Fluke has launched the SmartTrace 2082 Series underground locator, which injects signals to trace metallic cables and pipelines down to 6 m depth while identifying ground faults, sheath faults and coating defects where conductors contact earth. The locator connects via Bluetooth to Fluke’s PointMan app, enabling real-time geolocation, mapping and documentation of buried utilities directly on a smartphone for future works planning. Fluke cites around 60,000 utility strikes per year in UK excavations, positioning SmartTrace as a tool to cut strike risk and improve pre-dig surveys.

World Day for Safety and Health at Work sees Mott MacDonald showcase five digital tools from a Strategic Design Partnership hackathon aimed at tightening hazard management on infrastructure projects. Concepts include automated hazard identification from design models, mobile apps for site-based risk reporting, and dashboards aggregating incident and near-miss data in real time. For civil and geotechnical teams, the focus is on earlier visibility of construction and ground risks, faster feedback loops between site and design, and more structured capture of lessons learned.

Ordnance Survey has launched OS Enhanced Land Cover (ELC) Beta, a national habitat-mapping dataset that fuses OS National Geographic Database topography, OS aerial imagery, OS Terrain 5 and third-party sources including Natural England’s Living England, the Rural Payments Agency’s Crop Map of England and UKHab classifications to support 10% Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) assessments. The tool enables desktop and field workflows for ecologists and developers, with Wessex Water using it via Linckia’s ESRI-based Habitat Fabric platform to assess hundreds of sites in a single spatial view. Linckia reports a 40% cut in data processing costs versus previous methods, rising to 90% compared with processing raw imagery, with OS claiming time savings of days to weeks per development across 1.5 million homes in the pipeline.