Pipehawk

HSG47 issued by the HSE states that all reasonable precautions should be taken to identify the presence of utilities during ground excavations. There is clear potential for serious accidents and personal injury if utilities especially gas and electricity are severed and major disruption with indirect life threatening consequences if telephone or water services are interrupted.
There are several competitive technologies available to detect services including hand digging based on mapping, Electro Magnetic (EM) Sensors, CCTV and Ground locating radar; however, all of them have disadvantages. Hand digging is based on mapping which is notoriously unreliable especially on old brownfield sites. EM sensors are limited to conductors such as cables, wires and metal pipes but they can’t detect potentially high pressure plastic gas and water pipes, earthenware sewer pipes or optic cables used for telephone and data transmission . CCTV is only useful for pipes or drains with known access points. Ground radar technology can detect subsurface utilities irrespective of their construction; however, require a skilled operator to download and separately analyse and interpret the data.
This proposal is for a novel ground radar technology that will address these issues, thereby minimising the risk to those carrying out excavations, and reduce the disruption to the economy when for example, road works overrun or services are severed.