The Problem

Carillion had a contract with BT Open Reach to dig trenches and lay duct work for phone and network cables. Before breaking ground, they needed to perform various safety checks, such as checking for the presence of underground assets such as power cables, water pipes, or gas lines that may pose a risk to their operatives. This manual process was time-consuming and involved a team of 80 staff working full-time to keep up with the workload.

The Solution

To improve health and safety for its operatives, Carillion aimed to automate the safety check process. A system was created using the NDL SX Toolkit, which ran 25 RPA bots to contact each of the utility companies, request the necessary information, and collate the data into a single Job Pack ready for the teams on the ground. The custom system allowed staff to prioritize and manage work, view pending jobs, and monitor the status of in-progress tasks. An API was also developed to automatically submit work to the system from the company's Order Management portal, ensuring that the Safe Digs Report was ready to be viewed as soon as a request was received.