Before You Dig Australia has lodged a formal submission to the Federal Government’s Economic Reform Roundtable, putting forward its Digital Utility Location Portal as a national solution to boost productivity, safety, and cost-efficiency across infrastructure delivery.
The Roundtable, taking place in Canberra from 19-21 August, is focused on generating ideas to boost productivity, economic resilience and budget sustainability – goals that align closely with BYDA’s proposal.
The Digital Utility Location Portal – currently in BETA with utility participation across multiple states – provides planners, engineers and contractors with secure, digital access to underground utility data before they break ground. This reform aims to address the costly and dangerous delays caused by the current fragmented, slow and manual access to utility data.
With more than 20,000 utility strikes each year costing over $5 billion in avoidable delays and disruptions, BYDA’s submission calls for national policy support and coordination to accelerate utility data reform and unlock critical productivity gains for the infrastructure sector.
BYDA’s portal is the kind of practical, scalable reform the Productivity Commission aims to advance. With the right policy settings, it has the potential to become a permanent fixture in Australia’s digital infrastructure – delivering real-world productivity, economic, and safety outcomes across sectors.
