The repair bill is rarely the real cost of a utility strike. It’s the traffic management, the service reinstatement, the program delay while the asset owner investigates, the designer rework, and, depending on what was hit, the regulatory scrutiny that follows. Nationally, the numbers back this up: Before You Dig Australia’s own research puts the direct and indirect cost of utility strikes to Australia’s infrastructure network at $4.6 billion a year (BYDA, “Economic Assessment of Utility Strikes in Australia,” 2024), a figure the report attributes largely to poor regulation, outdated data standards, and inadequate training across the industry.
That’s a national number, not a Melbourne-specific one, BYDA’s published research doesn’t break the figure down by state or city, and HCS won’t pretend otherwise. But three things about how Melbourne is built mean the city carries more than its share of the underlying risk.
Why Melbourne’s Risk Profile Runs Higher
More utility owners per site than most cities. Metro Melbourne’s electricity network is split across five separate distribution businesses, CitiPower, Powercor, Jemena, AusNet Services and United Energy, depending on where a site sits, plus three separate water retailers covering different parts of the metro area. A single DBYD/BYDA referral pulls records from the right combination of these owners, but more owners means more separate record sets, more potential for a gap between them, and more parties involved if something does go wrong.
Decades of layered services in the inner city. Melbourne’s laneways and heritage precincts carry legacy cast-iron infrastructure sitting close to modern poly pipe, plus tram infrastructure with its own conduit and cabling network running through areas that have been resurfaced and redeveloped multiple times since. Every layer added over the decades increases the odds that at least one asset isn’t accurately reflected in current records.
Ground conditions that work against records-only approaches. A meaningful share of greater Melbourne sits on reactive clay and basalt-derived soils, particularly in the western and northern growth corridors, with variable clay-rich profiles common closer to the CBD too. These conditions increase GPR signal attenuation, meaning even a physical investigation needs to be run with the ground conditions accounted for, a locate that ignores this can under-report what’s actually there.
What Actually Reduces the Risk
None of this means every Melbourne site needs the maximum level of investigation, that’s neither necessary nor cost-effective. What it means is that a DBYD/BYDA records search (Quality Level D under AS 5488.1:2022) should be treated as the starting point of an investigation, not the whole of it, particularly on sites with any of the three factors above.
The projects that avoid becoming part of that $4.6 billion figure tend to share a pattern: physical locating with both EM and GPR at the design stage, quality levels escalated deliberately at pinch points rather than defaulted everywhere, and a locate that’s calibrated to the ground conditions on site rather than run the same way regardless of location.
Getting It Right Before You Dig
A Melbourne project’s risk profile depends on where it sits, what’s likely underground, and what the soil is doing to detection signals, it’s a site assessment question, not a records-search-and-go decision. HCS locators are CERTLOC certified and DBYD/BYDA accredited, and every investigation is carried out to AS 5488.1:2022, using EM and GPR together where the site calls for it.
If you’ve got a Melbourne project coming up, get in touch with HCS for a site assessment, it’s a lot cheaper than becoming a data point in next year’s report.
Sources: BYDA, “Economic Assessment of Utility Strikes in Australia,” 2024. This article pairs with HCS’s AS 5488.1:2022 Quality Levels and EM Locating vs GPR explainers.
