A core interactive course on ground disturbance: 19 scenarios walking the locate-and-verify sequence — reading locates, respecting tolerance zones, and hand-exposing before machine digging — validating 6 competencies. It builds the disciplined habit that keeps a buried line from becoming a strike.
Ground-disturbance and locates awareness for everyone who disturbs the ground or works near it — construction (residential, ICI and heavy-civil), utilities, pipeline, municipal works, landscaping, telecom and site-servicing crews, and the machine operators, spotters and supervisors around them.
Equip everyone who disturbs the ground or works near it to understand that what's under the ground is invisible until you hit it — the mark on the grass is not the pipe, buried…
Workers who excavate, trench, bore, or dig where buried utilities and services may be present.
Passing the final test issues a QR-verified certificate, valid for one year.
This certificate records completion of knowledge training in ground disturbance and buried-service locates — the utility locate colour code and what each strike does, the call-before-you-dig process, the locate ticket, the tolerance zone and the stop-and-report triggers at a dig site — and it records the Trained state only. It does not establish that the holder can hand-expose a live buried service. Daylighting a gas line or an energized cable inside the tolerance zone is a physical skill with explosion and electrocution consequences, and nothing assessed here can measure it. Before a worker hand-exposes a service or digs near one, the employer must confirm a valid, in-date locate ticket covering the actual work area, observe the worker daylighting the service before any machine works near it, and sign that observation off as Competent. This training confers no ground-disturbance permit or supervisor designation, no Competent Person — Excavation & Trench Safety designation, and no authority to act as a utility locator or to sign off a dig.
About 1 hour online, over 5 modules, at your own pace. It ends with a final test that needs 80% to pass.
One year from the day you pass. Orientra’s standard is for ground-disturbance and locates training to be reviewed at least annually and whenever the work, the site or the utilities change — a new dig area, a new or expired locate ticket, a service added or relocated, a change in the buried infrastructure, a near-miss or a strike all trigger a refresh, and a locate ticket must be valid, in-date and cover the actual work area every time.
Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health Act (C.C.S.M. c. W210); Manitoba WSH Regulation MR 217/2006; CSA excavation and shoring standards; and 5 more listed on this page.
This certificate records completion of knowledge training in ground disturbance and buried-service locates — the utility locate colour code and what each strike does, the call-before-you-dig process, the locate ticket, the tolerance zone and the stop-and-report triggers at a dig site — and it records the Trained state only. It does not establish that the holder can hand-expose a live buried service. Daylighting a gas line or an energized cable inside the tolerance zone is a physical skill with explosion and electrocution consequences, and nothing assessed here can measure it. Before a worker hand-exposes a service or digs near one, the employer must confirm a valid, in-date locate ticket covering the actual work area, observe the worker daylighting the service before any machine works near it, and sign that observation off as Competent. This training confers no ground-disturbance permit or supervisor designation, no Competent Person — Excavation & Trench Safety designation, and no authority to act as a utility locator or to sign off a dig.