It is the question I get asked most about usage data, and it is the one that has no number in the answer. How long should somebody be in each mode? In a street, it is how long is a piece of string.
In a field you could almost set a time
Out in open country, working cross country with very little to connect to, the work is close to standard. You could almost set a time for the scans and say you want so long in power, so long in radio, so long in Genny mode, because every hole looks much the same as the last one.
You will also see a different shape to the data out there. The Genny often is not connected to anything, so what you get is induction sweeps, power and radio. That is the work being what it is, not somebody cutting corners.
In a street you cannot
Streets and footpaths are not standard, so the time is not standard either. What decides it is how many services there are to find, and that comes off the plans and off the street itself, not off a stopwatch.
Take a street of modern houses on a PME system. Six houses means six Genny connections, because that is what it takes to be sure I have got all of them. Now take an older street where the lighting is fed off the main. Quite often I can clip on the lighting column and pick all of those up from one connection. Same six houses, completely different amount of work.
What I need before I can say a scan was enough
- 01The exact address of the job
- 02The utility plans for it
- 03Where the excavation actually was
- 04A look at the street itself, which for me usually means Street View
The plans and the street together tell me how many things we are looking for. Until I know that, I cannot tell you whether twenty minutes was thorough or nowhere near, and neither can anybody else.
What good looks like, by work type
In a footpath I want to see a decent amount of connection: hooking up to lamp columns, hooking up to buildings, getting a signal onto the things that are actually there. If I am seeing induction only in a street full of services, that is worth a conversation. Out in a field, induction sweeps with power and radio are often the honest answer to what is available.
The Genny still goes on first either way. Locate, then avoid.