Are you saying you have put in the start date in your Dial Before you Dig request, and have now got all the plans back, but you want to know if you can start the work now, or if you still have to wait till that start date you entered?

Or are you saying something different alltogher?

Thank you for the comment on here.

Yes I did speak to Rod (from CitiPower) and he was brilliant! He completely understood what my concerns were and was able to explain in detail what went wrong and I love that he was getting straight onto it to make sure it didn’t happen again.

Actually I have got to say I love how fast the reaction was and how well you guys have handled the whole situation, it is very impressive.

I think a lot of other utility companies could learn a thing or two from this and from the way you guys have got straight on top of it. I have been in the industry for some time now, and never have I seen anyone act as swiftly and professionally as you ( as in Powercor / Citipower ) have, so a big well done to you all.

However putting that whole Case Study that I used as an example to one side, I still think regarless of how good you guys act or what ever I say on my little website here, I still think that there is too much complacency in the industry at the moment.

I just want contractors to be aware of their work environments more and to make sure that when they do get their Dial Before You Dig Plans that they do check each service off that should be there and if they see anything that doesn’t look right that they raise there voice and just ask the question.

The plans will always just be a guide so there should always be time set aside to do your due diligence to make sure you know where every single building in the area gets their services from and then to make sure you know where everything is that has been shown on the DBYD plans.

But anyway, I’m not going to keep going otherwise I will end up just writing a whole other blog post again just in the comment section 🙂

Yeah I keep saying I should buy a FitBit or something similar so that I can actually see how far we walk each day, even though it is just back and forth, I reckon the kilometers would start to add up. I’ll have to do it and post the results online, I reckon there would be a few people that would be surprised with just how much we do each day.

And thanks for your support mate, much appreciated.

Thank you for watching the video and making the effort to writing a comment, I really appreciate it.

Yes you are 100% correct, the plans come back from the utility companies that are members of Dial Before You Dig, not Dial Before You Dig themselves. When I watched over the video again I actually thought to myself I should have really explained that part a bit better.

But then I thought to myself I really just want to get the video out there so I can start using it. My idea is that everytime someone replies to one of my emails saying “they haven’t got time to wait for Dial Before You Dig plans” I will just send my normal email saying “most of the utility companies now use an automated system to send plans out and generally don’t take that long”, but now I can also add to that line “and here is a link to a video I did recently, actually showing me waiting for plans to come in and showing how long it really did take”

I’m guessing most of the guys that will watch this video would have used DBYD before so hopefully they should understand the part of DBYD being just a referral organisation and not the ones that do the plans.

But it still is a very good point you have raised, so thank you.

I’m thinking I might also do a beginners video for those that haven’t used DBYD before, just going over how to put a request in, what you can expect to get back and what you won’t get back. Something more aimed at the homeowner rather than the construction worker like this one was. When I do I will definitely breakdown this part of it in more details.

Thanks again,

Regards
Ben