Log on Before You Dig

Australia's Dial Before You Dig campaign has just stepped up a notch; an interactive online service can now provide contractors with information about underground utilities quicker than ever.

In what has been heralded as just one step away from instant online access to information on Australia's underground assets, the Association of Australian Dial Before You Dig Services (AADBYDS) launched its new interactive online enquiry service at Melbourne's Telstra Dome on April 22.

Master of ceremonies for the occasion was Costas Kilias – a barrister who's better known to most as Farouk (Darryl Kerrigan's Lebanese neighbour in the film The Castle ), as Tony the Yugoslav (in The Wog Boy ) and as the “That's equity mate” guy playing table tennis in the Commonwealth Bank ads.

In his latest role, Kilias is the face behind the new Dial Before You Dig campaign, so you'll be seeing a lot more of him in coming months, promoting the AADBYDS's new catch cry: “It's never been easier, mate”. The campaign will be conducted through national advertising including radio, TV and print, together with an SMS and email promotion.

WA origin

At the launch, Kilias reinforced the importance of the states' services, tracing their progress from origins in Western Australian in 1993 to today, where 400,000 enquiries received by the services annually initiate 1.3 million referrals from utilities back to the services' customers.

Aimed at helping contractors, asset owners and individuals undertaking excavation, the new AADBYDS service allows users to electronically nominate and view their proposed worksite online for the first time ever and, within two clear working days, receive information from the underground asset owners. The service is free to users and covers all registered underground gas, water, sewerage, communications and electricity networks laid throughout Australia. The utilities themselves finance the not-for-profit Dial Before You Dig services.

Complements existing service

The online service works on a platform very similar to that which the Dial Before You Dig services themselves currently use to forward customers requests to the various utilities. The only difference now is that the customers can submit their enquiries directly to the utilities, reducing the workload of each state service. The new service is designed to complement the existing 8am to 5pm dial-in and fax services.

Following his introduction Kilias handed over to Peter Wood, the chairman of the AADBYDS. Wood said the new web-enabled service has been introduced to further the association's aim of saving people's time, money and lives.

“Ranging from being simply uninformed to absolute neglect, people and companies can literally cause millions of dollars worth of damage and threaten both lives and livelihoods within seconds through careless excavation practices,” Wood said.

“Imprudent excavation can have devastating effects and can result in the often unknowing perpetrators being liable for thousands through to millions of dollars.

Outside easements

“It is important to realise that cables and pipes can be anywhere – they are laid out at varying depths on both public and private property and can be located both inside and outside of easements, meaning that unsuspecting diggers can very quickly find themselves cutting essential services to their own homes, or in some cases to entire towns and cities,” said Wood.

“Dial Before You Dig can now provide any person or any company that is planning to excavate anywhere in Australia with a free, fast, reliable, 24/7, user-friendly service that allows for well-informed excavation with minimised risk.

“This is a historic day,” Wood said. “Other countries have Dial Before You Dig services, but Australia is the first to centralise its services. We are leading the way and the introduction of online enquiries is another step towards us achieving world's best practice,” he said.

Geoff Thomas, WorkSafe's construction and utilities director then addressed the crowd on behalf of the minister for WorkCover Rob Hulls, outlining the respective roles of WorkSafe and WorkCover and emphasising the importance of the Dial Before You Dig Services to WorkSafe's own aim of making workplaces free of risk, injury and disease.

The online service became publicly available on May 3 and will have a staged release to existing Dial Before You Dig customers through until June 11.

The DIGSAFE project is supported by the Commonwealth through the Information Technology Online (ITOL) Program of the National Office for Information Economy (NOIE), now the ( ).

SEPARATE PANEL:

How the online DBYD service works

1. Login Screen

If you haven't logged on before you will need to register your details and submit them, so your login and password can be emailed back to you.

2. Enquiry Screen

Input the details as prompted, starting with the state and a street address or alternatively a map reference. The system is quite versatile, so a map reference can be in any one of a variety of forms from a street directory reference or state road authority map reference, to the location's latitude and longitude. A map pops up and you can zoom in or out to locate your site accurately. For a suburban street you will also need to enter the name of the nearest cross-street and the site's distance and direction from that side street. The software allows you to measure the necessary distances on the map at the click of a mouse. Specific areas of work can also be defined, rather than merely street addresses. A facility is also provided for the user to add other notes considered relevant to the asset owners.

3. Summary Screen

Summarises the information entered before submission

4. Confirmation Screen

This screen confirms Dial Before You Dig's receipt of your enquiry and gives you an enquiry number for future reference. From this screen you can view the utilities that will be affected by your dig or put through a second enquiry for another dig location.

Within two clear working days you will receive advice from the affected utilities regarding the nature of their assets in the area.