Dial Before You Dig website claims 30% of enquiries

Three months after its launch, Dial Before You Dig's interactive online service has switched about one third of its enquiries from the phone-in service on 1100.

“That's a level we thought we wouldn't reach until a year had elapsed. So we've had good success in migrating users,” said Melbourne based DBYD business operations manager Bryan Smith.

Although the DBYD concept started in Perth in 1987, following a coroner's enquiry after a gas main was accidentally cut, Western Australia now has its own system and no website alternative. However Smith hopes to convince sand gropers of the Internet site's benefits.

Queensland is not on board the web platform either at present, although it is due to join in November.

Smith said over all enquiries were up 12% on last year. He explains a substantial part of that increase on 50 seconds of DBYD exposure on channel Seven's TV program Better Homes and Gardens .

The level of participation by utility companies varies from state to state. But a substantial number of private owners of infrastructure have entered their details on the site too.

Smith says one example is Braemar College, Woodend, in the hills 70km north west of Melbourne. Originally the semi-fictional school around which the book and film Picnic at Hanging Rock was based, it has logged a private water supply line and is only charged a fee by DBYD when someone accesses information about that area.

This writer, at Smith's instigation, logged a request on the website on Friday August 13 for information about underground services near his home in Sydney's Paddington. The first plan, of Agility Energy gas lines, arrived in the mail on Tuesday August 17 and others from Telstra and Integral Energy arrived the following day.

Smith said plans should be issued within two working days and in this case they were. Increasingly, he said, plans were issued automatically as PDFs sometimes within two hours.

Further information: www.dialbeforeyoudig.com.au, dial 1100 or Bryan Smith on 03 9466 9890.

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Dial Before You Dig website claims 30% of enquiries

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