Prepared by the Standard Guideline for Investigating and Documenting Existing Utilities Committee of the Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute and the Construction Institute of ASCE Standard Guideline for Investigating and Documenting Existing Utilities , ASCE/UESI/CI 38-22, endeavors to safeguard public welfare by providing guidance on performing utility investigations and documenting results in a standardized fashion. It serves as both a prescriptive standard and a performance standard. As a prescriptive standard, it provides a series of minimum actions necessary to achieve utility quality level documentation. As a performance standard, it describes the professional judgment necessary to determine the appropriate timing, sequencing, location, and scope of a utility investigative effort. The standard presents a credible system for classifying the quality of utility location information that is placed in design plans. It is predicated on the original subsurface utility engineering (SUE) practice that most projects will benefit from the concurrent and integrated use of geophysics, records research, and a utility feature survey as early as possible in project development. ASCE 38-22 replaces the previous standard, CI/ASCE 38-02. This revision adds new information on utility attributes and guidance on collecting and recording depths of utility features and utility segments.

It also includes appendixes on geophysical techniques, academic and organizational studies on costs and benefits of projects that have used utility quality levels, and guidance on the development of three-dimensional utility models, a relatively new practice. This valuable resource will assist subsurface utility engineers, design engineers, and other professionals proficient in engineering, surveying, and geological and geophysical sciences, those who directly oversee and execute utility investigations and develop the resulting documentation, as well as those responsible for management of the risks associated with development and construction that may affect or be affected by existing utilities.