Safe digging
How do you avoid striking underground services when drilling?
Locate, map, then prove - the layered checks that keep crews safe and live services intact before any rig breaks ground.
A service strike is dangerous and expensive, and it is almost always avoidable. The way to prevent one is not a single check but a layered process - records, locate, map, then physically prove the ground before any intrusive work starts. No single method finds everything, so each layer backs up the last. Every hole we drill starts with clearance.
1. Start with the records
Statutory undertakers' plans and site drawings tell you what should be there. They are the starting point, not the answer: records are often incomplete, and unrecorded or abandoned services are common. What they do is tell the survey team where to concentrate.
2. Locate on the ground
Next we find and mark what is actually there. Electromagnetic locating - a CAT and genny - detects metallic services and traceable cables, while ground-penetrating radar (GPR) picks up the non-metallic pipes and ducts that electromagnetic tools miss. Using both together is what makes clearance dependable rather than a best guess.
3. Map it properly, to PAS 128
For anything beyond a spot check, a PAS 128 utility survey records the located services to a recognised quality standard, with a clear drawing of what was found and how confidently it was detected. That gives your designers and site teams a reliable picture rather than a set of spray marks that wash away in the first shower.
4. Prove the position
Where a borehole sits close to a located service, we physically expose it with vacuum excavation - a 100% intrinsically safe way to uncover buried apparatus with no mechanical digging around live services. Proving the position is the layer that turns "should be clear" into "is clear", and our crews carry Chapter 8 barriers and signage to segregate the working area safely.
One contractor, start to finish
We are one of the few ground investigation contractors that can do the locating, the PAS 128 survey, the vacuum excavation and the drilling in-house. That means clearance and intrusive works are joined up and accountable to one team - no gaps between separate suppliers, which is exactly where strikes tend to happen. Tell us about your site and we will make sure the ground is proven before we break it.