Utility Locating
Digging & excavation for construction, installation, and maintenance nowadays is no longer an ordinary task, especially in developed cities. It requires high-level accuracy and care because utility pipes and cables may be lying underneath the ground. If you are engaged in a project that involves digging, the best way to avoid damaging buried utilities is to reach out to a reliable utility locating company. This service is required by law in North America when we have to do any type of excavation for the purpose of construction, installation of new utilities or excavating for repairs, and maintenance of existing utilities. Locating is an integral part of subsurface utility engineering and permitting.
Utility locating is a practice in which an individual or team of trained locating technicians utilize a variety of equipment and tools in order to pin point the location of underground utilities before excavation. The ability to identify buried utilities prevents digging accidents and promotes safer excavation. Proper damage prevention processes and underground utility locating has reduced incidents of damaged utilities to less than 5 damages per 1000 excavations.
The most common method of locating utilities, is through the use of Electromagnetic currents. Locating equipment that generates electromagnetic radio frequency, allows the receiver to detect utilities that contain conductive materials. This is a reliable method for locating underground electric, cable, telephone, water, sewer and propane lines. Once a utility is found, it is then marked with paint so that excavators know that a utility is buried in that exact location.
Before locating, it is important that all geospatial data and maps have been integrated into an accessible digital format. This makes locating easier to manage and more efficient for technicians.
While some utilities can be found easily, some can remain hidden due to a variety of circumstances such as induced signals and unclear depths. These types of buried utilities require a very high level of experience to locate with other methods being used to uncover their precise location. On a daily basis, tens of thousands of locates are taking place which require properly trained administrative and management personnel, along with sophisticated software systems.
