Sogelink has collaborated with the UK government's National Underground Asset Register (NUAR).

NUAR is a landmark initiative aiming to centralise and standardise access to underground asset data across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Driven by the Geospatial Team in the Government Digital Service (GDS), the NUAR programme seeks to reduce the risks, costs, and delays linked to the estimated four million excavation projects carried out annually in the UK. By creating a unified digital map of buried utilities, NUAR will significantly enhance safety, coordination, and efficiency in underground infrastructure works. It involves collaboration between public and private sector organisations, including a team at AtkinsRealis which delivered the Build phase of NUAR.

The UK government anticipates that £30 of benefits will accrue from every £1 invested in a national approach to digitalising underground asset data. It has forecast that the total monetised benefit of the NUAR programme will be £3.4 billion over 10 years.

Countries like the Netherlands and France have already adopted national strategies to reduce excavation damage through digital coordination. In the Netherlands, the WIBON law enforces the registration of underground infrastructure, supported by the Klic platform, developed by Sogelink, which now handles over 600,000 CBYD requests annually. In France, DICT.fr, also operated by Sogelink, serves as the country’s leading platform for managing regulatory declarations before digging (DICT), helping prevent accidents and improving accountability on worksites.

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These proven models combine centralised legal frameworks with user-friendly digital tools — an approach Sogelink is now bringing to the UK.

Fatima Berral, CEO of Sogelink, stated: "We are honoured to support the NUAR initiative, which echoes the success of the Dutch model. At Sogelink, we believe in scalable, pragmatic innovation — combining legal frameworks, proven technologies, and deep cooperation between public and private stakeholders to make underground construction safer, smarter, and more sustainable."

Over the past few months, Sogelink has worked closely with AtkinsRealis, the British Geological Survey, and key data providers including Cyclomedia, Thames Water, and UK Power Networks to build a London-based demonstrator showcasing how future underground works could be conducted more safely and efficiently.

Using the Aldgate tube station environment as a pilot site, this demonstrator combines:

Utility data structured in MUDDI format (the foundation of NUAR),

Geological and geotechnical insights,

High-quality terrain, street-level and building data,

Sogelink's proven visualisation app for cables and pipes, enriched with augmented reality capabilities, advanced revision workflows, and datasets on contaminated soils.

The project shows how underground works could be designed, planned and executed more efficiently. The result has been a seamless collaboration between office and field teams, with secure, tiered access to a centralised database of underground assets — a practical preview of what NUAR could deliver at scale.