One of the biggest issues that construction workers can suffer from is that of striking underground services in the course of a project. If you are constructing anything much larger than a garden shed which can sit on the ground surface, then it will involve digging in order to install the foundations. If you are a worker who works for a utility, then you have to dig in order to lay pipes and cables or repair or restore old ones or replace them with new. Practically every sort of construction project begins with digging.

The problem with workers striking underground services is that they can cause serious, life-changing injuries, and on occasion can be fatal. Some services are unlikely to cause injury, such as telecoms for instance, but if you strike an electricity cable of 11,000 volts, that can cause severe damage, as can striking a gas pipe.  

Either way, striking any sort of underground utility is going to cause problems for the users of that utility and is going to cost a lot of money to repair. It can also result in penalties for the contractor involved. In fact, according to Richard Broome, Managing Director of Linesearch BeforeUdig, it is calculated that the true cost of striking an underground utility is 29 times the cost of the repair. So, for every direct £1,000 cost of repair, the true cost is £29,000.

Part of the problem with underground services is that they can be just about anywhere. Certainly, you expect them to be present in the high street, and in residential areas, but they can also be present in a park, a field, along a riverbank – just about anywhere. This is not surprising when you consider that there is estimated to be at least 2.5 million kilometres of underground services in the UK.

Furthermore, it is also estimated that there are no fewer than 4 million excavations taking place across Britain every year. In 2017, figures show that only 2.25 million excavations were preceded by a thorough search for cables and pipes before the work began. In other words, 44% of all excavations were carried out without a detailed examination for buried services. That is a pretty shocking figure. No wonder it is estimated that there are some 60,000 utility strikes every year in the UK.

In fact, it should be the case that no spade is ever allowed to touch the ground without a thorough search being done beforehand. If you don’t know what is down there before you dig, how can you possibly know that you are not going to strike anything? You can’t.

Searches Must Be Carried Out With The Utmost Care

Even when you do carry out a search it has to be done with the utmost care. There is a case from 2005 where a subcontractor was making a straightforward connection to a gas pipeline near Spaghetti Junction in a heavily populated area. The subcontractor mistook a 12” multifuel pipeline for a 6” gas pipeline, so when drilling started the contractors were unaware that they were drilling into a pipe with petrol running through it at very high pressure. Fortunately, the pipeline technicians carried out a regular patrol of the pipeline and were able to avert a strike by a matter of millimetres. But if the work had continued for just minutes longer there would have been a disaster on a massive scale.

All of this is why it is essential to conduct a thorough survey of any area where digging is to take place, using the correct tools, and with the specialist training needed to carry out a survey properly. This is what we teach at our utility surveyor training courses at Sygma Solutions.

Our courses are approved by The Survey Association, and also the CITB. They cover in-depth training in the classroom and out on site as well, so that operatives are able to fully understand the use of the CAT and Genny, and the fact that they do have certain limitations.

Our team has over 100 years of combined experience in the use of the tools required to carry out a survey to locate and identify underground utilities.

We are also now providing our utility surveyor training courses online as well as in the classroom, so you can undertake that part of the course from wherever you happen to be.