Telecoms Industry Sees 7 Percent Increase in UK Digging Work

The LSBUD (Line Search Before You Dig) organisation, which provides an online asset search facility to UK civil engineering firms for underground pipes and cables, has published its annual Digging Up Britain 2022 report and revealed that the majority of digging work is still being performed on behalf of the telecoms sector.

The report notes that, during 2021, the number of search enquires that passed through LSBUD’s portal reached 3.4 million, which they say equates to 84% of all digging work (up by 10% on with the previous year). Telecoms has remained the dominant industry in need of detailed underground mapping, amassing a total of 1,204,984 searches (up by 7% on last year) – closely followed by Water on 914,886 enquiries (up 10%).

However, when looking at the total enquiries, the share for telecoms accounted for less than it did in the previous year, with the sector’s overall stake at 44% (down slightly from 45%). This is because other sectors, such as Water, have simply grown at a faster pace.

Interestingly, the continued reliance on LSBUD’s service within the Telecoms sector is attributed, in the report, to both the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit scheme and their complementary plan to have most of the UK capable of connecting to a 5G mobile signal “by 2022“, which is something we’d dispute.

Project Gigabit is still in the early procurement stage and no contracts have even been awarded yet, thus most of the actual engineering surveys and build is still largely the result of separate commercial deployments – mostly in more urban areas, and we don’t expect that to change for a while.

Similarly, virtually every single 5G deployment is currently being driven by commercial interests and not the Government’s incredibly vague and unambitious coverage target, which is incidentally NOT set for 2022, as stated in LSBUD’s report. The official target is instead “to have the majority of the population covered by a 5G signal by 2027,” which both EE and Three UK already claim to have achieved (here).

Richard Broome, MD of LSBUD, said:

“One thing is for certain – safe digging practices are continuing to rise across the length and breadth of the U. More people, ranging from construction workers through to everyday consumers are searching, with record numbers passing through our portal in 2021.

The rise of the UK consumer is a fantastic trend that we are witnessing, with our safe digging messaging reaching far and wide, not just to those that dig as part of their job. We have seen an increase in searches from people at home, whether they are doing some home improvements, building a new shed or replacing a garden fence, it doesn’t matter What matters is they are aware of the dangers, and are searching before putting a spade in the ground. A major win for us and the whole digging community.

As well as good news on the enquiry front, we now have over 100 Members on board, sharing their asset data through the collaborative portal Indeed, at the start of 2022, LSBUD has two thirds of the UK’s utility operators, which includes 90% of gas distribution networks, 92% of electricity distribution networks and 99% of fuel/oil pipeline operators. Sadly, some water companies are still being less proactive about sharing their information, but we have high hopes for 2022.

Couple those numbers with the fact that the portal now houses over 1 million kilometres of the UK’s utility network. It certainly seems like an increasingly aware community of people wanting to keep themselves and others safe, whilst protecting their underground infrastructure, has firmly established itself.”

At this point it’s worth noting that the UK Government is currently developing a new National Underground Asset Register (NUAR), which is a digital map of underground pipes (water etc.) and cables (broadband, power etc.) that could help reduce accidental damage (here and here). But this does rather ignore the fact that alternative platforms, such as LSBUD, already exist to provide a similar facility.