Every guide to Before You Dig Australia (BYDA, formerly Dial Before You Dig) is written for the person holding the shovel. That is fair, because that is who the scheme protects. But a consulting engineer uses BYDA differently. You want to know what is in the ground before you design, before you quote, and sometimes before the client has decided whether to proceed at all. This guide is for that use.
How long a BYDA enquiry takes
BYDA’s own guidance is that plans typically arrive within minutes, but to allow up to two business days. In practice:
- Major utilities in metro areas respond automatically, often within the hour. Energex, Ergon, Urban Utilities, Telstra, NBN and most gas distributors are in this group.
- Councils and smaller asset owners may take one to two business days, and some respond with a “no assets” letter rather than a plan.
- Some asset owners do not respond at all within the window. BYDA’s FAQ tells you to contact them directly. For a design job, that gap is itself a finding.
Plan on two business days for a complete set. Lodge on Monday for a Wednesday desk review.
When plans expire
Plans are valid for a limited period from the enquiry date, typically 28 to 30 days depending on the asset owner. After that, you re-lodge. This matters at two points:
- Design programs longer than a month. The plans you designed against are stale by the time the contractor lodges their own. Expect minor differences, especially for NBN and telco.
- Feasibility that turns into a job later. A plan set from a feasibility study three months ago is background information, not a current record.
PlanInsight lodges the enquiry against the property record and auto-expires the response set after the 30-day window, so nobody in the team quotes from an expired plan without noticing.
What the plans show, and what they do not
Utility plans are the asset owner’s records. They show the approximate alignment of known assets. They do not confirm depth, exact position, or the presence of private and unregistered services. A plan showing a sewer main along the rear boundary tells you there is a sewer main along the rear boundary, somewhere, at some depth.
For a design engineer that is still very useful:
- Stormwater and sewer. A council or Urban Utilities plan shows pits, mains and invert levels where recorded. It is often the first evidence of a lawful point of discharge or a connection point.
- Electricity. Underground HV along the frontage changes the driveway and services design. Overhead lines are usually on the plan too.
- Gas and telco. Rarely a design constraint, always a construction constraint. Worth knowing before you draw a boundary trench.
- Water. Main size and location for a hydraulic connection assessment.
For anything that goes into a drawing at a specific depth or offset, you need a locator and potholing. The plans tell you where to look.
Lodging across many sites
The portal is designed for one enquiry at a time, with a drawn dig area, a project reference and a start date. That is fine for a builder. For a consultancy scoping ten sites a week it is a real time cost, and it means the enquiries are scattered across whoever lodged them.
PlanInsight lodges a BYDA enquiry on your behalf for the property you are looking at, collects the response PDFs as they arrive, and attaches them to the property record. Anyone in the team can open the property and see the plan set alongside the title, boundary, contours and planning overlays. Details on the features page.
Two conditions come with this, and they are important:
- The enquiry is lodged against the property, not your specific project or dig area. It is scoping information.
- If you or a contractor will excavate, a project-referenced BYDA enquiry must still be lodged by the party doing the work. That is a legal requirement and PlanInsight does not replace it.
A feasibility-stage checklist
When you open a new site, in this order:
- Confirm the lot on plan and boundary. Cadastral boundary as DXF covers this.
- Pull contours and watercourses in the same DXF. Note fall and drainage direction.
- Check planning overlays: flood, bushfire, waterway corridor, easements.
- Lodge the BYDA enquiry. Two business days.
- Open the survey plan and check for easements and encumbrances.
- Read the plan set against the contours. Where is the sewer, where is the stormwater, do they line up with where the site wants to drain?
- Write the fee proposal with the constraints named.
Steps 1 to 5 happen on one screen in PlanInsight. Step 6 is where you earn the fee. The consulting engineers page shows the full workflow.