Damage to underground services – electricity, telecoms, gas pipes, water, fibre optics, and a lot more – causes a huge amount of problems every year. Just to begin with, on average there are some 600 serious injuries and 12 deaths every year in the UK as a result of operatives striking underground services when carrying out some form of excavation.
That may not seem a considerable amount when you consider that there are an estimated 1.5 million km of underground services and that some 3.5 million to 4 million excavations are carried out every year by utility companies and local authorities in order to maintain them. Nonetheless, it is 600 serious injuries and 12 deaths every year too many. Not only that, the figures for street works only apply to utilities and local authorities who are intentionally digging to maintain the services, let alone all the other contractors who may be digging for many other reasons such as preparing the foundations for construction works.
This is why cable avoidance training is essential for any contractors undertaking groundworks. We have tools such as the CAT and Genny, yet many surveyors do not understand all of their uses, and – more importantly – do not understand that these tools have certain limitations. In other words, they may provide a reading which says there is nothing in the area to be excavated, when in fact there is.
How can that be? You might well ask. If a cable avoidance tool has shown there is nothing there, how can it be wrong?
Here is a simple example – although there can be others. The tool may be limited in how deep it can read. So you may intend to dig down 2 metres, but the tool can only read down to 1 metre. It says there is nothing there, but suppose there is a cable at 1.5 metres depth? Cable avoidance training tells you how to understand these limitations, and how to deal with them.
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