Hey guys, Ben here,
Geelong Cable Locations.
I want to talk to you today about borehole clearing,
locating underground services,
so they can drill boreholes.
So, there's an issue with our industry,
and,
the Geotech industry.
There's two types of locators,
and two types of clients,
or two types of Geotechs when it comes to borehole clearing.
You've got one,
the guys that do everything.
They'll go through, and locate everything in the area,
make sure the site is fully clear,
and then, once it's clear,
they'll mark out where the boreholes go.
That's what I do.
Or there's two.
There's guys that just wave their magic wand over the borehole,
and say, yep,
I can't pick up anything,
go for it, drill,
drill away,
and they're the guys that we need to try and eliminate out of this industry.
We need to try and educate the industry to say,
you cannot do that.
So, I'm sorry
if you're one of those people that have been following me for a while,
and if you're one of those guys that just waves your magic wand,
or if you're a client,
if you're a Geotech guy, or if you're a driller,
and you think you can just
get your locator, and just tell the guy just to clear this site,
just to make sure there's nothing in that borehole.
The boreholes are only there about that round.
Make sure there's nothing there,
and then we can just start drilling.
Let me show you a job site.
So,
just finished out here this afternoon.
They're going to be building a new building through here,
and in the building envelope is where they want to do their boreholes.
They've given me a plan and said they want to,
where they want to roughly do it,
and now I've gone through it and marked
all the underground services in the area that I can pick up,
or everything I can locate in the area.
Once I've marked it all, I've then gone and
put where the boreholes are clear away from everything else.
So, let me show you an example.
So, first off let me explain
for those that don't realise, white is comms,
white is communication.
Red is fire service.
So, whenever you see red paint that's for fire,
orange is for power,
and pink is for unknown.
Now over here we've got,
there's meant to be a water main through here,
and it splits off into two spots over there.
I've found something with radar here.
So because I found it with the radar,
I'm going to, I'm calling it unknown,
but I'm 99%,
I'm pretty confident that's the water,
because it matches,
tees into where the fire service is,
and there's other water pipes through there as well.
Anyway, let me show you what some guys do.
So, they'll turn on B in radio mode,
yep, we can find something there guys,
stay away from there.
Nah, can't see anything here guys,
feel free to drill here.
There's something over this way more,
but over here.
Nah, feel free to drill right there, guys.
Nothing there at all. You can drill right there.
Go to power mode,
and again,
yep, definitely,
definitely nothing there, guys.
So you can drill right there.
Over here.
Nah, picked up something there. Stay away from there.
So, that's what they will do.
They'll just literally go, and wave their magic wand over the spot,
and say, yes, you're all clear to drill,
and I do not like that at all,
because as it's proved there,
we have a telephone cable.
Now it's copper cable,
three copper lines going over
to feed that building there,
going straight through there,
around there, and around there,
and over to there.
You can't even rely on plans,
on especially sites like this one here,
because the plans they've got,
they've actually got pretty good plans for this site,
and they had that fire service on there.
They had the water main on there.
They even had that power cable going down over to the building there.
What they didn't have is
that pipe.
Just there, see the pipe underneath there,
and it's only when I went down to see the,
tried to find where the
stormwater is, that I saw that one there,
and I was able to realise, hang on a minute.
Where's that going?
Hooked on to it, and that's where it found me.
So, guys when you're working at job sites,
you need to go through, and find everything in the area,
and when I say everything in the area I mean,
Sorry guys.
When I say everything in the area I mean
going through and seeing where every single building gets its services from.
For example,
we've got a building over there that's right by itself.
There's no other building attached to it.
Where do they get their power?
Where does the power come from?
Where do they get their comms?
Do they have gas down there?
Do they have water? You'd assume they've got water.
Where does the water come from?
I think I can see sewer. Where does this,
how does this sewer go?
You've got to go for it, and stormwater. Where is stormwater?
You've got to make sure
that you go through every single building on the job site,
and see where all the services go to those buildings,
where they all come from,
and mark them all out.
Once you've marked them all out,
that's when you can know whether you've found everything.
Don't go,
you get some guys that give you 10 minutes.
They expect you to find,
expect you to clear up borehole in 10-15 minutes,
and it's like, no,
I'm sorry, but I need to go through,
and spend time
finding everything on a job site.
This one here.
I was here yesterday afternoon, and I'm back here today.
Finding everything is taking me, you'd say a full day,
and the site doesn't look that big when you look at it, does it?
Have a look at it.
You wouldn't think it'd take that long,
but because I've had to go through, and find where every single little thing is for different spots,
that is why it takes time,
and if I didn't do that,
then we would have no idea this was here,
because it wasn't on any plan,
no one knew it was here.
If I didn't do that,
they could have easily gone straight through there,
because this is the area they wanted the borehole.
They wanted the borehole here.
I've pushed it back further.
I've pushed it back over there.
So, if you're a locator,
and you do locating for Geotech guys,
if you do locating for guys that do drilling,
make sure you take your time and locate everything on the job site.
Don't just,
don't just wave your wand over the spot.
Yes, in some areas,
if you're in the greenfield spot,
if you're in the somewhere where there's
nothing else you can hook on to,
then all you can do is power mode, and radio mode,
and running your ground penetrating radar over the spot.
Sometimes that's all we can do,
but still first,
before you do all of that,
find everything else in the area.
If you can, always hook on to everything in the area,
check where it all goes,
and try and locate all that.
That's if you're a locator.
If you're a Geotech,
if you're a driller,
if this is what you do for a living, if you get guys to come out,
if you do drilling, and you get guys come out, and clear your boreholes,
make sure they're doing their due diligence.
Make sure they're going through and locating where everything is first.
Don't just give them a limited amount of time.
Yeah, I get at some sites,
and you get there,
and the drill is setting up while you're there,
and I'm like mate, what are you doing?
And he's like, I'm about to start drilling as soon as you clear this up,
clear the borehole, and I'm like,
dude, you can't start drilling yet.
I'm going to be here for a few hours trying to find where everything is.
Like it's just,
yeah,
for the locators following me,
my apologies again if you're a locator,
and in the past you've just waved your magic wand,
and it's what you do.
Guys, take the time to do it properly.
If you have clients that don't like it,
that want you to spend quick five minutes doing it,
fire them.
Don't work for the clients that are shit,
don't work for the clients that
don't want you to put your due diligence in, because
if they hit something, they're going to blame you.
Guys,
we're here trying to protect underground assets,
and more so we're trying to protect people's lives.
We don't want people to get hurt.
If they,
I mean yes, that power showed up easy but if someone had hit that power,
I'd be to blame.
I'd be the one that would be on the front page of the headlines
saying that they've had a locator out here,
and they haven't done it the right way.
So, don't put yourself in danger.
Don't put yourself at risk of something going wrong.
Find everything on site.
Don't work for clients that are shit.
Clients that just want you to spend five minutes on a job site.
Explain to them beforehand,
before you get out to the job explain to them
what you're going to do, the time it's going to take,
and how,
and the effort you'd go through to do this sort of stuff, so.
Does that all make sense?
I know I'm rambling on a bit guys, I know,
I apologise,
but
there's, as I said,
there is an issue with our industry, and it's not just here in Geelong,
or in Melbourne, or in Victoria,
or in Australia.
I see it everywhere. I see it overseas as well.
They've all got the same situation where
drillers that just expect,
some,
some drillers and Geotechs expect you just to be able to clear a borehole like that.
Just go and wave your wand over it and that's it,
and no, you need to put the effort in,
you need to go through, and try, and find where everything is first.
All right guys.
Hope that makes sense.
Any questions at all, feel free to leave a comment below,
and we'll, yeah, talk soon.
Bye.