The Location and Positioning of Buried Pipes and Cables in Built Up Areas

There are currently more than four million kilometres of underground cables and pipes in the UK alone — a combination of water, sewer, gas, electricity and drainage. It is estimated that there are 1.5 million holes dug every year on UK highways and footpaths by utility companies so they can install new services and maintain existing ones. In the UK, many of today’s ‘buried water and sewerage assets ’ were laid during Victorian times (up to 200 years ago) when accurate records of the location and depth of each pipe were not kept. Every time a company digs a hole it runs the risk of hitting one of these pipes, causing disruption to drivers and customers, or a live power cable, which in some cases can prove fatal for workers. Further to this, up until recently, the recording of the utilities’ location was not carried out in an accurate or methodical manner. Locating these underground assets is currently hit and miss — ground probing radar is widely used with some success but is slow and not reliable to the depths required, particularly in the UK’s clay soils, and cannot locate newer plastic pipes