Plan ahead
Before digging, plan your job and be sure you’ve considered who you need to inform.
Work safely
Determine which utilities may be affected by your activity underground and overhead. This could be network telecom/ fibre, gas lines, power lines, water mains or other infrastructure. Hitting or damaging this equipment could result not only in outages of these services, but also injury to you, your family, and your neighbours.
It’s the responsibility of the ground disturber (excavator) to contact all underground utility owners for locates prior to beginning the work. Use your province’s One Call service to send your locate request to the relevant public utilities.
Markings
For your protection, if your excavation will be within 1 metre of a located line (with lines marked with paint, flags, stakes, etc.), you must carefully expose the utility's equipment using hand tools (shovel or spade only) or via hydro vac (less than 1500psi) without causing damage.
Report damage
Report any damage, either caused or found, to all utilities.
Contact your province’s One Call service
One Call/Call or Click Before You Dig is a program developed to promote safe digging for all utilities. They send your locate request to the relevant public utilities who are members. Contact your province’s One Call service, and any other utilities if they’re not covered by the One Call program, to make sure all buried infrastructure is marked before you dig.
For other areas, visit Click Before You Dig to find out who to contact.