Direct repair cost of a utility strike taken as $9,000 a strike across about 15,000 strikes a year, Australia 2024

What it is. Per reported utility strike, direct cost of repairing the damaged asset only; indirect and social costs excluded.

Sample. A direct cost per strike that the industry body advised as conservative and the report used to price about 15,276 strikes reported a year by the 26 largest network operators ($137.5 million a year). The 16 case studies it examined (four each in gas, energy, water and telecommunications) averaged $26,732 in direct cost, which the report says is likely higher than the average strike. Including indirect and social costs, the report puts the total at $4.6 billion a year, about 32.4 times the direct cost.

What it is not. An advised planning figure used as a model input, not an observed mean. The cost is the asset owner's repair cost: the utility bears it unless it recovers it from whoever caused the damage, so it is the contractor's exposure only where that recovery is made, and it is not the contractor's loss. It excludes the contractor's own standing-time and reinstatement costs, delay, and the societal cost of the outage. Strikes by pipe, cable or sector differ widely (telecommunications repairs in the case studies were the largest). The report gives no price year for the $9,000 (it escalates its case-study costs to 2024), so 2024 is the report's date. The strike count covers reported strikes only, which the report thinks is two to three times fewer than the strikes that happen. The report's own basis for the $9,000 is "BYDA data and experience" (Appendix C), with no records shown.

Where it came from

• Before You Dig Australia (prepared by Clear Ridge Consulting) (2024), Economic Assessment of Utility Strikes in Australia
  Section 3.3 (Table 1, 16 case studies) and Section 3.4 (Table 3 and the extrapolation), report pages 5 to 8, and Appendix C for the basis of the $9,000 · source record

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