When you are a contractor who engages in any sort of excavation work – even if it is only going down a couple of feet – you need to be aware of the ever-present problem of underground services. They can be literally anywhere. Of course, there are a lot of places where you would expect to find them, such as in any high street or residential street, because they all have telephone cables, electricity cables, sewer pipes, and water pipes running through them, and there may be gas pipes, fibreoptic cables, and more.
It is thought that there are at least a million kilometres of underground services in the UK, and you can also find them in places that you might not expect to, such as out in the country or a remote Scottish island with few inhabitants.
Certainly, today we have equipment such as the CAT and Genny which can make a considerable contribution towards the location of underground services, but despite that, there are some 60,000 cable strikes a year in the UK – about 230 every single working day. The problem is not just the damage to the underground service, although that is bad enough, but the fact that a cable strike can – and often does – cause serious injury, and on occasion proves fatal. There are around 12 fatalities every year from cable strikes, and many more serious and often permanent injuries to workers engaged in excavation work of all sorts.
This is why there are companies that have been set up with the express purpose of training people tasked with the location of underground services. Certainly, you can buy a CAT and a Genny, and they come with a set of instructions. So does a new car. However, neither can prepare you for all of the possibilities that can occur, which is why a professional training course is a must.
Sygma Solutions 