Accidentally striking an underground service when carrying out any form of excavation work can have a huge impact on both the workers doing the digging and the owner of the utility. It is estimated that there are around 4 million excavations of one sort or another carried out every year in Britain, and they result in some 60,000 strikes of cables, gas pipes, telecoms, and so on.

Now striking a telecom cable is unlikely to cause injury to workers, but conversely, striking an electricity cable or gas pipe can result in serious burns, electrocution, and can even be fatal. However, striking any sort of asset is going to cause problems for those who rely on them and use them, and also for the utility owner who is going to have to come out at short notice and repair them.

There can also be an impact on the contractor carrying out the work, as there may be penalties for delays on the contract, and there could also be claims for damages from businesses who have been affected, as they may not be able to carry out any work until the utility has been restored. It can also have an effect on the reputation of the contractor concerned and may lead to a loss of future business.

All of which are sound reasons for carrying out a thorough survey of the area to be excavated before putting a spade in the ground.

The very first thing to do is to obtain any and all plans from utilities in the area regarding the services that they supply and the location of them. Unfortunately, obtaining such STATS cannot be relied on as sacrosanct for a number of different reasons.

The first thing is that records may not have been kept or may have gone missing, so the STATS are simply unobtainable. However, even if they are available, they may not be accurate for a number of reasons. Things may have been wrongly recorded at the outset. For instance, a contractor may have been employed to install a service, say, four feet underground, but could have cut corners and only installed it at two feet. The utility owner believe that it is at a four-foot depth and that is what the records say.

Bear in mind also that records are not kept according to a particular method. Not only that, but over the years they may have been transcribed from a hand drawing to a computerised version and things may have gone awry as they have been transcribed. So, utility records, while useful, cannot be relied upon as the truth, but only ever as a guide.

Linesearch BeforeUDig

One thing that has become more useful over the last four years or so is Linesearch BeforeUDig which is an online portal that more and more local authorities and utility owners are joining. They record their STATS here and this enables contractors to carry out a search for underground services online. However, one has to remember again that the results should not be taken as gospel.

The only way to be as accurate as possible is for operatives to carry out a survey on the ground using the CAT and Genny before undertaking any excavation works. Even then, it has to be remembered that, as good as these pieces of equipment are, they are not infallible, and can have certain limitations depending upon ground conditions and other factors.

At Sygma Solutions, we have a joint experience of over 100 years in the use of the CAT and Genny for underground cable and pipe location. Our classes are designed for the express purpose of teaching operatives everything that we know about underground service location and identification, with a certain emphasis on the limitations of the equipment. Our courses are approved by the CITB, the EUSR, and The Survey Association, and we cover all of the latest manufacturers’ equipment including Radiodetection CAT4 and Genny 4, RD8100, Vivax Vscan and Vloc, and C Scope locators.

Even when you have carried out a full survey of the area to be excavated and identified and traced any underground services, one must always remember to proceed to dig with caution.