£2.4bn in utility strikes and the live dig radar moving from trial to nationwide rollout

Network Plus is rolling out live dig radar across its UK operations, backing a tool designed to spot buried utilities in real time before excavation turns into a strike, delay or injury.

The expensive part of digging is often the bit you were never meant to hit.

A buried cable, a gas main or a water pipe can turn a routine hole in the carriageway into an evacuation, a repair job and a very long day for everyone nearby. Network Plus now says it is taking RodRadar’s Live Dig Radar nationwide across its UK operations in a move aimed at cutting that risk before the bucket gets there.

In brief:

• Network Plus is launching a nationwide rollout of RodRadar’s Live Dig Radar across its UK operations.
• The system is aimed at reducing underground utility strikes during excavation.
• Network Plus puts the cost of the UK utility strike problem at £2.4bn.

Why the live dig radar rollout matters on street works sites

For highways readers, this is not really a gadget story. It is a street works story. Every hole opened in the road carries the same basic problem: records are imperfect, buried services move over time, and the ground does not care how tidy the drawing looked back in the office. When an excavator finds the truth the hard way, the result can be injury, service loss, traffic delay and another scar in the road that nobody wanted.

That is why the appeal of live dig radar is obvious. Rather than relying only on pre-excavation locating, the system is designed to give real-time detection of underground utilities during digging itself. In plain English, it is meant to help crews see what sits below the surface while the excavation is happening, not just before it starts. That changes the moment of risk. Instead of discovering a buried asset at the point of contact, the aim is to spot it earlier and stop work before steel meets service.

The company described the rollout as “a decisive shift toward eliminating underground utility strikes”, which remain one of the most stubborn safety and cost problems in construction and utilities work. On busy roads, the effect spreads well beyond the work gang. One strike can mean emergency attendance, traffic management changes, supply disruption for homes or businesses and a repair that leaves the carriageway patched again. Drivers mostly notice the cones. The mess underneath is the costlier part.

That matters because street works already carry a public trust problem. People will tolerate disruption more readily when the job is quick, planned and finished properly. They are less forgiving when a routine excavation turns into an extended closure because something below ground was hit. We have seen elsewhere how much of highways work depends on the jobs the public never sees, from inspection and cleansing to overnight preparation and reinstatement. A day with Hull’s road crews shows why 24-hour highways work is mostly the jobs you never see, and buried asset avoidance sits firmly in that category.

RodRadar’s system is branded Live Dig Radar, with the emphasis on live. That distinction matters. Traditional locating methods help build a picture before digging begins. A live system is intended to stay relevant as the excavation develops, which is where real sites usually become less tidy than the method statement. Ground conditions vary. Utility depths vary. Records vary even more. Real-time warning is attractive because buried networks are not polite enough to stay where last year’s drawing suggested.

Network Plus has framed the problem in unusually blunt terms: a £2.4bn utility strike issue across the UK. That number captures why contractors and asset owners keep looking for better ways to manage excavation risk. This is not just about avoiding a broken main. It is about programme certainty, workforce safety, service continuity and the state of the road after emergency repair crews have been through it.

There is a roads angle here that goes beyond utilities. Every avoidable strike reduces the chance of extra reinstatement in the carriageway or footway, and that matters for long-term surface condition. Repeated openings and patches can leave weak points behind, even when completed to standard. Fewer emergency interventions usually means fewer opportunities for a road to come back looking and performing worse than it did before.

The announcement does not set out route-by-route deployment or name individual highways contracts, so the practical test will be how widely and consistently the technology is used once it moves from rollout language to normal site routine. That is always the harder part with any new site system. The interesting question is not whether the kit exists, but whether it becomes ordinary enough that crews trust it, clients specify it and strike reduction shows up in the numbers.

For now, the significance is straightforward. A major utility and infrastructure contractor has decided this problem is expensive enough, dangerous enough and common enough to justify a nationwide deployment of a real-time detection tool. On roads, where one damaged service can jam up a whole corridor and ruin a day for thousands of people, that is a practical decision rather than a flashy one. Which is usually how the useful stuff arrives.