Most professionals are of the belief that preparation is the best way to avoid cable strikes and the injuries that occur when this happens. While having appropriate protective gear is recommended, to limit the damage of explosions and electrocutions, this isn’t enough.

Before any excavation work even takes place, there should be a diligent cable survey carried out as well as the implementation of important health and safety protocols.

Understanding the Challenges

Like many accidents, it is less the case that people want to intentionally put people’s lives at risk and more than other challenges, distractions or work-based pressures get in the way of people following the rules. One of these is trying to meet tight timelines with minimal resources.

For instance, downward pressure from utility companies, private contractors and even the government in many cases can make it difficult for firms to carry out all the safety checks and assessments they need. Often, corners will be cut and people will rush to complete various stages of the project so that deadlines can be met.

While the responsibility is still on the firm to adhere to safety standards, it’s important that those who are commissioning projects should be aware that unreasonable timelines and undue pressure can put companies in a difficult position.

Most should be confident enough to push back and advise stakeholders and third parties that expectations are unreasonable and safety must be the priority, yet others may just try to get the work done faster. This may be because they fear being dropped as a contractor of choice in the future or losing the current project.

Therefore, everyone involved in the sector should ideally be working towards reducing risk where possible. Efficiency and timeliness is good, but this should never be at the expense of people’s safety.

If utility companies and government bodies are expecting work to be carried out faster, it is imperative that adequate additional resources are invested in the project to ensure that health and safety standards are always met, rather than stretching existing resources more thinly, which is often a cause of accidents occurring.

Accurate Mapping

The issue many workers face when digging for various construction projects is that they’re dealing with unreliable utility maps. For example, many water records originate from drawings that accumulated several errors over the years due to records being changed between physical and digital formats.

Underground pipe networks are incredibly complex and there isn’t just one overarching map that exists, telling people where exactly cables exist and at what depth. Different organisations have access to different maps and some firms have their own internal record-keeping systems.

As this problem is almost impossible to improve, unless the entire country migrates to a universal mapping system that can be updated in real-time, the most important thing we can do is adhere to cable location best practices. This means using the right processes and tools to always locate and record cables on any active site before work commences.

Understanding the Importance of Excavation Safety

One of the best preventive strategies for cable strikes is to remind people of the dangers involved in poor health and safety standards and ineffective cable detection processes.

People working in the sector should be aware that cable strikes and arc flashes are some of the biggest health and safety dangers that those working with or near electricity or gas pipelines can encounter. These utility strikes can occur alarmingly regularly and can result in serious injury or even fatalities.

Tens of thousands of operatives are exposed to risks every day, including electrocution and explosions. This other issue is that damage to cables can be costly and disruptive. Huge sums can be spent fixing the damage caused by cable strikes and excavations that don’t take into consideration the accurate location of underground cables.

Unfortunately, the full extent of the problem is unclear as there is no legal obligation to report strikes, and companies have different in-house reporting structures. Also, there is a suspicion that some firms may even be covering up strikes to avoid the consequences of poor health and safety practices being revealed.

Get Trained

If you or your team are in need of training so you can ensure you are always adhering to industry best practices when it comes to cable avoidance, take a look at our popular CAT & Genny courses! With more people trained in the right way, it becomes less likely for dangerous practices to be followed and for serious accidents to happen.