MEETING THE DEMAND FOR COMPRESSED LEAD-TIMES IN SUBMARINE

CABLE ROUTE SELECTION & SURVEY

Graham S. Evans
Director of International Business Development
C & C – EGS Subsea Geosciences

1. ABSTRACT

Cable route planners and surveyors are under increasing pressures flowed down from cable system
purchasers to meet compressed lead times from system launch, through implementation to system
RFS. This paper addresses some of the responses by planners and surveyors to these demands. In
particular the paper focuses on the following key points:

• Pre-survey planning and route selection processes.

• Advances in route selection and surveying methods.
• Expediting the flow of information to suppliers and installers.
• Providing fast track burial assessment.
• Restrictions and limitations to meeting the demands.

2. INTRODUCTION

Driven largely by the Internet, the submarine telecommunications industry is experiencing explosive
growth in capacity demand. Parallel with this growth, the industry is also undergoing radical changes
in structure from being an industry largely controlled by a relatively small number of state owned
PTTs to an industry in which deregulation has brought about a rapidly increasing number of
competing carriers. Among the new carriers are an aggressive entrepreneurial breed of investors who
are challenging the old conservative order.

The insatiable demand for telecommunications capacity and the rapid pay-back on investments,
coupled with deregulation and the new order entrepreneurs, are factors not only driving the
spectacular pace of advances in submarine telecommunications technology, these factors are fuelling
competition. Competition in the submarine telecommunications industry is not restricted to
 Meeting the Demand for Compressed Lead-Times in Submarine
Cable Route Planning & Survey
Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

competition between carriers for the available traffic, competition can be found in the application of
leading edge technology, competition for routes, and competition for the available manufacturing
capacity. The carriers reaction to competition is to squeeze system suppliers into ever faster response
times. The resultant compression of lead-time between wish list to ready for service, flows through
all system implementation phases such as system planning, the proving and delivery of contracted
technology, the manufacturing process, installation and system commissioning.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of compressed lead times on critical components
of the system planning process. Specifically, the paper addresses the selection of a secure route that
will meet the system design life and life cycle budget, and the route survey which proves the validity
of the selected route, and provides critical information to system installers.

3. REVIEW OF SYSTEM PLANNING PROCESSES

The system planning and route selection processes can have an enormous impact on the life cycle
costs of submarine systems. Short-cutting the procedures in an attempt to save money at this early
stage in the life cycle of the system are not to be recommended without considerable thought to the
potential consequences. In the overall scheme of things, the total cost of the combined planning and
route selection processes account for typically < 1% of the total construction cost for repeatered
systems and within the range 2 – 4% for unrepeatered systems. Within the total cumulative life cycle
cost of the system, these costs infinitesimal amounts. This is illustrated diagrammatically in Figure 1a
and 1b below.

100 1

Installation
Desk
Warranty Study
Cost %

Cost %

Period
Preliminary
System Design Route
Supply Maintenance Survey

0 0

Survey Time Time

Fig 1a Fig1b
Typical Cumulative Cost Relationship, Whole Life versus System Planning Phase

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 Meeting the Demand for Compressed Lead-Times in Submarine
Cable Route Planning & Survey
Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

The Figure 2 below summarises the principal components of the system planning process.

Needs
Assessment

Feasibility
Desk Study Route Survey
Study

Technology
Assessment

The carrier will typically undertake the needs and technology assessment components of the planning
process. While the initial system configuration will be developed at this time, this will be primarily
determined by capacity demand forecasts, the location of centres to be serviced and the capacity of
existing networks.

4. PRE-SURVEY PLANNING & ROUTE SELECTION

Pre-survey planning and route selection processes comprise three main elements:

• Preliminary Planning
• Landing Site Selection
• Desk Study

These issues are discussed in more detail in Evans 1998 [1].

4.1 PRELIMINARY PLANNING

Preliminary planning and route selection should (but does not always) form part of the feasibility
study and conceptual design phase of the planning process. During this phase of route development,
it is important for the design team to identify, assess and evaluate the risks and hazards to which the

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 Meeting the Demand for Compressed Lead-Times in Submarine
Cable Route Planning & Survey
Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

cable system may be exposed during its design life. In this way system planners are able to design a
route either avoiding potential hazardous areas or, where this is not feasible, estimate the costs of
damage prevention engineering. These considerations are particularly important where systems are to
be installed in developing regions where traffic restoration possibilities are restricted and where
system owners may have limited access to maintenance facilities. During the preliminary planning
stage the potential need for exotic installation procedures should be identified and costed together
with the system life cycle maintenance budget.
Preliminary planning procedures will typically include:

• Preliminary examination of available charts and literature pertaining to the landing sites and
possible cable routes between the landing sites.

• Determination of political constraints to cable routing for example international boundaries and
disputed territorial claims.

• Determination of physical constraints to cable routing and installation, for example rock and coral
outcrops, seismic activity, excessive sea bed slopes, sand waves, coastline stability etc.

• Determination of cultural constraints to cable routing and associated risks, for example fishing
activities, offshore mining, hydrocarbon exploration and production, coastal developments,
offshore dumping grounds, marine parks etc.

• Determination of way leaves and rights of way at the landing sites and the availability of land for
terminal station construction.

• Identification of viable cable landing site locations.

4.2 LANDING SITE SELECTION

Landing site selection, which will be typically based on the system structure, should be finalised
during the feasibility study and initial conceptual design phase of the system planning process.
However, technical viability can often only be proven during the Desk Study landing site visits.
Avoidance of the potential requirement for costly re-surveys at landing sites that need to be relocated
following the completion of the route survey should be a prime objective of the system planners. The
key factors in selecting the system landing sites are:

• The availability and establishment of the necessary permits, rights of way and way leaves for the
route approaches, manhole position and terminal station site prior to commencing the route
survey.
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 Meeting the Demand for Compressed Lead-Times in Submarine
Cable Route Planning & Survey
Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

• Technical viability taking account of:

Ø Design life of the system.
Ø Protection and burial requirements
Ø Constraints imposed by cultural activities.
Ø Constraints imposed by other cables sharing the same landing site.
Ø Constraints imposed by the physical environment.

4.3 DESK STUDY

The importance of the desk study cannot be overstated when planning submarine cable systems. Errors
and omissions during the desk study phase of planning can have extremely costly and far-reaching
consequences during the later phases of the project.

The desk study should form a logical more in-depth continuation of the processes performed during the
feasibility and initial conceptual system design phases of the project. The desk study should address the
following key objectives:

• Confirm system feasibility and enable system budgets to be refined.

• Enable preliminary system design and configuration parameters to be confirmed and refined.

• Identify and fully define cultural activities and physical conditions along the preliminary cable route
that may impact system design.

• Identify and fully define political and environmental constraints that may impact system design.

• Enable the route survey scope and procedures to be correctly defined.

The role of the desk study in the route selection process is to examine existing literature and information
held both in the public domain or, where available, other less accessible data bases. In developing
regions such information may be sparse, however it is important to obtain all the information available.

Close attention to system security and survivability potential is fundamental to the route planning and
selection process performed at the desk study phase. Key areas of study during the desk study are the
evaluation of physical conditions prevailing along the provisional route developed during the feasibility
and conceptual design phase, and cultural activities along and close to the selected route which have
been shown to be a far greater cause of cable system outages than the impact of the physical
environment. A primary function of the desk study is therefore to identify and notify all other
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 Meeting the Demand for Compressed Lead-Times in Submarine
Cable Route Planning & Survey
Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

potentially conflicting seabed users of the intention to install a cable across the seabed where they may
have an interest. In some cases it will be necessary to negotiate a mutually acceptable route. This
negotiation process must be concluded prior to the commencement of survey operations.

Typically, the most common routing conflicts occur with offshore hydrocarbon developments or with
seabed mining operations. In developing regions, such operations may be absent, in the early stages of
development or be playing an important role in the economic development of the region. Other likely
routing conflicts may occur due to coastal fishing activities, marine conservation areas and coastal
tourism developments. As submarine cables typically land at and/or link main coastal population
centres, it is important for the desk study to identify routing conflicts due to existing or planned future
coastal construction projects for example ports and harbours, coastal power stations and chemical plants.

During the desk study a clear understanding must be gained of political issues that can impact on cable
route planning and selection, installation, and long term maintenance of the system. Such issues include
permitting which can seriously impact system implementation programs, international boundary
crossings and territorial claims of both landing and non-landing parties.

Visits to all the landing sites should form an important integral part of the desk study task. The site
visits should be used to test the technical viability of the site and should be used to gather information
from local government offices and other relevant authorities administering the regions in which the
landing sites are located.

A major and time consuming problem when planning new cable systems has been found to be the
difficulty in obtaining accurate as-laid position lists of existing cables, repeater locations and histories
of previous faults. This information is critical when developing new submarine cable routes in order
that normally expected separation, crossing angle and minimum crossing distances from repeater
criteria are met.

These difficulties often result from critical data being held in disparate sources, for example the data
for a particular cable may be partially held by each of the landing parties, by the installation
contractor(s), and/or by the maintenance organisation(s). Thus when selecting new cable routes on an
increasingly crowed sea bed where no apparent thought was given to the potential needs for future
cables occupying similar routes, much time can be lost researching this information.

Typical problems encountered researching existing cable and repeater positions include:

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 Meeting the Demand for Compressed Lead-Times in Submarine
Cable Route Planning & Survey
Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

• Poorly quality controlled databases resulting in numerous errors in the data sets.

• Varying RPL formats.

• Incomplete RPLs

• Geodetic system not recorded.

• Slow response times from custodians of the data.

• Lack of co-operation from the custodians of the data.

• Out of date fault histories and maintenance records.

It has therefore become increasingly obvious that the submarine telecommunications community need
to take action and develop standardised procedures that will enable a world-wide database to be
constructed of all existing in service and out of service cables, repeaters, fault histories and
maintenance records. This database needs to of an internationally agreed format and should provide
for easy and reliable maintenance of the data. All existing data should be updated with the standard
format and geodesy.

It should be apparent from the above, that the output from the desk study forms an indispensable
component of the overall process of route planning and selection. The output from the desk study will
include:

• All the information gathered during the desk study.

• The provisional cable route in the form of a physical description, RPLs and SLDs that have been
developed during the initial conceptual system design and desk study phases of system planning.

• A series of system planning charts depicting the route showing all route alter course points and
landing site details.

• Definition of provisional cable quantities, and cable engineering including provisional cable
armouring schemes.

• Full detailed descriptions of the system landing sites.

• Full details of route permitting issues and procedures including the status of routing negotiations.

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Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

• Definition of detailed route survey procedures and scope of work, based on the most appropriate
technical approach that addresses the prevailing physical conditions of the route, and the cable
protection and installation strategies.

5. ROUTE SURVEY

Following the desk study phase of the planning process, the route survey will form the last phase of
route selection and planning.

5.1 SURVEY OBJECTIVES

The primary objectives of the route survey may be defined as:

• Providing all the necessary information required to confirm or amend the preliminary cable route
developed during the initial conceptual system design and desk study phases of the system
planning process.

• Defining and fully documenting a final, safe route that is technically and economically viable.

• Enabling final cable engineering and protection parameters to be defined and final cable quantities
to be calculated.

• Providing the system installer with all the data required to finalise installation procedures.

• Enabling potential residual post installation hazards to be identified that could impact on the
system’s long term survivability and maintenance life cycle costs.

5.2 SURVEY SCOPE OF WORK

The degree to which the route survey can successfully achieve it’s primary objectives will be
considerably influenced by the survey specifications and scope of work included with the survey request
for quotation. An additional factor influencing the outcome of the survey is the time of year the
fieldwork is performed which should coincide with the most favourable weather season.

The high capacities of advanced fibre optic submarine telecommunications cable systems, and the
statistical fact that more than 70% of submarine cable outages are due to damage inflicted by third
parties, system owners are strongly focused on cable protection and system security to insure their
investments and revenue earning potential. Effective cable protection is of particular importance in
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Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

developing regions where traffic restoration possibilities and lack of access to maintenance facilities
may be restricted.

Cable burial is generally the preferred method of cable protection across the continental shelf sections of
submarine cable systems. To facilitate effective operational planning of the installation and to
circumvent some of the potential installation problems associated with cable burial, the installer requires
detailed knowledge of the soils profile to the full depth of burial along the cable route. The installer will
also rely on the detailed documentation sea bed obstructions and hazards whether these are natural or
man made features.

Field investigation procedures and scope of work should be properly defined on the basis of information
gathered during the desk study. The scope of work should fully address the predicted conditions along
the route and the requirements of the installer to be provided with all the information needed to achieve
the installation requirements.

The most fundamental data components of a cable route investigation are:

• Bathymetry
• Seabed imagery
• High resolution seismic reflection profiling
• Seabed soils data
• Submarine geology
• Electronic burial and plough assessment
• Oceanography

To meet the demands being imposed on system planners and supporting service providers to the ever
increasing demand to reduce lead times from the launch of a new submarine cable through planning,
installation to cut over, requires each of the planning and survey phase components to be examined for
ways to expedite the various processes.

6. ADVANCES IN ROUTE SELECTION & SURVEYING

6.1 ROUTE SELECTION

Accessibility to global public and private domain data bases available on the Internet or other electronic
media, residing with national and international institutions, and government agencies, has contributed to
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C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

speeding up the preliminary planning process. These data sets provide the system planners with useful
tools to quickly gather and consolidate a wide range of information that has traditionally required time
consuming research from a range of disparate sources, and, provides for higher level planning at the
preliminary route selection stage.

Information is available on many of the political, cultural and physical parameters impacting route
planning. Although access to these data contributes to accelerating the processes of route planning in
general, it is the large transoceanic and interregional systems where the greatest potential for
compressing planning lead time has been realised. The range of data available includes:

• Ocean basin geology and tectonics.

• Sea bed and ocean floor sediment distribution and thickness
• Physical and chemical oceanography
• Territorial delimitations
• Shipping activity
• Fishing activities
• Bathymetry

While the benefits of ease of access to these data sets flows through the preliminary phases of planning
and route selection to the desk study, there remain a number of key desk study activities requiring
traditional ‘hands on’ pro-active inputs from the system planning team before the pre-survey provisional
route can be finalised. The predominant bottle necks requiring a focussed hands on approach before the
pre-survey route can be finalised may be summarised as follows:

Existing Cables

As discussed in Section 4.3 above, until the submarine telecommunications community take action to
develop an internationally agreed world-wide database of all existing in service and out of service
cables, repeaters, fault histories and maintenance records, the determination of the positions of cables
to be crossed, will continue to delay the route selection process.

Way Leaves, Permissions and Consents

While the finalisation of way-leaves, permissions and consents pertaining to the emplacement of the
planned submarine cable may not delay the surveying of the selected route, failure to conclude these
issues may result in post survey route changes. Route changes imposed post survey will result in

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 Meeting the Demand for Compressed Lead-Times in Submarine
Cable Route Planning & Survey
Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

costly re-surveys and/or delays to the installation program. The often complex issues associated with
the permitting processes, particularly in developing countries, necessitate that these processes are
commences at a very early stage in route planning.

Route Conflict Negotiations

As discussed in Section 4.3 above, an important function in the route planning and selection process is
to identify potential route conflicts with other sea bed users. All conflicts identified must be resolved
prior to the commencement of the route survey. The resolution of such conflicts may require
adjustments to an otherwise optimum route, or alternatively, a compromise may need to be negotiated
between the parties. Whichever solution is adopted, this needs to be fully finalised prior to the
commencement of the route survey to avoid the need for post survey re-routing.

6.2 ROUTE SURVEY

Advances in route survey practices have centred around the increasing acceptance of swath mapping
and imagery techniques as being the industry benchmark. Swath mapping and imagery technology
provides an efficient means of acquiring high resolution high density data that yields a more accurate
representation of the seabed topography within the survey corridor. Swath methods also enable
routing decisions to be made in near real-time when adverse bathymetric terrain is encountered.
With cable burial being the preferred method for cable protection and the increasing requirement to
bury cables to greater water depths, technologies have been developed to enable sub seabed soils data
to be collected and characterised.

Conventional burial assessment surveys employing variously instrumented scaled down towed
ploughs or grapnels have traditionally been carried out after the completion of the electronic route
survey. Due to the high cost of these operations and now more importantly the compressed system
implementation time scales, alternative burial assessment techniques employing electronic burial
assessment (E-BAS) systems, mini CPT systems and hybrid systems employing both electronic and
CPT technology are now in increasing use. The use of these systems allow simultaneous burial
assessment and route engineering to be performed concurrently with the route survey operations.

The use of these advanced systems has been supported by concurrent developments in on-board data
acquisition, processing and management systems. It is in the handling and processing of data together
with the ability of the purchaser and/or supplier to agree the final route and system engineering, that

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 Meeting the Demand for Compressed Lead-Times in Submarine
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Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

offers the greatest opportunities to compress the overall time required from commencement of survey
operations to the delivery of the final system RPLs and SLDs.

Advances in on-board data acquisition, processing and management systems provide for the integration
of multi-parameter data sets by an interdisciplinary survey team throughout the entire data acquisition
phase of the survey. These procedures are needed to develop a full understanding of the along-route
conditions and their impact on cable engineering and installation and provide the capability to make
routing refinements at sea that will satisfy the objectives of system burial, optimum system engineering
and installation.

The development of data compression software and high-speed data transmission facilities aboard the
survey vessel offer the capability of downloading large digital data files directly into computerised route
planning and engineering systems located in the offices of cable suppliers.

7. EXPEDITING DATA FLOW

As discussed in Section 6.2 above, advances in at-sea data acquisition, processing and management
systems offers the greatest opportunity to compress lead times in the overall planning and route
selection process. The need to be able to evaluate survey data in near real time has always been a pre-
requisite of cable route survey scope of work to facilitate identification of areas where route
development is required. In the past, this requirement was satisfied by using partially processed
bathymetric and imagery data. Full data processing and reporting was done post mission in the office.

It is now common practice for survey vessels to carry a fully equipped data processing laboratory ,
and to carry a full multidisciplinary survey team capable of processing, analysing and interpreting the
data near real time. Thus the technology and procedures are in place to minimise the time from the
collection of data, through data processing, analysis and interpretation, to having a final surveyed
route, charts, RPLs and SLDs available for the purchasers and cable factory segment by segment as
the survey proceeds.
While the flow of data from acquisition to delivery to the cable supplier and purchaser can be
expedited, the delivery of a ‘final’ route requires approvals from the system purchaser. For the
traditional ‘club’ cable systems, the route approval process can and often is protracted, conversely, the
new more aggressive entrepreneurial carriers, typically devolve responsibility of final route selection
to the chosen supplier. Whichever system procurement process is being followed, it is the purchaser
approvals which lie firmly entrenched on the critical path of final route selection.

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 Meeting the Demand for Compressed Lead-Times in Submarine
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C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

8. FAST-TRACK BURIAL ASSESSMENT

Traditional plough and burial assessment techniques have involved the towing of scaled down
versions of the installation plough along the cable route as a post electronic route survey mission.
This procedure entails the use of large vessels with sufficient power to provide the bollard pull
necessary to pull the plough share through the seabed soils. Not only is this operation very expensive,
the results are frequently made available too late to influence final system design and cable
engineering.

A number of factors have focused attention towards the use of electronic remote sensing data
collected during the route survey, and in the application of new generation direct testing techniques
that can be cost effectively integrated into the route survey operations and used as the primary data
sets for burial and plough assessment.

These factors include:

• The high operating costs of traditional burial and plough assessment tools.

• The fact that the results from traditional plough and burial assessment operations are frequently
provided too late to influence system design and cable engineering.

• The fact that integrated electronic remote sensing and direct testing data provides not only
information on ploughability, this data also provides information necessary for assessing post lay
burial conditions.

The new generation burial assessment technology and procedures meet the demands for reduced lead
times in the overall route selection process by allowing operations to run semi concurrently, with the
route survey operating sufficiently ahead of the BAS to allow analysis of the geophysical data.
While the traditional burial assessment methods are still occasionally used, with the increased demands
being placed on the cable installer to bury cables deeper and over longer sections of the route together
with the pressures imposed by reduced lead times, greater emphasis has been placed on more innovative
and accurate burial assessment methods that will provide reliable data to the maximum required burial
depth. Two methods have been introduced and are now in regular use, lightweight mini cone
penetrometers (Mini CPTs) and electronic burial assessment device (E-BASS).

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C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

Mini Cone Penetrometers

Mini CPT devices have been developed that provide high quality in-situ geotechnical data real time to
depths up to 20m below sea bed. More commonly these devices are configured to operate to 6m. The
cone penetrometer test is ideally suited to investigating the strength of clays and the density of sands and
is now being specified and used widely in cable burial assessment studies. CPT testing involves the
insertion of a metal rod with a conical end piece into the sea bed at a fixed rate. The equipment
monitors the resistance of the sea bed sediments to the passage of the cone tip. Data is typically
displayed directly on the operator’s computer screen and recorded digitally on disc for further
processing.

The advantage of the Mini CPT , is that the system can be operated from most survey size vessels with a
capability of lifting 1.5 tonnes. The systems that are available currently can operate to water depths of
2,000m. For very shallow water, operations can be mounted using a small landing craft or barge,
alternatively, the system can be mounted on skids to enable testing to be carried out up to and on the
beach.

The main disadvantages with the Mini CPT are that it only provides data at the location of the
measurement. Assessment of burial conditions between measurement locations needs to be inferred
from the interpretation of geophysical data. Unless a piezocone rod is fitted, the Mini CPT does not
provide porosity data. The system has to be recovered aboard the survey vessel after each measurement,
production rates can therefore be substantially reduced in deep water where deployment and recovery
times are long this problem is exacerbated when sea states exceed 2-3.

Electronic Burial Assessment and Survey Systems (E-BASS)

Integrated electronic burial assessment and survey systems have been developed by the cable and survey
industries. The principal objective of these new E-BAS systems is to provide a reliable and cost
effective alternative to conventional BAS equipment.
Conceptually, E-BAS systems can either form part of the equipment suite carried during the electronic
route survey, or be operated from a separate vessel running slightly behind the route survey vessel. The
systems are much lighter than the conventional BAS or PAS tools and require much less bollard pull to
tow them. Data output from E-BAS systems supplement the geophysical data normally collected during
the route survey as described in the earlier sections of this paper, whilst at the same time provide high
quality ground truthing by having the capability to obtain direct measurements of critical geotechnical
parameters.

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Graham S. Evans
C&C-EGS Subsea Geoscinces

E-BAS systems will be selectively used along cable routes, with the sections of routes to be assessed
being selected on the basis of preliminary seismic data interpretation. The key advantages of E-BAS
systems is the integration of multi-parameter sensors in a single sea bed towed ROV type vehicle. In
this way a continuous along track record of burial and plough assessment can be made, compared to
conventional coring devices where information is obtained only at the core locations.

One operational E-BAS system the Cable & Wireless Global Marine C-BASS (Cable Burial
Assessment Survey System). This system is an integrated multi-parameter tool and has completed a
number of burial assessment surveys since being introduced in 1996. The system incorporates a sea bed
towed ROV fitted with four primary sensor sub-systems comprising a high resolution acoustic
absorption profiler with transceivers operating at three different frequencies, a Mini CPT similar to that
described above, a video camera, and a marine resistivity towed electrode cable which among other data
on soils conditions, provides important information on soil porosity. CPT data is collected at pre
selected locations by stopping the ROV momentarily. Once deployed, the C-BASS does not normally
need to be recovered until route sections being tested are completed.

9. RESTRICTION & LIMITATIONS

The foregoing sections of this paper have shown how the marine survey industry is contributing to
meeting the demand for compressed lead times in cable route selection and survey. There are however
key constraints and limitations that impact the route selection processes which are beyond the control of
system planners and survey contractors, these include:

• Constraints imposed on route selection by a lack of a properly co-ordinated and maintained world-
wide data base on existing cable systems.
• Post survey route changes imposed by unresolved pre-survey permitting and way leave issues.
• Protracted route approval procedures from the system purchasers.

REFERENCES

[1] Evans G. S. 1998 Developing Standardized Procedures for the Planning of Secure Submarine
Telecommunications Systems (ICPC Plenary, Orlando, USA May 1998)

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