Short answer: if you’re a business, yes — the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 puts a duty on you to find out what’s buried before you break ground. If you’re a homeowner digging in your own backyard, the law is less direct, but the cable under your lawn doesn’t care who’s holding the spade. Here’s how it works in Auckland, what “locating” actually involves, and where people get caught out.
What the law actually says
The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) applies to any “person conducting a business or undertaking” — a PCBU. That covers builders, landscapers, fencers, civil crews, pool installers, and the company that hired them. WorkSafe’s Excavation Safety good practice guidelines describe an express duty on the PCBU with management or control of the workplace to take all reasonable steps to obtain underground services information before excavation starts.
In plain English: if you’re being paid to dig, or you’ve engaged someone to dig for you, “we didn’t know it was there” is not a defence. The guidelines go further than just getting plans. They tell you to:
- get the service plans and have the services traced and marked out on site;
- assume all services are live unless the owner confirms in writing that they’re not;
- treat plans as a starting point — “some service plans are not accurate and the actual position and depth may be quite different”;
- pothole (hand-dig or vacuum-excavate) to confirm position and depth before mechanical excavation gets close;
- keep the plans and mark-out records on site.
There’s also a hard number worth knowing. WorkSafe’s minimum approach distance for mobile plant near cables and high-pressure pipelines is 2 metres. Digging closer than that with a machine needs a documented permit or consent from the service owner, held on site.
Homeowners: not a PCBU, still on the hook
If you’re digging footings for your own deck on a Saturday, HSWA mostly isn’t aimed at you. But the asset owners still are. Strike a Vector power cable or a Chorus fibre lead-in and the repair bill goes to whoever caused the damage. Beyond money, a live low-voltage cable through a spade is a serious injury risk. The practical standard — plan, locate, hand-dig — is the same whether or not the Act technically applies.
beforeUdig vs a physical locate — you need both
This is the bit most people get half right. They lodge a beforeUdig request, get a PDF of plans back, and think they’re done.
| beforeUdig plan | On-site locate | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Free national service. Asset owners (Vector, Chorus, Watercare, etc.) send you their records of what they think is in the ground. | A technician on your site with electromagnetic locating equipment, tracing the actual cables and marking them on the ground. |
| What it tells you | Roughly where registered services run, from the owner’s records. | Where the services actually are, including private cables that aren’t on anyone’s plan. |
| What it misses | Private cabling (your own data run to the garage, the neighbour’s old power feed to a shed), services laid off-plan, depth changes where the ground has been reshaped. | Non-metallic pipes with no tracer wire — those need ground-penetrating radar. |
| Cost | Free. | Quoted per job. |
| Output | Plans by email. | Paint or flags on the ground, plus a signed report with photos for your pre-start pack. |
The plan is the paper trail; the locate is the ground truth. WorkSafe’s guidance is explicit that you use “plans, mark-outs, locators and safe digging practices” — all of them, not one.
What a locate actually involves
A proper underground services locate in Auckland follows the same rhythm every time:
- Plans first. The beforeUdig request is lodged (we do this for you) so the technician walks on site already knowing what should be there.
- Sweep. The area is grid-walked with a cable and pipe locator. Where a service can be accessed — a pit, a meter, a far-end termination — a signal generator is clipped on so that specific cable can be traced end to end.
- Mark. Each traced service is marked on the ground with washable paint or flags, and photographed.
- Report. You get a signed PDF: site map, what was found, how, and what couldn’t be traced. The last part matters — a report that says “nothing could be traced in the north-east corner” is telling you to hand-dig there.
- Pothole. Before the digger bucket goes near a marked corridor, somebody exposes the service by hand or vacuum to confirm depth. The locate gets you close; the pothole makes it certain.
Who should book one
- Civil and excavator crews — the signed report goes straight into the pre-start pack.
- Fencers, landscapers, pool and deck builders — post holes and footings are exactly the depth where lead-ins live.
- Stump grinders and arborists — roots and cables share the same ground.
- Anyone running new cabling outside — if we’re trenching fibre or Cat6 to your sleep-out or garage, we locate what’s already there first.
Digging in Auckland this week?
Cabling For U locates underground power, data and fibre, marks the ground, and emails a signed report the same day. Same-week booking, Auckland-wide, no metro travel fee.
Questions people ask
Is beforeUdig the same as a locate?
No. beforeUdig gives you the asset owners’ plans. A locate is someone physically tracing and marking the services on your site. The plans tell you what should be there; the locate tells you what is.
Can you locate water and gas?
We locate power, data and fibre, and metallic conduits. For gas, potable water and wastewater we point you to a certified utility locator or the asset owner, and for non-metallic pipes without a tracer wire you need ground-penetrating radar, which we can refer.
How accurate is it?
On a well-traced service, typically within about 10 cm horizontally. Depth is always an estimate, which is why potholing before mechanical excavation is non-negotiable.
If I get a locate and still hit something, whose fault is it?
The person breaking ground carries the responsibility. A locate report states what was found, what couldn’t be traced, and the tolerance. Dig inside the marked corridor without potholing, or outside the surveyed area, and that’s on the excavator. That’s the industry-standard position, and it’s why the report spells out its limitations.
Sources: WorkSafe New Zealand, Excavation Safety — good practice guidelines (section 5.9, overhead and underground services); beforeUdig NZ. Related: Before you dig in Auckland: the 7-step checklist.