Dial Before You Dig (DBYD) has announced Deloitte Consulting and Esri Australia as the providers for its next generation referral service set to provide enhanced protection for $388 billion worth of underground utility assets across the country.

DBYD chief executive Stuart Burdack says the group was extremely pleased to collaborate with Esri Australia to provide the next generation referral service and Deloitte in the development of the digital platform that will operate the new DBYD service.

“For more than two decades DBYD has remained one of Australia’s most relevant and respected services prioritising worker safety and the protection of critical underground infrastructure, above all else,” he says.

“Our vision of ‘zero harm, zero damage’ sits at the heart of our decision to pave a new, innovative path forward for the DBYD service.”

Esri Australia are location intelligence specialists and will leverage cutting-edge Geospatial Information System (GIS) technology in the development of a vastly improved referral service for DBYD.

Phase one of the project will see the delivery of self-managed kiosks for reporting and information uploads; enhanced data integration capabilities allowing the seamless amalgamation of referral service data into web maps for analysis and visualisation; map-based search functions; an improved user interface and many more features.

The next generation referral service will be built and tested over the coming year and will ‘go live’ in the latter half of 2021.