Leak Detection - Utility Surveying Guidance

What is Underground Surveying? The process of identification, locating and labelling buried pipes, cables and communications beneath the ground is widely known as line locating. Land survey services are able to detect any underground utility so you can fulfil your project requirements and provide an accurate record of the entire site structure for safe planning and site excavation.

Benefits of utility surveying. There are many welfares which come from the engineering drawings of construction plans such as:

• Increase the safety of the workplace
• Decrease risk of utility damage
• Minimize costs and project delays
• Minimize site and utility damages
• Smart planning and avoiding unnecessary digging
• Location of clear boundary lines

What one should look for in a utility locating contractors ? Most important underground surveyors must be competent and qualified to operate and to carry out the entire risk out of the task required. Essential qualifications and training are certainly required for the position such as Quality ISO 9001, Environmental ISO 4001, WHS ISO 4801, Telstra Optic Fiber Accredited Locators etc. High levels of accreditations are one aspect in order to achieve quality standards. Employees must take further educations and qualifications of utility drawings, moral and contractual awareness, relevant experience for planning and organization of private and public utilities.

Equipment and technicians. Equipment in underground locating is from utmost importance for accurate and timely locating utilities such as metal pipes and optical cables beneath the ground. Consisting of transmitter and receiver the centre notifies whenever it locates something to prevent possible damage with serious consequences or injury during the excavation. The right equipment in capable hands can describe precise depth measurements of the utility being observed. This methodology is developed for accurate tracing of metallic or non-metallic utilities down to an exact depth of round 10m. It must be mentioned that detection depths are affected by the tools used in the process and the accuracy can be improved through calibration. The main drawback is the inability to predict what kind of utility line laid down beneath the surface.

Locating a utility line can give you a hard time as there are so many factors to consider such as soil condition, representation of utilities, corrosion of old pipes and cables. Moreover interpreting the signals which the equipment emits is not an easy task. When you don’t know the exact location, there is always a risk when a gas line can explode or electrical power line can cause fire or electrocution. Depending on the scope of your time and budget, in practice professional survey service is a must to provide precise information of where underground utilities are placed. The possibilities of hazards and environmental issues when working with a successful leak detection contractor are minimal regarding the safe methodology and execution.