PROTECTING LIVES, CABLES & PIPES
THE FREE TO USE SAFE DIGGING SERVICE PROVIDING UTILITY ASSET MAPS FOR OVER 3 MILLION SEARCHES EVERY YEARIt’s quick, free and easy to avoid utility assets.
LSBUD IS FOR ANYONE INVOLVED IN
construction, excavation, fencing, ditching, works likely to break ground (of any scale) from a highway scheme to simply replacing a garden fence.
LinesearchbeforeUdig
What is LSBUD?
LSBUD exists to help keep people safe.
With over 50%, and rising, of Great Britain’s utility infrastructure protected by LSBUD, it is firmly established as the national safe digging service.
It helps over 90 asset owners (‘Members’) protect over 900,000km of assets from damage by responding immediately to over 3 million third party ‘User’ enquiries every year. The assets protected include over 900,000km of pipes and cables in the electricity, gas, high pressure fuel, water and telecoms / fibre optic networks.
With over 130,000 registered Users representing utility companies, contractors, councils, landowners and the public, LSBUD connects those that need the information with those that own the assets.
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WHAT?
Need Utility Maps? – LinesearchbeforeUdig (LSBUD) is a free to use online search service that any individual (“User”) can use to check their works against over 90 asset owners’ (“Members”) utility assets. These assets include hundreds of thousands of kilometres of underground and overhead pipelines and cables in the electricity, gas, high pressure fuel/oil, heating, water and fibre optic networks. The service processes over 3 million enquiries per annum- that’s more than one every 10 seconds
WHY?
There are many benefits of using the service, including:
- Keeping you safe by reducing the risk of death & injuries caused by asset strikes.
- Saving you time by receiving multiple responses to a single search
- Avoiding any unexpected costly damages to assets.
- Encouraging best practise for all stakeholders.
- Providing essential communication channels between asset owners and those working near their network.
WHO?
The service is designed to be used by anyone that needs to know where utility assets (pipelines and cables) are in order to work safely. This includes:
- Contractors
- Utilities
- Local Authorities
- Excavators
- Fencing installers
- Private Individuals
- Farmers
- Conveyancers
…and many more.
HOW?
The service can be broken down into three easy steps –
- You provide a few details of your works and submit a free online enquiry
- You receive an instant response showing which of our registered asset owners (“Members”) have assets near your site
- Our registered asset owners send you the plans of their assets relevant for your area, in accordance with their processes.
LSBUD Members
% of utility infrastructure protected in the UK
enquiries every year
kms of assets protected
utility and asset owners
Digging Up Britain 2020 Report
Damage Prevention Campaign
"It has been refreshing to work with LSBUD on this project. I can’t think of another service provider that cares for its Members or the industry as much as LSBUD does. It is always thinking about how it can make safety better, and UKPN is pleased to be a part of that.”
Emily Wood
Cable Damage and Plan Provision Manager at UK Power Networks
"We are delighted with the way that LSBUD has transformed our whole process of managing asset data requests. We now have a faster and more reactive solution that gives utilities, developers and local authorities unrivalled access to our asset data online, whilst at the same time, protecting our intellectual property rights. Most importantly, in making our data more widely available, we are dramatically reducing the likelihood of asset strikes helping everyone to work more safely and efficiently, leaving us more time to do what we do best - managing our network on behalf of our customers."
Mary Horsted
Network Planning and Administration Supervisor
“LSBUD has provided us with a fast, efficient and trouble-free way of distributing our network location data, ensuring that all have access to it. WPD has worked with LSBUD for five years, and we’re immensely pleased with the service provided. LSBUD has massively reduced the number of mapping requests that need to be processed in-house, hugely reducing our workload in this capacity.”
Dave Burnford
Mapping Technical Team Manager at Western Power Distribution
“Our customers now have access to information about our network 24 hours a day, all year around. The portal helps customers with simple enquiries to self-serve, while our experienced team focus more on complex and challenging enquiries like high pressure pipelines. With LSBUD's support we have been able to give more customers better information. 7.5 million people rely on our network everyday and improving the information provided not only improves the customer experience, it also keeps our network safer."
Stephen Davies
Plant Protection Network Officer
Featured Case Study
I
n 2019, UKPN was receiving up to 70,000 enquiries per month through LSBUD, which is a 250 percent increase year on year since it first became a Member.
UKPN had two plan provision departments, both of which were responsible for answering customer requests and printing out plans of UKPN’s underground network. Both teams were large, employing up to seven people at any one time. Due to the sheer number of customer requests, not only was the printing machine one of the most important pieces of technology in the office, but it also was one person’s job to fold the printed plans for their entire shift. However, this way of operating was creating huge backlogs, which meant that the team often had to work on weekends and evenings to supply customers with the information they needed in an appropriate timeframe.
UKPN wanted to move away from this more traditional way of providing asset plans via print. Instead it wanted to respond to each enquiry online, making the process much quicker. The company felt this would improve customer service and reduce the number of asset strikes. For this, UKPN needed a solution which would automatically generate the ‘maps’ customers were requesting, sending results in a matter of minutes.
