Thursday 16 December 2010

Utility roadworks add to Christmas chaos

As the winter weather bites, pressure on utilities providers nationwide is increasing dramatically.  Over the last month the number of roadworks resulting from repairs to burst water pipes in London alone increased from an average of 75 per day to over 185.



Peter Hendy, London’s Transport Chief, was critical in his comments about utility firms:

“I am as frustrated as the rest of London at the needless jams caused by poorly planned and managed roadworks.  Transport for London is working hard to smooth traffic flow in the capital, but to make a real difference the utilities must radically reduce the amount of time they spend digging up our roads.”

Business Group London First estimates that congestion caused by roadworks costs London’s economy c£4bn per year.   

One of the schemes being proposed to tackle the volume of roadworks in London involves co-ordinating the work of utilities providers. 

In order to put together workable proposals, planners would be well advised to follow the example set by increasing numbers of professionals and arm themselves with comprehensive utility reports.

Groundwise Utility Reports available from FIND contain up-to-date utility infrastructure plans obtained from an average of 30 utilities and service providers on, under, above and around a specified site.  They are sensibly priced, carefully checked and backed by £2m of professional indemnity insurance.

The information contained in these comprehensive reports is already being used by architects, engineers, legal practices, insurance companies and environmental consultants.  The reports are trusted resources which enable them to save time and money.  In fact, the Groundwise Utility Report is the hottest product in the FIND catalogue.

Visit www.findmaps.com for more information about what Groundwise Utility Reports can offer you.

Wednesday 15 December 2010

Now that’s MAGIC!

Good news...

After posting our blog on 7 December about the imminent closure of the MAGIC website (magic.gov.uk) we were contacted by Natural England who run the service on behalf of Defra.  While the current website will indeed be closing, the full MAGIC service including all the information and tools that are currently provided will continue to be available on the Defra website. Users should in fact not notice any difference. Natural England will continue to run the service on behalf of the MAGIC partnership.

MAGIC.defra.gov.uk is scheduled to go live on 6 January 2011 and all users will be automatically directed to the new site.