CareHomeDeskCareHomeDeskCare home grounds are riddled with undocumented services from decades of incremental work. What HSE's own guidance requires before digging starts, and what a competent contractor's method statement should actually contain.
HSG47, Avoiding Danger from Underground Services, is the Health and Safety Executive's principal guidance for anyone who plans, manages or carries out work that involves breaking ground. It is not itself legislation, but it exists to support compliance with the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and, on notifiable projects, CDM 2015 -- and HSE treats it as the baseline standard for safe excavation. It sets out three elements that have to happen in order: planning the work, locating and identifying buried services, and excavating safely once those services are known.
Care homes are frequently older buildings that have had services added, diverted and re-routed incrementally over decades by different contractors, often without every change making it back onto an accurate site plan. A drawing showing where a gas or electrical service was originally laid is a starting point, not a guarantee -- HSG47 is explicit that plans alone are not sufficient evidence of what is actually in the ground. Before any excavation, the area must also be checked with a Cable Avoidance Tool and signal generator (a CAT and Genny), used to sweep the ground and trace live services rather than relying on documentation alone.
Once a service has been located, it should be clearly marked -- HSG47's own guidance recommends different colours for different service types -- before excavation continues. Where a live service is confirmed within the work area, digging by machine should stop and the immediate area should be hand-dug only, using care and, where the service is fragile or unclear, non-sharp or non-pointed tools to reduce the risk of striking it directly. The closer the work gets to a confirmed live service, the more the method has to shift from mechanical excavation toward careful hand exposure.
Any excavation deep enough for a person to enter carries a collapse risk that increases with depth and depends on ground conditions -- looser or wetter ground fails at shallower depths than firm ground. Sides should be battered back to a stable angle, benched in stages, or supported, rather than left as an unsupported vertical face, and the excavation should be inspected at the start of each shift and after any event -- heavy rain, a nearby vibration source, a period left open overnight -- that could have changed ground conditions since it was last checked. Where access is needed into a supported or shuttered trench, use a proper means of access such as a tied ladder rather than climbing the shoring itself, and where an excavation is even moderately deep, treat ventilation as a genuine consideration, not an afterthought, particularly where fuel-powered plant is being used nearby.
In an occupied care home, an open excavation is also a very real hazard to residents, visitors and staff who have no reason to expect it and may not recognise it as dangerous. Every excavation should be barriered and signed to prevent accidental access for the full duration it remains open, not just while work is actively taking place, and covered or made safe at the end of each working period if it will be left overnight.
CareHomeDesk gives you compliance checklists, maintenance logs, and contractor management tools built around exactly this kind of knowledge.