AUSTRALIAN DIAL BEFORE YOU DIG SERVICES

Spring Edition - Sept 2006

NewsletterNewsletter

Association of Australian Dial Before You Dig Services ABN 91 089 413 650

Dial Before You Dig has recentlyundertaken a tender process to select apartner to deliver the enquiry service in

all areas except Western Australia for the nextthree years. Datacom Connect have beenappointed to deliver the Call Centre and ITservices from 1st October 2006. Whilst theService Provider will be changing, a number ofthe existing staff will be moving over to workwith Datacom so there will continue to be somefamiliar voices on 1100.

Datacom are a major provider of outsourcedservices and bring significant experience inmanaging call centre, IT and help deskservices to Dial Before You Dig. With theincreasing reliance on the online service, thestrength of Datacom's systems will ensure theongoing high level of availability andreliability for the Service is maintained. Weare pleased that Mark Scopece who has beenDial Before You Dig's IT Manager and whohas been central to the integrity and strengthof our systems for many years will be joiningDatacom.

Whilst we are changing our call centre providerwe would like to acknowledge and thankCentral Call Services who have provided theservice for the last four years. During this timethere have been a number of major changes

including the introduction of DigSafe in 2003and the expansion to cover Queensland in 2004.These changes have occurred with a minimumof disruption thanks to the willingness of CCSto work co-operatively with Dial Before YouDig to ensure delivery of the Service.

During any given year we advertise in variousmagazines and publications along withtelevision and radio campaigns. Promotion inmagazines may be spread over a full year, whiletelevision and radio tends to be limited tospecific periods. Electronic and mass mediaadvertising is expensive, so we aim to targetspecific locations and demographic groups atparticular times of the year to stimulateawareness. Continued growth with plan requeststells us in broad terms that awareness isgrowing, but the only accurate way to measure

the success of advertising is to conduct surveys.We have allocated funds this year to conduct asurvey (the first since 2002) to help understandhow effective we are at reaching our targetaudience. You can help too by advising us eachtime you see (or hear) a Dial Before You Digadvertisement in a magazine, paper, poster,bumper sticker or on radio or TV. I see stickersevery day on plumbers' utes, electricity trucks,gas vans etc, and I'm sure you do too.Information you give us can help support theresponses we get from our surveys, so pleasetake a moment to comment back to us from ourwebsite about advertising that becomes apparentto you.

Back in March Dial Before You Dig introducedthe new Kids Colouring book. It has proved tobe very popular and has attracted positivecomment from many different groups. Thebooks are provided free of charge so if you havecontact with primary aged children eitherthrough your business or privately, you couldrequest books from us and provide them to thechildren. We know the importance of educatingthe young to change behaviours,and thisnewcollateralitem willpositivelyimpactchildren forthe future ofsafeexcavation.

Last year we launched our first ever Dial BeforeYou Dig calendar! It has also been very wellreceived as a means of keeping the Dial BeforeYou Dig message in front of people atworkplaces, while providing space to write indate claimers and keeping you across keyholiday periods. To order your copy just enterthe promotional code “ ” when you entera Dial Before You Dig enquiry online before 31

October. In the code is entered nextto the map of your worksite, and for WAenquiries, enter the code on the input screenunder Customer Details.

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Dial Before You Dig Advertising

Kids colouring book and calendar

CAL07

DigSafeTM

Digging responsibly

Telstra's Plan Service

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If you carry out a simple Google search youwill quickly discover that Dial Before YouDig is mentioned on a number of websites forboth utility providers and governmentagencies. Here are a few that refer to DialBefore You Dig and were found using 'safedigging' as the search criteria and this is not anexhaustive listing by any means:Managing critical Infrastructure in a ChangingWorld WAEnergy Australia NSWEnergy Safe VICIntegral Energy NSWCountry Energy NSWOrigin Energy QLDActewAGL ACTNT Gas NTPOWERCO TAS.

In Queensland (and some other States), theWorkplace Health and Safety Act has provisionsto use Dial Before You Dig in its 'Building andConstruction Industry Workplace Health andSafety Guide' dated December 2005. On page 4of the Guide it States very specifically that onemust 'Obtain and provide information aboutunderground services' before commencing work.On page 8 under the heading 'Excavations(including underground services)', it goes on tostate:

Before any excavation work is carried out,the principal contractor for the constructionwork must-

find out what underground services exist;obtain relevant information about the

service (location, type, depth, restrictions tobe followed);

record the information in writing;give the information to the relevant

persons who are to do the work; andkeep the recorded information until the

construction work ends.

( ). A relevant personmust not start excavation work unless theprincipal contractor has either advised thereare no underground services or, if they doexist, has given the relevant person theprescribed information. The relevant personmust-

consider the information;follow any reasonable restrictions; andimplement necessary control measures.

Where there is no principal contractor, the

relevant person has the principal contractor'sobligations about underground services.

All this information continues to place a greatdeal of responsibility on persons excavating tomake sure they effectively discharge theirresponsibilities to underground serviceproviders.

With a network presence in most parts ofAustralia, Telstra is the largest supplier of assetinformation to the Dial Before You Dig service.Telstra's in house data system, Smartplan,processed over 400,000 Dial Before You Digrequests nationally last year. Of these, 99.5 percent received a response from Telstra within 48hours. Gary Searston, Telstra's national managerfor processing and delivering Dial Before YouDig data and also Chairman of the QueenslandDial Before You Dig Board, says that althoughresponse times are good there is still room forimprovement in both delivery time frames anddelivery methods.

“Historically, information delivery relied heavilyon hard-copies via fax machines and the postalservice, but these are being gradually phased-outin favour of e-mail, which enables us to deliverelectronic copies of infrastructure plans fasterand more efficiently,” Gary said.

Electronic delivery of plans and documents (viae-mail) in A4 format was introduced by Telstrain May 2005 (excluding Western Australia), andcurrently accounts for 40 per cent of Telstraresponses to Dial Before You Dig requestsnationally.

Delivering plans electronically enables Telstra totake full advantage of the Dial Before You Dig

web-based enquiry facility (notcurrently available in WA). Although it is notanticipated that all requests will be received viathis technology, it is expected that the majorityof requestors will take advantage of this

Dial 1100 Before You Dig is a usefulservice emphasis ours

DigSafeTM

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preferred delivery method.In some cases, the nature of the request and thedensity of Telstra's infrastructure means thatproducing a readable plan in an A4 format is notpracticable, and therefore it is still necessary todeliver some plans via post.

To address this Telstra plans to introduceelectronic delivery of plans in a format largerthan A4. “This should significantly reducedelays currently experienced when sendinglarger plans, as well as provide Dial Before YouDig users with greater portability of plans andmore flexibility when viewing and printingplans,” Gary said.

Telstra's Smartplan system is currently beingoverhauled to allow this functionality as well asother improvements to improve efficiency andshould be available for trial within the next fewmonths. To take advantage of theseimprovements, Dial Before You Dig users areencouraged to simply lodge their requests via

and supply a preferred e-mail addresson the Dial Before You Dig website atwww.dialbeforeyoudig.com.au.

Construction activitycontinues to be strong withstrong numbers of planrequests in July and August.There's plenty of activityacross the State whereinstalling gas pipelines,recycled water pipelinesand work on buswayprojects are underway. The photo above showssome of the work being undertaken as part ofthe King George Square redevelopment project.

A trade stand was operated at Farmfest duringJune ( ) and at Ag-GrowEmerald in July. Both these events were aimedat bringing the Dial Before You Dig message tothe rural community and providing opportunitiesto answer questions while getting feed backfrom users. One young tradesman commented tome that his TAFE college has Dial Before YouDig stickers displayed in every room where hetrains. Other agricultural colleges contacted usasking about providing materials for theirstudents too. It was great to walk around and see

Dial Before YouDig stickers onnew machineryranging fromaugers andbuckets to chaindiggers andexcavators. On

that central Queensland visit around 13 councilswere visited en route where brochures were re-supplied and contacts arranged. There has beenopportunity to present cable & pipe awarenesssessions with Telstra at a number of centres inSouth East Queensland, the Darling Downs andBurnett areas.Coming events before Christmas:

Attend IPWEAQ Branch conference atKingaroy in September (with stand)The AGM of Dial Before You Dig will occurin Brisbane (September)Shane Wynd will be racing at Willowbank onSeptember 15-17Operate a trade stand at Logov Expo inOctober (Primmer racing will attend)Operate a stand at the IPWEAQ Stateconference in OctoberConduct awareness sessions with Telstra onthe Sunshine Coast (Sep & Oct)Conduct awareness sessions with Telstra inCentral Queensland (number of centres)Operate a stand at the international No-DigExpo in Brisbane during NovemberInvolvement with IPWEAQ NQ Branchconference at Tully in November.

If you want a free awareness session for yourgroup that is co-jointly presented by Telstra andDial Before You Dig and runs for around 2hours, contact Brian Zeller on 07-3325 4444 sowe can schedule it.

July 2006 saw Dial Before You Dig participatein the Annual Tasmanian Farmers & GraziersAssociation Conference ( ), held inLaunceston, as a sponsor of the opening sessionand an exhibitor. The event was well attendedand it was a great opportunity to meet with avariety of people and talk to them about theirexperiences with the service. We also attendedthe Vegetable Growers Forum in UlverstoneduringAugust, tohighlight theneed to usethe service,especially innew areas.

DigSafeTM

Trade Shows and Industry ContactEvents

Queensland

see picture above right

Victoria and Tasmania

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The number of enquiries received in Victoria &Tasmania reached a new record high for thefinancial year 2005-06, with over 110,000enquiries being received for the year. This wasover 12% higher than last financial year. Therewas also a big move by people using theinternet, with over 4,400 enquiries lodgedonline via our website, which was nearly doublewhat was received in 2004-05.

The number of Members continues to grow withVERNet (Vic), Caroline Chisholm CatholicCollege (Braybrook, Vic), Woodside Energy(SW Vic), Department of Defence (NE Vic) andGreat Northern Community Water SupplyScheme (NE Vic) all joining the Association.

Activities for the period May to August 2006are as follows-

Numerous presentations to TAFE studentgroups (all ages)Discussions and meetings with variousmembers regarding the pending migration ofWA call centre functions to the nationalcommunications centre in 2007Farewell of Mike Morris from the CivilContractors Federation (WA) a greatsupporter of Dial Before You DigWelcome to Nigel Haywood of the CivilContractors Federation (WA)Displays at the Gas Industries Trade Evening,the Margaret River Wine Expo, theTradesman's Expo, the Master PlumbersTrade Expo and the Local GovernmentSupervisors Trade ExpoA 2 day road trip through part of the WheatBelt, with a Telstra Network Integrity rep, tosee many existing and potential members andcustomersA Customer/Member Forum following theannual telephone customer and membersatisfaction surveys.

Coming events -Dowerin Field DaysMingenew Field DaysMaster Plumbers Trade night in AlbanyDial Before You Dig awareness presentationsVisits to existing and potentialmembers/customersAdvertising in various trade and LocalGovernment publications.

Workcover NSW invited Dial Before You Dig toattend a series of Rural Safety Field Days beingheld across the State and we have been

represented atForbes, Griffith,Lismore, Bourkeand Narrabri. Inconjunction with theField Days, DialBefore You Dig hasmet with andpresented to

Councils in Forbes, Lachlan, Griffith, Hay,Lismore, Tweed, Ballina, Bourke, Brewarrina,Cobar, Moree and Inverell.

Ocean Thunder gets underway at Dee Whybeach on Saturday September 16. OceanThunder is a made-for-TV event that pitches thebest surf boat teams in Australia against eachother. In 2006 Dial Before You Dig will berepresented by Bondi. In early September acrew from Sports Tonight interviewed the Bondicrew ( ) for an item that will air in theweek leading up to the first event.

Drag racer Shane Wynd ( ) competed inwestern Sydney in early September. Despitetransmissionproblems, Shanereceived goodencouragementfrom visitors tothe pits.

Darwin Surf Life Saving Club launched its newsurf boat in August. The boat was refurbishedand painted in Royal Blue. The club Presidentdescribed the result as “great.” The whole clubparticipated in a photo shoot and launch ( )that coincided with a dune rehabilitation projecton National Tree Planting Day.

President Gary McKinnon reports theyoungsters were delighted with their “Livewire”t-shirts. Darwin plans to go to Mackay for NorthAussies and then the Aussies in Scarborough(WA) in 2007.

Western Australia

New South Wales and the ACT

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South Australia and the NT

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