FAME Utility Guide (UK) – Advice for Archaeological Practitioners

The FAME Health and Safety group has been working on creating guidance for FAME members on a range of issues. We are happy to announce the publication of our second guidance on working with utilities in the UK. Which can be downloaded here:

Key Messages

• Damage to utilities can cause fatal or severe injury as well as significant disruption and environmental damage; it can also delay the project and incur considerable costs.
• It is the duty of the client in the first instance to obtain and supply all available information relating to the presence of utilities.
• You should plan site activities to avoid conflict with utilities risk areas as far as reasonably practicable and if additional utilities are identified during the works then you must modify your activities if they risk contact with the utility.
• You can never rule out coming across additional utilities when digging, even if nothing is shown on plans.  Always treat anything you find as live until confirmed otherwise.

About

The FAME Health and Safety Technical Papers are produced by the FAME Health and Safety Working Group to provide high-level guidance to its members to foster safe systems of work for development-led archaeological practice. The principal author of this paper was Ian Smart (Wessex Archaeology) with input from other members of the FAME Health and Safety Working Group.