In a typical week, a city council could handle hundreds of Dial Before You Dig (DBYD) enquiries from utilities, construction contractors, civil engineers and various internal departments requesting information about its underground assets.
To prevent damage to these assets and ensure accurate responses to dig enquiries, one council in South Australia syncs its asset data with SmarterWX Automate — a GIS-centric, automated response system for dig enquiries.
Working independently in the SmarterWX Cloud, SmarterWX Automate takes complete responsibility for managing and responding to DBYD enquiries, without any requirements from internal infrastructure.
It sends customised responses in various formats, including standard PDFs, web maps, data downloads or as a GIS service — which allows excavators to build the asset data into their own project maps or load it directly into GPR devices.
The enquiry response workflow is built on user-defined rules and can include notifying named stakeholders when enquiries come in regarding strategic assets or watch areas. This delivers real-time situational awareness to relevant decision makers and ensures zero-damage to underground assets.
Council can also customise the enquiry response process, QA review and content to be included in the email responses, and even choose which excavators receive digital data downloads to complement PDF plans.
Following a strict audit trail, SmarterWX Automate stores all data, enquiries, maps, emails as well as rule changes and asset data updates in a searchable archive for seven years, making historic and real-time data accessible to internal staff.
With increased awareness around dig requests across the organisation, staff are now able to flag issues as they arise and address them in a timely manner that ensures asset protection and avoids unnecessary damages.
SmarterWX Automate is part of the SmarterWX suite of capital works and asset protection tools — including SmarterWX Collaborate and SmarterWX Locate — that facilitate active collaboration, workflow automation and information sharing to maximise productivity.
Built on a secure scalable cloud platform with intelligent mapping at the centre, SmarterWX provides the tools to deliver smarter, faster, and more efficient capital works programs.
SmarterWX Collaborate is a collaborative capital works scheduling platform that presents layers of capital works data as a common operating picture. This facilitates communication between project owners and highlights collaboration opportunities and flags scheduling conflicts instantly.
SmarterWX Locate collates DBYD responses into a user-friendly web interface, sending the enquirer a single email to notify them that the responses are ready.
Built to collaborate with each other — and integrate with existing business systems — the SmarterWX tools help prevent damage to underground assets and maximise productivity for organisations involved in capital works.
Find out more about SmarterWX Automate.