Utility Search and Excavation Records for Groundworks

Utility search and excavation records for groundworks come down to four things done in order: submit a utility search before you price the programme, get a marking-out on the ground (in Sweden a ledningsanvisning, requested free through Ledningskollen.se, allowing at least five working days), hand-dig inside the protected zone either side of every marked line, and photograph the open trench before you backfill. The photographs are the part most firms skip and the only part that matters once a network owner sends a damage claim. A timestamped, located set of pre-backfill images showing the marks, the hand-dug approaches, measured depths and undamaged ducts answers the claim before it is made. Without them you are arguing your memory against their repair invoice.

Why this got harder by 2026

The ground is more crowded than it was five years ago. Fibre pushed shallow ducts down thousands of verges and driveways, some micro-trenched far shallower than older crews expect. District heating expanded through the same streets. EV charge points added low-voltage runs to car parks, kerbsides and domestic driveways, often installed quickly and recorded by nobody. More strikes per metre dug, and a patchier record of what is down there. A drawing showing one cable in a verge is not a promise there is only one. The contractor who assumes the drawing is complete pays. The one with a pre-backfill photo set does not.

What a utility search actually is, and what it is not

In Sweden, Ledningskollen.se is a free national service run by PTS, the post and telecom authority. You draw your dig area on a map, say what you are doing and when, and the service forwards the request to every network owner registered for that area. Each owner answers independently, with one of three things:

• No assets in the area. Keep that reply. It is the cheapest evidence you will ever get.
• Drawings or map extracts. Positional data, usually with a stated tolerance and a validity period.
• We will attend and mark out. Someone sprays or pegs the line on the ground. That is the ledningsanvisning proper.

Two request types matter most. Projektering is for the design and tender stage, when you want to know what is there before you price the work. Ledningsanvisning is for when you are about to dig. They are not interchangeable, and a projektering reply is not a licence to dig.

What it is not is complete. It only reaches owners who have registered. Private assets almost never appear: the client's supply to a garage, garden lighting, an irrigation main, a septic run, an old feed to a barn. Those are the client's to declare. Ask in writing, keep the answer. No assets from every registered owner does not mean the ground is empty.

Lead times: the number that decides your programme

The paperwork is fast. The physical marking is not. Plan backwards from the dig date.

The practical rule: submit the request the day the job is confirmed, not the week you are due on site. It costs nothing and expires harmlessly. Waiting costs you a machine day and a crew.

Reading the drawings on site

Drawings arrive as PDFs with a legend, a scale and a stated tolerance. Read all three before you look at the lines.

• Tolerance is not accuracy. A plan may state the position is good to within a metre or two. That tolerance defines your hand-dig zone. The line on the paper does not.
• Depth is almost never guaranteed. Roads get resurfaced, verges get scraped, and a cable laid at 700 mm in 1988 can sit at 300 mm today. Treat any depth figure as history, not fact.
• Read the legend, not the colour you assume. The common convention puts electricity in red, gas in yellow, water in blue, drainage in green and telecom in orange or white, but conventions vary by owner and by country. The legend on that sheet wins.
• Cross-check against the surface. Warning tape, marker posts, chamber lids, a pillar, a cabinet, a line of settled reinstatement across a verge. If the surface says something the drawing does not, believe the surface.
• Sweep before you cut. Run a cable-avoidance locator over the whole area, in both search modes, before the first spade goes in. A signal from a duct with no drawing behind it is the discovery you want to make with a locator rather than a bucket.

Take the drawing to the trench, not the office wall. The person cutting the ground needs the current sheet, the case number and the marking date in their hand.

Hand-dig zones: the rule that keeps you out of court

Every network owner attaches conditions to a marking, and hand-digging is the one that is always there. The width varies: commonly no mechanical excavation within 0.5 to 1 metre either side of a marked line, wider for high-voltage and transmission assets, wider again where the stated tolerance is poor. Read each owner's terms and follow the strictest one that touches your dig. What that means in practice:

• Spades and shovels. Not picks or bars driven downward. A pick through a low-voltage cable is a very direct way to learn how arc flash works.
• Vacuum excavation is better wherever you can hire it: faster than hand-digging, far safer than a bucket, and it leaves a clean exposed duct that photographs well.
• Expose the asset, confirm it, then work along it. Never machine-dig toward a line, only parallel to it and outside the zone.
• Trench safety is a separate duty. Battering or shoring falls under Arbetsmiljöverket's rules for construction and civil-engineering work, reworked under the new rule structure in force since 1 January 2025. A collapse hurts people in a way a struck duct does not. Deep and narrow is where crews die.

Photograph the trench before backfill

Once you backfill, the evidence is gone and the argument becomes symmetrical: they have a damaged cable and a repair invoice, you have a recollection. Every photo taken before backfill turns that into an asymmetry in your favour. The pre-backfill set, per trench section:

1. The marks, before you dig. A wide shot of the sprayed lines against a fixed reference: kerb, corner, building line. This proves a marking existed and where it ran.
2. The open trench, wide. The whole section from both ends, showing the relationship between the marks and the dig.
3. Every exposed asset, close. Duct, cable, pipe, warning tape, with a tape measure or graduated rod in frame giving depth and offset. One clear shot per asset, undamaged and in focus.
4. The hand-dug approaches. Show the zone was hand-dug. This is the shot that rebuts negligence.
5. Bedding and surround before cover. Sand bed, tape or tiles laid, the asset intact under your work.
6. Anything you found that was not on a drawing. Photograph it, log it, and notify the client and the owner in writing the same day. An unrecorded asset is a liability you can hand back only if you documented it.

Every image needs three properties or it is worth much less: a timestamp nobody typed, a location, and an unbroken link to the job. A folder of photos on a lad's personal phone has none of those reliably, and he leaves in March.

The excavation record that answers the claim before it is made

A damage claim asks three questions in substance. Did you request a marking? Did you follow its conditions? Did you cause the damage? Build a record whose structure answers all three without you reconstructing anything a year later.

• Case number, request date, reply date, marking date, and the date the marking expires.
• Each owner's reply saved as received, including the no-assets ones.
• The drawings actually used on site, with version and date.
• The locator sweep: who swept, when, what was found.
• Who was responsible for the dig that day, and who was on the machine.
• The photo set above, in order, timestamped and located.
• The client's written declaration of private assets, or their statement that there are none.
• Any deviation, and why. Deviations documented at the time read as competence. Discovered later, they read as concealment.

This is a self-inspection protocol, no different in shape from an electrical egenkontroll, which is why it belongs in the same system as the job rather than a shared drive named GROUNDWORKS FINAL v2. In OdinTask you build it once as a protocol template, attach it to every groundworks job, and let the crew fill it on the field app, which works with no signal and queues the photos until there is coverage. When the claim arrives eleven months later, the case number, the marking date and the pre-backfill images are still attached to the job that produced them.

If you hit something anyway

Assume it is live. Stop, move people back, do not touch the cable and do not lean in for a closer look. Call the network owner's emergency number, then the client. Do not backfill and do not tidy. Photograph the strike exactly as it happened, including the marks, the depth and the position relative to them, before anyone repairs anything: the moment the repair crew arrives, the evidence of where that cable actually sat becomes their spoil heap. Report it the same day in writing. A strike you reported honestly with photographs is a cost. A strike you buried is a different category of problem.

Outside Sweden

The workflow transfers, the phone numbers change. In the UK, LSBUD covers many asset owners but not all, so you still contact DNOs and Openreach directly, and HSE's HSG47, Avoiding danger from underground services, is what any investigation will measure you against. New Zealand has beforeUdig, Australia has Before You Dig Australia. In every one of them the same three failures recur: the search was never made, the search was made and its conditions ignored, or the work was done properly and never photographed. The third is the cheapest to fix and it decides who pays.

If your groundworks records live across three phones and a glovebox, fix that before the next claim rather than after it. Start a free trial and build the excavation protocol once.