An underground service strike can lead to injury or loss of life, while the financial consequences can also be substantial.

To help minimise this risk, the cable avoidance industry has evolved over the years with new technology and processes to improve how underground cables are detected.

Nevertheless, there are hundreds of serious injuries recorded each year as a result of striking cables beneath the ground, and many more that are not included in official records.

A Growing Issue

Underground networks are more dense and complicated than you can imagine. Each year, the government rolls out new infrastructure to bring services to different parts of the UK to support growing communities.

The result is an ever-growing system of underground cables and services that must be navigated for any kind of underground work to take place. For example, water sector workers are readily faced with health and safety dangers from electric and gas pipelines as they work below ground to implement and maintain essential water services.

Without the right knowledge, trained professionals, and industry best practices, these utility strikes – also known as service strikes – can occur regularly, exposing individual workers to risks, including electrocution and explosion.

What’s the Cost?

As well as serious damage to people’s lives, cable strikes also have a financial impact on various parties, including private companies who have been contracted to complete a project.

The issue is costly and disruptive and huge sums can be spent rectifying the damage caused by a cable strike. Repair work of existing services can take months and this will undoubtedly have a knock-on effect for any future projects, such as property development.

Surprisingly, there is no unified data source that can reflect the extent of the problem or its relative cost to the UK government or private businesses. When it comes to injury to individual workers, there is no legal obligation to report an incident to an external party or governing body.

Most cable avoidance professionals, service workers, and construction companies will have their own internal recording systems, but there is arguably a dangerous lack of coordination between independent parties, making it hard to see the whole picture.

What’s Needed?

For those who understand the issues and challenges faced by the industry, it is widely agreed that better preparation, training and awareness is needed across the board. This means implementing safer working practices for all individuals who are involved in underground services and cable avoidance.

We also need a better way to accurately map and verify underground services, by unifying cable locations through the UK within an easily referenced system. This will make it easier to establish the existence of potential problem areas when excavating.

Safe and high-quality cable avoidance relies on active detection, meaning that the process of searching out and detecting known and unknown underground services should become an independent activity, separate from the actual excavation process.

This also means working with only those who are sufficiently trained and knowledgeable about cable avoidance to carry out underground service detection, not just site operatives who have access to CAT and genny tools.

Get Trained!

If you want to inquire about CAT and genny training for yourself or one of your team, get in touch with us at Sygma Solutions for up-to-date, industry-focused and practical training aimed at overcoming the challenges the industry faces and reducing harmful and costly cable avoidance strikes throughout the UK.