CAT and Genny Training: Cable Avoidance Before You Dig

Why cable avoidance training matters

Striking a buried electricity cable can cause serious burns or death, and hitting a gas main, water pipe or telecoms line brings its own danger, cost and delay. HSE guidance HSG47, Avoiding danger from underground services, sets out a safe system of work built on three things: using service plans, using detecting devices, and safe digging practice. Cable avoidance training is about doing the second part properly and joining it up with the other two.

A CAT in untrained hands gives false confidence. Many strikes happen on sites where a locator was on hand but used in the wrong mode, swept too quickly, or not used again as the dig went deeper. Training closes those gaps.

What the course covers

The course mixes short theory with practical tracing on your ground. Candidates learn how buried services are found and why no locator finds everything, then spend most of the time using the equipment.

• Reading service plans and understanding their limits
• Pre-use checks on the CAT and genny, including the self-test
• Power, radio and genny modes, and what each can and cannot detect
• Connecting the genny directly and using induction to trace a service
• Sweep patterns, pinpointing and following a service across the site
• Marking out services clearly and recording what was found
• Safe digging practice near located services, including hand digging

Using the CAT and genny together

Used alone, a CAT in power mode picks up cables carrying a load, and radio mode picks up signals re-radiated by long metallic services. Neither reliably finds a cable carrying little or no current, or a short metallic pipe. The genny fixes much of that by putting a known signal onto a service, either connected directly or induced from above, so the CAT can follow it.

Plastic pipes and some ducts carry no signal at all unless they contain a tracer wire, which is why training keeps returning to plans, careful observation and hand digging. Operators learn to treat a quiet reading as 'not found' rather than 'not there'.

Who should take cable avoidance training

Anyone who breaks ground on site benefits: excavator operators, groundworkers digging by hand, people using breakers or post drivers, and supervisors who sign off a permit to dig. On utility, civils, housebuilding and farm drainage work, it is common for the person on the CAT to be different from the person on the machine, so training both together means they use the same terms and the same markings.

For digger operators, cable avoidance pairs naturally with excavator training, where working near services is already part of the practical. Running both on one visit keeps the dig plan, the marking and the machine work consistent.

Training on your own site

Running CAT and genny training where you work lets candidates trace real services under your yard, plot or road, using the locators your team will pick up next week. It also lets the instructor talk through your permit to dig and marking arrangements, so the training fits the way your site already runs.

Tell us how many people need training, which locators you use and what work is coming up. Chris will confirm the course content and certification at booking.