Richard Broome (pictured), managing director at LSBUD (Linesearch BeforeUdig), a leading online asset search facility, discusses the recent Digging Up Britain 2019 report and how safe those working on the UK’s highways are when it comes to excavation.
Moving in the right direction
Unintentionally striking a gas pipeline or electrical cable during excavation work can have a substantial impact on both the person doing the digging and the asset owners.
In Great Britain there are approximately four million excavation projects taking place each year. Of the UK’s 1.5 million kilometres of underground utility infrastructure, more than 800,000 kilometres are currently covered by our collaborative portal, a 23% increase on last year.
The Digging Up Britain 2019 report provides a fascinating insight into the sectors which did the most digging, and the type of projects involved. Of the 2.6 million searches on the LSBUD portal, 360,000 related to highways projects, which was an increase of 18% on the previous year.
Almost four in ten (38%) were for the installation of street furniture, 18% related to road resurfacing, 13% were for linear projects, 3% for gully works and 1% for traffic calming measures. Interestingly, 3% of searches related to road/track construction projects. This was a significant 17% decrease on the previous year but still amounted to 10,715 enquiries relating to road/track construction.
Impact of strikes
How likely is un-checked digging to result in an incident?
According to report, over the last six years, there have been 3,972 injuries, including fatalities, caused by asset strikes. However, note this is only the number reported to the HSE, it does not include incidents that were ignored or unreported.
Furthermore, we’ve noted a significant increase in emergency enquiries going through our system; they increased by 88% over the last year. If these figures are indicative of what is happening nationally, of the four million jobs completed, 216,000 of them were emergency related. This spike in emergency projects is worrying. If an asset isn’t registered with our portal, the firm doing the digging will need to deal with the asset owner directly and that can take up to 28 days.
This time scale does not fit with the idea of an ‘emergency’ – so corners may be cut, and assets struck due to the need for speed. When analysing the data, the Utility Strike Avoidance Group (USAG) found that there is a strong correlation between the severity of an asset strike and the nature of the work carried out. Projects which are classed as ‘emergency’ are twice as likely to have medium or severe incidents than those with planned works do.
On top of the human impact, there are also financial and reputational implications caused by striking an asset. These rapidly escalate when you factor in the indirect costs such as worker ill-health, traffic disruption, impact on the immediate neighbourhood, loss of custom to local businesses and so forth, massively inflating the overall cost of the strike.
In fact our report highlights that the true cost of an asset strike is 29 times the direct cost; for every £1,000 of direct repair cost arising from a utility strike the true cost is £29,000. In the case of fibre optic strikes the true cost has actually been calculated at £81,000 per strike.
Conclusion
No responsible company or contractor working on the UK’s highways wants to run the risk of worker injury or the financial penalties, which can arise from striking underground assets – and our research suggests this message is getting through. However, while we have seen a marked improvement, there is still some way to go. Over a third of excavation work is still not proceeded by a thorough underground asset search, and this needs to change.
Everyone needs to make sure an enquiry takes place before any digging work commences. Searching is free and quick for the user – making it ideal at a time when emergency jobs are on the rise. There’s simply no reason for this best practice not to be followed. That’s why we urge all those involved in any form of highway projects to always conduct a search.
We also encourage the remaining asset owners not on our portal to make their information available through us. There is a safety in numbers – the more information we have, the more people will use it, the safer the UK’s workforce and assets become.
