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CAT and Genny Cable Avoidance Training
Half a day on finding buried services before the bucket does. The CAT tells you something is there. The Genny tells you what. Neither of them is any use if the person holding it has never been shown how to sweep properly.
About this course
A service strike is quick, expensive and occasionally fatal. An 11kV cable does not give anybody a second chance, and a struck gas main empties a street. The equipment that prevents it, a Cable Avoidance Tool and a Signal Generator, sits in most site vans and is routinely used wrong.
This half day is for the people using it: groundworkers, excavator operators, utilities and highways teams, civils crews, and the supervisors signing the permit to dig. It covers the equipment, the modes, the sweep and, above all, what the readings do and do not tell you.
The limitations are where the course earns its keep. Power mode misses an unenergised cable. Radio mode will not pick up a plastic water pipe at all. Genny signals bleed onto neighbouring services. A clean sweep is not proof that nothing is down there, and treating it as proof is how people get hurt.
So the course puts detection in its proper place: one part of a safe system of work that starts with utility drawings, adds detection, and finishes with careful hand digging to expose the service before any machine touches it.
We run it at our centres in Stoke-on-Trent, Derby, Manchester and Liverpool and onsite across the UK. Onsite, we can sweep your own ground with your own kit, which finds problems a classroom never will.
- Why service strikes happen, and what the consequences look like in practice
- HSG47 and the safe system of work: plans, detection, then safe digging
- Reading and using utility drawings, and why they are a guide rather than a map
- What a Cable Avoidance Tool actually detects, and in which mode
- Power, radio and genny modes, and when each one is the right choice
- Using a Signal Generator: direct connection, induction and the signal clamp
- Sweeping properly: the pattern, the depth check, marking up and re-sweeping
- The limitations: unenergised cables, plastic pipes, signal bleed and false negatives
- Daily function checks, calibration intervals and what takes a CAT out of service
- Safe digging: trial holes, hand digging and exposing a service before machines start
How completing this course helps you
- An Acadame certificate in CAT and Genny cable avoidance
- Operatives who sweep in a pattern rather than waving the wand about
- A team that treats a clean sweep as information rather than permission
- Fewer strikes, and a defensible safe system of work if one happens anyway
Who should attend?
Groundworkers and excavation crews, plant and excavator operators, utilities, highways and civils teams, drainage and telecoms contractors, and the supervisors and site managers who authorise excavation. Also useful for surveyors and designers who need to understand what detection can and cannot promise.
Entry requirements. None. It assumes no previous training and it is written for the people doing the work rather than the people writing the policy.
Ready to take the next step?
Choose a delivery option, compare dates and book with confidence, or ask MB and get an answer straight away.
Awareness or card
Awareness training, or the NPORS operator card?
This half day gives your people the knowledge and the practical competence to use a CAT and Genny properly. For a great many groundworks and civils teams that is exactly the right level.
If a client or principal contractor is asking for a card, that is a different route. NPORS N304 Cable Avoidance Tool is the accredited operator qualification and it comes with a card that a site can check at the gate.
Send us the wording the client used. “CAT and Genny trained” and “NPORS N304 card” are asking for different things and sending somebody on the wrong one wastes a day.
Everybody who sweeps
This half day. Practical, on real ground, with the limitations demonstrated rather than described.
Where a card is required
NPORS N304 Cable Avoidance Tool, the accredited operator qualification.
The supervisor authorising the dig
CITB SSSTS, plus RAMS training so the permit and method statement match the ground conditions.
Course content
What you will cover
The qualification is structured around the management of health and safety and the practical application of risk assessment.
Before you switch anything on
- Why underground service strikes happen
- HSG47 and the safe system of work
- Obtaining and reading utility drawings
- Planning the dig and the permit to excavate
- Understanding what each utility looks like underground
The equipment
- The Cable Avoidance Tool and what it detects
- Power mode, radio mode and genny mode
- The Signal Generator: direct connection, induction and the clamp
- Daily function checks and calibration
- Recognising a fault and taking kit out of service
Sweeping and digging
- The sweep pattern, and doing it in two directions
- Tracing a service and estimating depth
- Marking up the ground and when to re-sweep
- Limitations: unenergised cables, plastic pipes, signal bleed
- Trial holes and hand digging to expose services
- What to do when you find something unexpected, or strike one
Method of assessment
How CAT and Genny is assessed
Assessment is built into the session rather than bolted on. Your trainer checks understanding as you go and there is a short written check at the end.
Practical sweep
Everybody uses the CAT and the Genny on a real sweep, locating and tracing services and marking up. Onsite we do it on your own ground.
Limitations exercise
A sweep set up to produce a false negative, so people see for themselves that a clean reading is not a guarantee.
Written check and certificate
A short paper on the modes, the limitations and the safe digging sequence, then an Acadame certificate on completion.
Ways to learn
How you can take this course
Every route covers the same accredited syllabus and the same support. Pick the one that fits how your people work.
Dates and locations
Pick a date
Live availability from our booking system. Prices exclude VAT.
Have the dates emailed to you
Which centres do you want on the sheet?
A clean, printable PDF of exactly what you are looking at, however many pages that takes. We will only use your address to send it and to answer you.
Classroom and live online courses
1CourseLengthFromAvailabilityCAT & Genny Cable AvoidanceGeneral AwarenessHalf a day£140 + VAT6 dates
- Fri 2 Oct 2026 · 08:45Liverpool (Widnes)£140.00 + VATBook
- Tue 27 Oct 2026 · 08:45Stoke-on-Trent£140.00 + VATFully booked
- Mon 2 Nov 2026 · 08:45Liverpool (Widnes)£140.00 + VATBook
- Thu 3 Dec 2026 · 08:45Liverpool (Widnes)£140.00 + VATBook
- Thu 18 Mar 2027 · 08:45Stoke-on-Trent£140.00 + VATBook
- Fri 4 Jun 2027 · 08:45Stoke-on-Trent£140.00 + VATBook
Prices are per person and exclude VAT. Nothing here has to be booked online: call 0330 124 2165 or email hello@acadame.co.uk and we will book you on, or put a date on to suit you.
Nothing matches that. Clear the filters, or tell us what you are after and we will point you at it: 0330 124 2165 or hello@acadame.co.uk.
Everything we run is on this page, whether or not a date is showing. Where a course is scheduled, open the availability column to see the dates, the centre, the price and how many places are left. Where nothing is scheduled it only means nobody has asked yet: tell us the course and the numbers and we will put a date on, here or at your place.
Also available
In-company training
We run this one to order, at your place or ours.
Onsite / in-company
Run CAT and Genny at your site
We deliver anywhere in the UK, on your dates and around your shift patterns. For six or more people it is usually cheaper per head than sending everyone to a centre, and nobody loses a day travelling.
Tell us roughly how many people and when, and we will come back with options and a price, or ask MB and get an answer straight away.
What onsite includes
- The same tutor, materials and certification as our centres
- Your venue or one we arrange near you
- Dates and start times built around your operation
- One invoice and one point of contact for the whole group
- Content examples drawn from your own workplace
CAT and Genny FAQs
The CAT, a Cable Avoidance Tool, is the receiver: it listens for signals coming off buried services. The Genny, a Signal Generator, is the transmitter: it puts a signal onto a specific service so the CAT can find and trace it. The CAT on its own will find live power cables and some radio signals. Adding the Genny lets you find and identify much more.
Not on its own. A plastic pipe with no tracer wire carries no signal to detect, and this is one of the most common causes of a strike after a clean sweep. It is why the course treats detection as one layer in a safe system of work rather than the answer.
Manufacturers generally specify annual calibration, and a daily function check before use on top of that. The course covers both, because a CAT that has not been checked since it came out of the box is a false sense of security in a bag.
No. This is Acadame accredited awareness and practical training. NPORS N304 Cable Avoidance Tool is the accredited operator qualification that comes with a card. Sites asking for a card need that route.
Yes, and it is the version we would recommend. Sweeping your own ground with your own kit routinely finds a CAT with a flat battery, a Genny nobody has ever connected directly, and a patch of ground where the drawings are wrong.
Acadame. It is general awareness training rather than a regulated qualification, which is the right shape for this subject: it is built around what your people actually do and it can be adapted to your own equipment, substances and procedures. Where a regulated qualification is what you need instead, we will say so and point you at it.
Yes, anywhere in the UK, and it is usually the better option. Training on your own equipment, in your own building, with your own procedures in front of people, transfers to the job in a way a generic venue does not.
Up to twelve on a standard session. For practical subjects we will talk through numbers with you, because a room of twenty watching two people practise is not training.
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