Safety legislation requires that you undertake all reasonable steps to avoid damage to buried assets and to reduce the risk of injury or death. The WorkSafe Guide to undertaking work near underground services states: "Individuals undertaking work must positively locate the underground services. Locating the service is to be undertaken before manual excavation or other permitted methods, for example non-destructive excavation."

You are responsible for the safety of your staff and any damage to buried assets, or damage to property caused by damage to buried assets.

Please see our rates page.

Generally speaking, the equipment Ballarat Locating Services uses can locate buried pipes and cables to within 300mm horizontal accuracy. This is in compliance with Australian Standard 5488.1.

The Australian Standard dictates the colours used for marking buried utilities:

• Orange is for power/electricity.

• Yellow is for gas.

• White is for communications cables such as Telstra, Optus, NBN, etc.

• Blue is for potable (drinkable) water.

• Green is for stormwater.

• Red is for fire services.

• Cream is for sewer.

• Purple is for recycled water.

• Brown is for petroleum-based products.

• Black is for "Intelligent Traffic Systems".

• Pink is used for any unidentified buried assets that may have been detected and for any assets located using ground-penetrating radar.

Yes, we can accommodate this upon request.

Both you (the client) and Ballarat Locating Services have to order our own sets of plans from Before You Dig Australia (formerly "Dial Before You Dig").

You (the client) have certain obligations and responsibilities when working near buried services. These responsibilities are detailed in the various documents that are sent to you by the BYDA system along with relevant plans. You need to make sure you have read them all, understand what each asset owner requires, and adhere to their requirements.

Ballarat Locating Services will also order another set of plans from BYDA. It streamlines the process for everyone and if some of the documents are missing, we can handle it before we arrive on-site. This saves you time and money.

Yes, our work complies with Australian Standard 5488.1:2022 Classification of Subsurface Utility Information (SUI), Part 1: Subsurface Utility Information.

• Ballarat Locating Services is a CertLoc certified locating organisation.

• David Hunter is a CertLoc certified locator.

• David also has the following qualifications:

  • Bachelor of Archaeology, La Trobe University, Melbourne.

  • First Aid trained

  • White card/Construction Induction course

  • Working With Children Check

  • Telstra Accredited Plant Locator, including fibre optic accreditation.

  • RIICCM202E – Identify, locate and protect underground services.

  • David also did a traffic management course back in 2012 and is qualified for traffic management work, although this is not a service he provides directly.

• David also has the following skills acquired from working experience (not formal qualifications):

  • Use of survey equipment for mapping.

  • Ground-penetrating radar expertise, to the level of training people worldwide in the use of GPR.

  • Use of geophysical equipment for the detection of buried archaeology, human graves, geology, and infrastructure.

  • Design, development, and use of geophysical equipment and software.

  • Sale of GPR-SLICE software for processing, visualising, and interpreting ground-penetrating radar data.

Yes, we have insurance policies that comply with the requirements set out by CertLoc, Telstra, Optus, and all other relevant buried asset owners.

Certificates of currency for our insurance policies are available upon request.

Call us at the time of the incident. Do not wait days or weeks so we can visit the site, see the damage done, map where excavations occurred, and complete an incident report.

We will also have a discussion with you regarding any claim for expenses relating to the repair of any damage caused by our mistake.

We are obligated to report the incident to CertLoc and to the buried asset owner (e.g. Telstra, Optus, water authority, etc.).

Please note that - as every project and every site is different - we cannot provide a fixed price quotation. We can only provide our hourly and daily rates.