Most cable strikes in Auckland aren’t on big civil sites. They’re a fence post auger on a Saturday, a pool dig in Howick, a trench for garden lighting in Albany. Small jobs, shallow depths — exactly where power lead-ins, fibre and data runs live. This is the checklist we’d want every tradie and homeowner to run before the first hole.
1. Lodge a beforeUdig request (free, takes minutes)
beforeUdig is the national service that asks every registered asset owner — Vector, Chorus, Watercare, Counties Energy and the rest — to send you their plans for your address. It’s free. Do it a few working days ahead, because the plans come from the owners, not instantly. If you book a locate with us, we lodge it for you.
2. Read the plans for what’s missing, not just what’s there
Plans show registered, public-side services. They won’t show the private data cable your electrician ran to the garage in 2015, or the old power feed to a demolished shed, or the neighbour’s irrigation controller wire. WorkSafe’s excavation guidelines are blunt about it: plans may be inaccurate, depth may differ, and there may be unmapped services. Use the plan to know where to look harder.
3. Walk the site with your eyes open
Before any instrument comes out, look for the tells: a meter box or pillar on the boundary, a Chorus pit lid in the berm, a conduit coming out of a wall, a gas regulator, a disturbed strip of lawn or a line of newer asphalt. Every one of those is a service entering or leaving, and the straight line between them is where it probably runs.
4. Get the services physically located and marked
This is the step people skip, and it’s the one that turns a plan into something you can dig beside. A locator traces power, data and fibre with electromagnetic equipment, marks them on the ground, and gives you a signed report you can keep on site. For a residential job it’s usually an hour or two.
What a locate can and can’t do:
| Traceable with an EMF locator | Needs something else |
|---|---|
| Power cables (live or signal-injected) | Gas — asset owner or certified utility locator |
| Data cabling (Cat5e / 6 / 6A) with a tone applied | Water and wastewater — Watercare or a certified plumber/locator |
| Fibre with a tracer wire, pit access, or a signal generator on the far end | Non-metallic pipes with no tracer — ground-penetrating radar |
| Metallic conduits and duct runs | Anything the technician says “could not be traced” — hand-dig only |
5. Pothole before the machine gets close
Marks on the ground give you position; they don’t give you certain depth. WorkSafe’s guidance is to expose services by hand (or vacuum excavation) before mechanical digging approaches them, and to keep mobile plant at least 2 metres from cables unless the service owner has given a documented permit. On a fence line, that means hand-digging the post holes that sit on or next to a marked service, not just “going carefully” with the auger.
6. Keep the plans and the report on site
If you’re a business, this is part of your HSWA 2015 duty and your pre-start pack. If you’re a homeowner, it’s what you hand the contractor who turns up with the digger. Either way, the person operating the machine needs to have seen the marks and the report before they start.
7. Know what you’ll do if you hit something
Stop. Keep everyone away. Assume a struck cable is live. Don’t try to re-bury it. Call the asset owner’s fault line (power and fibre faults are on the owners’ plans you already pulled). If someone has been hurt, call 111 first. Strikes to live services are notifiable events for a business under HSWA, so document what happened.
Book a locate before the fence, pool or trench
Power, data and fibre located and marked, signed PDF report the same day. Residential and commercial, Auckland-wide, same-week booking.
Common questions
Do I need a locate for a single fence post?
If the post sits anywhere near a boundary, a meter box, a pit or a driveway, yes — that’s exactly where lead-ins run. One post in the middle of an open lawn with plans showing nothing nearby is a judgement call; hand-dig it.
How far ahead should I book?
Lodge beforeUdig as soon as you know the dig date. Locates in Auckland metro are usually bookable within the week.
Does the locate come with a guarantee?
The report states what was found, what couldn’t be traced, and the tolerance of the marks. Responsibility for the excavation stays with whoever breaks ground — that’s the industry-standard position and the reason potholing is on this list.
Sources: WorkSafe New Zealand, Excavation Safety — good practice guidelines; beforeUdig NZ. Related: Do you legally have to locate underground services before digging in NZ?