Posted By Martin Clarke Greetings all, My first post after long time lurking ;0) I have recently been made responsible for the above (amoungst other things !) at a local authority borough council. My thoughts are that in previous small civil engineering jobs involving excavation I have dealt with(minor sewer repairs, etc), statutory undertakers undergroung mains records are obtained during the normal planning process (with the exception of emergency works). However, many such nameplates are renewed, re-located, etc during the course of the year. Most are renew's, not new installtions. What are your opinions in obtaining mains records for this type of work given the high volume ? Is it sufficent to CAT scan prior to excavtion. Your comments appreciated.

Posted By Stuart Nagle Martin. Having had similar responsibilities for some years, I can state (lucky perhaps) that no one was ever injured due to a cable strike. The vast majority of the work I undertook was in fact complete replacement of SNP's, mainly due to vehicle accidents or vandalism, and I pioneered outsourcing away from the large national street name plate suppliers, to local SME's. We assisted these with the SNP frame design and they manufactured (welded). We also assisted them in obtaining PC systems and cutters for cutting out vinyl etc as well as using polycarbonate and gavernised steel backing plates. This formed the main construction of the SNP's. We contracted with these SME's for two services, namely SNP's and pedestrian guard rail repair and replacement (we designed the basoics and they manufactured as required) which again was cheaper and more effective than buying in from national supliers. The service, being local, was also response orientated for our 'customers' and so had fast and 'urgent' response levels contracted in. The service worked well. We also in fact trained the chaps to use Cat's, Gennys were not deemed necessary, and insisted that the contractor 'splashed out' and got their own. As far as I can recall, they never encountered a utility cable in anger whilst taking down or erecting any SNP's, but we did see a trend that large signs generally (due to their positioning) had a higher level of service cables being encountered. Often because they were illuminated of course!! I would say that nowadays, as a minimum, the persons must be competent Cat users. I would suggest that pre-planning of works in ultra-urban areas, including obtaining location drawings from the statutory undertakers prior to undertaking works would assist greatly 'if' anything were to occur, and of course help prevent it in the first place. One must also remember that a line on a drawing supplied, when scale is considered, is often 2m wide or more, so carefull hand excavation, as always, should be the order of the day.... which is of course the way most such jobs are performed, and perhaps hence the low incident/accident rate.