The email lands at 6.40pm. A builder needs a locate first thing tomorrow, and attached is a Before You Dig Australia (BYDA) response pack: a dozen PDFs from different asset owners, some with one page of plans, some with twenty pages of conditions. Somebody has to work out what is in the ground, what the locator needs on site, and whether anything stops the job before it starts.
This guide covers what BYDA’s own pages and guides say about enquiries and plans, then gives an order a locating office can read a pack in. It isn’t legal advice. Asset owner instructions and the rules in your state come first.
What the pack is, and what it isn’t
BYDA runs a referral service at no cost. Whoever is planning the work lodges an enquiry online or in the app, finds the site by street address, lot number or coordinates, draws the work area on a map and gives the project details: start and end dates, the type of work, and whether the work is for a utility, a council or a private party.
BYDA then sends an enquiry confirmation email listing the asset owners affected, with their contact details. The plans come from those asset owners, not from BYDA. They often arrive within minutes, but BYDA says to allow up to two business days. If a plan hasn’t arrived by then, contact the asset owner and quote their sequence number.
Plans show that infrastructure is present, not its exact location. BYDA’s Best Practice Guide treats them as Quality Level D, the lowest of the quality levels in Australian Standard AS 5488 (quality levels explained), which is why a locator is on the job at all.
Step 1: the enquiry confirmation
Start with the confirmation, not the plans. It lists every asset owner BYDA notified. Tick each one off against the responses in the pack. A missing response is the easiest gap to miss, and BYDA’s guidance is clear that work shouldn’t go ahead until information from every affected asset owner has arrived. BYDA also suggests keeping a copy of the confirmation on site.
Step 2: the site, the scope and the dates
- Is it the right site? Check the address and the drawn area against the client’s request. BYDA’s responses tell enquirers that a wrong dig site means a new enquiry.
- Is the scope the same? If the work has changed since the enquiry, a new enquiry is needed.
- Are the plans still valid? Each plan carries a validity or expiry date, typically 28 or 30 days from the enquiry date. An expired plan means a new enquiry. For long jobs, BYDA offers auto-renew, which resubmits the enquiry every 28 days for up to six months.
Step 3: read the conditions before the plans
Asset owners send duty of care statements and conditions with their plans, and BYDA asks that everyone on site understands them before work starts. Read these before the drawings. They are where you find:
- No Go Zones and Exclusion Zones around assets such as high-pressure gas and high-voltage power.
- Requests to contact the asset owner before work, or to have them attend.
- The permitted potholing method, where potholing is allowed.
- Pit and manhole access rules. For example, CERTLOC says only Certified Locators registered with a Certified Locating Organisation can access Telstra infrastructure for locating purposes, which matters when Telstra plans are in the pack.
Flag anything that changes the job: a standby, a permit, an exclusion zone, a different crew.
Step 4: the plans, owner by owner
- Legend, scale and north point. BYDA’s guide for asset owners asks them to include these, so find them before reading a single line.
- Service type. Electricity, gas, water, sewer, drainage or communications, and whether a page covers underground or overhead assets.
- What isn’t drawn. BYDA notes that plans generally don’t show the whole domestic connection, only services delivered to the property. Its Best Practice Guide also warns that not every asset owner is a BYDA member, so the pack may not show everything in the ground.
- Stated accuracy. Some owners mark their plans as indicative, at Quality Level D.
Step 5: on site
BYDA’s 5Ps of safe excavation are Plan, Prepare, Pothole, Protect and Proceed. For the locator, Prepare is the main one: compare the plans with clues on site such as pit lids, marker posts and meters, then locate electronically before any potholing. BYDA also reminds crews never to assume pipes and cables run in a straight line or at a set depth.
Where the time goes
Reading a pack properly isn’t slow because of any single step. It is slow because the same details get typed three times: from the client’s email into a job sheet, from the PDFs into notes for the locator, and from the job sheet into the invoice.
How OpsChase reads the pack
With OpsChase’s utility locating software, you forward the client’s request and the BYDA response emails to your job inbox, or drop in the PDFs. OpsChase reads every PDF, lists each asset owner and service type, flags anything that needs a standby or special conditions, and pulls the site address and enquiry details into a draft job with the plans attached. You check it, set the price and confirm. The locator gets the address, contact, scope and every plan on their phone, offline if needed.
OpsChase is independent and isn’t affiliated with Before You Dig Australia. It works with the response packs you already receive, and enquiries are still lodged with BYDA the same way as now.
Where to start
Take tomorrow’s jobs and check each pack against its confirmation and plan expiry dates before anyone leaves the yard. Then see what goes in the report afterwards, look at pricing, or book a demo.