Lord Civil

Trevor Lord, of the Christchurch-based firm LORD Civil says his plan could take two years to achieve, but he believes if a start is not made now on achieving change, the cost of continuing under the present “hit and miss” system will escalate further from an already unacceptable level.

“Unfortunately, in many cases it is the ratepayer and the consumer who end up paying the cost of a lack of co-ordinated planning and co-operation between ‘utility’ companies and local and central government agencies that need to lay cables, pipes and other infrastructure,” he says.

The problem lies in contractors digging up streets and roads without being aware of exactly where existing pipes and cable have been laid.
Trevor Lord says hardly a month goes by without media coverage of a serious “excavation mishap” somewhere in the country. Most often these mishaps will cut power or water supplies, and require expensive and time-consuming rectification work that inconveniences the public and the business sector.

“And those are just the incidents that make the pages of the newspaper or on radio bulletins,” he says.
“It has reached a stage where there’s now minimal tolerance for this sort of mishap, but unfortunately there is not an effective system in place to stop the sort of collateral damage that is regularly occurring. A response that will stop these excavation disasters is called for – now.”

Mr Lord is lobbying for a solution in both New Zealand and Australia to what he says is an international problem.
“The USA alone has some 32 million kilometres of underground facilities. In 2000, 19 million excavation notices were recorded in the States. The UK has around 4 million street work events each year.”
He says in this country, the numbers of mistakes that result in severed cables and broken pipes have reached an unacceptable level: “but the answer does not lie in some quick-fix approach.”

He says the problem New Zealand is facing is complicated by the fact that non-metallic underground infrastructure – power cables and water, gas, and drainage pipes – cannot be easily located with any “practical” surface-based technologies. In other words, there is no totally effective locator system to “ping” underground pipes and cable.
Mr Lord says more than 65% of new cable and pipe infrastructure being buried these days is non-metallic. “Most often they are made of plastic. Unfortunately the types of ‘location technologies’ used in the past have assumed that underground pipe and cable infrastructure would mostly be metallic.
In addition, the as-built records for these services – the ‘maps’ that show where pipes have been laid - have never been accurate enough.

“These factors have combined to lift the risk of accidental damage during road excavations. The amount of damage done has now reached a level where there is major collateral damage occurring regularly.
“This has implications for the integrity and long-term viability of underground systems, the health and safety of workers on site, and inconvenience and cost to the assets’ owners, contractors, and stakeholders alike.”
Also, contractors are now facing serious consequences of getting things wrong on the job – including Health and Safety penalties, risk of prosecution and financial problems arising from downtime, contract over-runs and loss of commercial reputation.

Trevor Lord is calling for a new level of “best practice” in managing the positional recording and re-location process for underground pipes and cables. He believes the answer to our on-going problems lies in an industry response through a best practice approach that is not just based on a willingness to “do something” about the problem, but is a carefully planned combination of:

• suitable location and mapping technologies
• better workplace procedures
• detailed engineering design
• comprehensive personnel training
• professional site overseeing, and
• a supporting legislative framework at a local and national level.

Mr Lord has produced a 10 thousand-word paper that covers the extent of the underground locating and mapping problem, details international and national practices and looks at the strengths and weaknesses of existing location technologies - including ground-penetrating radar, and electromagnetic and radio-frequency-based locators.
The paper is primarily intended for experts in the field, but he has also drawn up recommendations for an industry response.
This includes:
an agreed minimum code of practice
defined levels of quality for utility detection
implementing a policy for best practice delivery
having asset owners and stakeholders buy into these measures.

He says current levels of utility location and excavation best practice in Australia and New Zealand are “wide-ranging and largely unregulated”. Recent international efforts to fix similar problems have made major progress, and Mr Lord believes similar moves in this country would be welcomed and encouraged by stakeholders.

He is following a plan that involves direct lobbying of local councils, the Australian Pavement Contractors Association, the National Utilities Location Contractors Association in Australia, major industry contractors on both sides of the Tasman, a submission to the New Zealand Underground Utilities Location Association, and direct lobbying of key Industry asset owners affected by accidental damage to underground infrastructure.

Trevor Lord acknowledges it will not be easy making major change to established practices, but he says it can be done – to the benefit of the whole of New Zealand - if a clear view of the outcome is adopted by everyone involved, and it is implemented in a coordinated, structured way, with proper consultation amongst all parties.


(Copies of Trevor Lord’s paper are available by telephoning him on 03 348 5999).