it. Yeah. So it’s assessment one and assessment two. And they’re on after we’ve got the baseline copy, we can always compare it to its prior scan.

Anonymous: 30:20

So my question is kind of going to piggyback. I want you guys to just hear that we’re not assessing the full chimney and we’re not assessing the base. Why are we not assessing the base when that’s the mother lode? Right.

Jon Borden: 30:32

Yeah. So the video captures it on the first scan. The second scan, it’ll do all of it because we need that reference. So the reference for this manhole, we know again that 48in because it’s precast should be the first time reference. But next time we’ll know all the dimensions because we’ll have this as our scan.

And we can compare it to itself next time. So the next time we scan this, we’ll see the entire thing. This is a really good point though too, is, if we look at the behavior of hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen sulfide is heavier than air typically works its way up from the bottom. What we’re seeing is definitely degradation from the bottom up. The first analysis will show us how impacted is that overall manhole.

And if we’re looking at something on the far right, it typically means we’ve got degradation down there on the shelf and in the bench as well. So we are using that as a first time indicator. That kind of indicates the condition of the rest of the manhole. So we are extrapolating the score using the barrel as our scorecard. But it really does tell the condition of the entire manhole when a manhole gets eaten by H2S.

The H2S is not picky. It eats everything. Yeah.

Anonymous: 31:48

It looks like you have a pretty good definition of where the barrels start and stop there. How do you determine when you were scoring this or reading this where one barrel started?

Jon Borden: 31:59

And that’s a good question. So that’s an automated algorithm that does that. It’s looking for the curvature change. So when we start to get curvature at the bottom or curvature at the top, that’s where it stops. This is something again we want to implement at scale.

We’re scanning thousands and thousands of manholes to try and keep the costs really low. And so we have to automate that. And so what it’s doing is it’s climbing up the barrel looking for a change in the diameter. And that’s where it stops. So it goes up as high as it can.

Yeah. I think there’s yes. Thank you. Your hands have been up for quite a while. Have you tested this out? I mean Lake Elsinore is a relatively new area mostly built up, I think probably in the 1990s to present.

So it sounds like almost all of your manholes are precast concrete. Is that right?

Jesus Barron: 32:48

No, actually, Elsinore was built in 19, actually 1800 1896, somewhere around there and downtown. I have an old downtown sewer map that was hand done by the last director of operations. We have it up. It’s all done by hand, and it’s all the manholes and the cleanouts in that downtown area. That was 1906 when they started that. So we have that still in the archives.

Jon Borden: 33:14

Well, have you used this on brick manholes?

Jesus Barron: 33:18

Have we used this on the. We haven’t gone into downtown itself, but it is slated to be videoed. The manholes that we started with a pilot were some of them in downtown that actually scored really bad, but the brick mantels were not part of that. We wanted to target where we had the big trunk line and that’s where a lot of those. This is a major trunk line.

This is a 27 inch trunk line going to our treatment facility. So this was attacked really hard. So we wanted a video or we wanted to get an assessment on those mantles specifically because we knew that when the crews have gone through they keep bringing back a lot of aggregate. Right? So we knew that they were deteriorating.

We knew that they were really bad. So we wanted to make sure we addressed those first. And then now that we’ve started the phases, the ones in downtown will be on the list and will be scanned. But that’s a good question. So although we.

Jon Borden: 34:17

Didn’t scan in Elsinore, we’ve scanned, we’ve scanned, we’ve scanned tens of thousands of these. And many of them are brick. It’s interesting because brick will deteriorate differently than precast. Precast has the sloughing and the degradation problem that we’ve shown up here. Brick will lose a brick.

And so you’ll actually just see a hole sitting right there, or the grout will start to degrade and it will let me and I in. So the signature that the brick gives off is different, although it can certainly indicate we can see the degradation on brick the same as we can with precast. Great question. Yeah, we’ve.

Anonymous: 34:52

Are you guys replacing these manholes? Are you guys lining them when they’re finished? Like what’s the rehab on them?

Jesus Barron: 34:57

So the rehab they are getting lined up. Okay. We are lining the manholes after they get re whether they’re replaced or they’re repaired and then they’re, they’re lined

Anonymous 35:13

The data formatting that that you’re receiving. Can you integrate that with any other program like your CMS or a condition assessment program?

Jon Borden: 35:20

Yeah. So the data is held in ArcGIS fully exchangeable with any other platform. It’s not proprietary. There’s no license costs. It can be all exported in a CSV or in a shapefile and easily imported into any platform.

Yes.

Anonymous: 35:35

And that’s all the data that you get from this?

Jon Borden: 35:38

It’s all the data. The animations that we’re looking at are, are there links and it’s all held on AWS, on Amazon, but those links can be exported anywhere. And as soon as you click the link, it turns on the video. So you can download all the point clouds. That’s all I know.

It’s all available. It’s not proprietary. So yes, it’s fully exchangeable with any platform.

Anonymous: 36:01

Those point cloud files can be very big.

Jon Borden: 36:04

Yes they can.

Anonymous: 36:07

Are you guys only scanning manholes right now or are you doing other structures such as rectangular structures, wet wells, other facilities?

Jon Borden: 36:16

We’ve done everything even up to a digester. And that was fun. So yes, we typically do. We focus on manholes. That’s the primary.

Just because that’s how that’s the majority that are out there. But we do wet wells, we’ve done lift stations and we’ve done digesters. So yeah, we could do it for all of them.

Anonymous: 36:34

How much does the pilot run? Okay. You guys were a 20 man pilot. Obviously not buying the equipment, that kind of stuff, because I’m guessing the equipment’s super expensive. But how much was the pilot?

So if anybody’s interested in doing this, how much would it run us?

Jesus Barron: 36:47

All right. I’m gonna let you. I don’t recall what the pilot cost, but it was. It was. You know, he did it for us.

It was reasonable where our management said, let’s try it. But it was, I don’t want to give you a number because I don’t recall what it cost. I

Jon Borden: 37:17

Come talk to me afterwards. We’ll talk numbers.

Jesus Barron: 37:21

Thank you guys. I appreciate you staying in my presentation. You guys are a lot of fun.

Outro: 37:27

Thanks for listening to the Saving Our Sewers podcast. We’ll be back next time with more insights you can use. Be sure to click and subscribe to get future episodes.