SROH 4th edition · Android · UK street works
Get the cut right
before you break ground
Photograph the excavation, trace the cut and whatever is already in the ground beside it. Proximity Rules measures every gap, cites the clause, and tells you whether the dig has to be cut back before it is squared off — on the phone, on site, in seconds.
Drag the yellow edge — or focus it and use the arrow keys.
The workflow
Six steps, one straight line
Nothing to set up, no account, no sync. Open the app at the dig and work forward through it; every edit is written to the phone as you make it, because a work handset gets closed mid-job and rained on.
Photograph or sketch
Shoot the dig, import from the gallery, or sketch it to scale when there is nothing to photograph. The sketch route runs the whole workflow without a camera.
Set the scale
Draw a line along something you have measured — usually a kerb — and type its length. Without a scale nothing is quoted in millimetres: a wrong reading is worse than none.
Trace the cut
Freehand or tap corner to corner. Long-press any side and type what it measures to bring a rough sketch to size. Corners can be nudged by 1, 10 or 100 mm afterwards.
Mark what is in the ground
Drag manholes, gully gratings, kerb runs, joints and previous reinstatements off the palette, or trace them. Add a note — "BT chamber, lid cracked" — and it prints.
Read the verdict
Every gap gets a figure, a clause and a verdict, and the worst one is the verdict for the dig. Where it fails, the app draws the shape that would clear it.
Export the record sheet
An A4 sheet with the marked-up photo, the findings, the clauses, the site reference and a GPS stamp. Saved to your gallery, shared however you like.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure is a clause,
quoted
The distances are transcribed from the Specification for the Reinstatement of Openings in Highways (SROH), fourth edition — the HAUC code published by the Department for Transport, statutory guidance from 10 May 2021. Nothing in the app is a rule of thumb. If a rule is not in the specification, it does not get a verdict.
Proximity — flexible and composite roads
Bituminous carriageways. Measured from the trimmed edge of the excavation to the road edge, kerbing, another reinstatement or any other fixed feature.
Where the trimmed edge of any excavation is within 250 mm of the road edge, kerbing, other fixed features or another reinstatement, the trim-line must be extended to the interface with the road edge, kerbing etc.SROH 4th ed., S6.8.9(1)
Proximity — rigid and modular roads
Concrete and modular carriageways, where the trigger list also names transverse and longitudinal joints. S7.5.12(4) adds that trimming into that distance takes the area of slab with it.
The edge of the excavation must not be located within 300 mm of a kerb, ironwork, transverse or longitudinal joints or another reinstatement unless the trim-line and surface reinstatement can be extended up to the feature in question.SROH 4th ed., S7.5.4
Rigid roads with dowel bars
Where dowel bars are installed the distance grows by half the bar length — the specification's own worked example is 300 mm dowels giving 450 mm. Set the bar length on the job and the assessment uses the longer distance.
The edge of the excavation must not be located within half of the dowel bar length plus 300 mm of a kerb, ironwork, transverse or longitudinal joints or another reinstatement…SROH 4th ed., S7.5.9
Footways, footpaths and cycle tracks
The shortest of the three distances. Edge preparation on footways still follows S6.8, so the corner and projection rules apply here too.
For all footways, footpaths and cycle tracks, where trim-lines for the reinstatement edges are within 150 mm of an edge, kerb, ironwork or other reinstatements, the trim-lines must be extended to the interface of the edge, kerb etc.SROH 4th ed., S8.6.3
Small footway features are exempt
A narrow sign post, lamp column or stop-cock box does not drag the trim-line out to it. The app measures the width of what you traced on the side facing the cut, so a slim post stays slim however far it runs up the footway.
Fixed features in the footway such as sign posts, lamp columns, stop-cock valve boxes, etc. that are less than 250 mm diameter or 250 mm wide on the side facing the reinstatement are exempt from the trim-line extension.SROH 4th ed., S8.6.4
Internal corners and projections
Corners do not have to be square — a 45° chamfer makes 135° internal corners and passes. There is no requirement to trim to a uniform width or a square either, so long as nothing sticks out by less than 250 mm.
Internal corners should generally be 90° or more… Any shape, having no projection less than 250 mm long, may be considered to be regular.SROH 4th ed., S6.8.6(1)(c)(ii)–(iv)
Judgement calls, stated plainly
Two places it does not
simply parrot the spec
An acute corner is a hard fail
S6.8.6(1)(c)(ii) does not forbid a corner under 90°; it makes it conditional on the compaction equipment being able to reach into it. A compactor cannot be worked into an acute corner, so in practice that condition is never met and the material left there frets out.
The app fails it outright. That is a deliberate step past the letter of the clause in the direction of its purpose — and the reference screen inside the app says so in as many words, rather than implying the specification demands it.
A distance line gets a number and no opinion
Drop a line between a gully and a kerb and you get the gap, in millimetres, in the measuring cyan — never in a verdict colour. It carries no clause, so it gets no verdict: inventing one would be inventing a rule.
The exported sheet prints these under MEASURED ON SITE, apart from the findings, and says outright that no clause has been applied to them.
What it will not do
Honest limits
- It cannot see buried apparatus, damage to the layers below the surface, or anything out of shot. It checks what you trace on the photograph.
- It is not a substitute for the specification or for your authority's own requirements, and it is not an inspection.
- The photo scan is a spotter, not an assessor. Suggested outlines and defects are drawn dashed and amber until you accept them; nothing it finds is ever assessed on its own say-so.
- No scale, no millimetres. Without a calibration the corner check still runs but every distance drops to an advisory.
What it does do
On the phone, on site
- Says what to cut to. Where a gap fails, the app draws the smallest shape that reaches every feature it is too close to — and how far each edge has to move.
- Reads in sunlight and at night. Dark-only hi-vis palette, big targets, built for cold hands and a wet screen.
- Works with no signal. There is no network code in it at all — see below.
- Keeps a record. Every job and every exported sheet stays in the history, with what it was of and what it said.
Offline by design
The app has no internet
permission at all
Not "we don't collect much" — the app cannot reach the network, because Android was never asked for permission to let it. No servers, no accounts, no analytics, no ad SDKs, no crash reporting. Your photographs, your job references and your GPS stamps stay on the handset until you choose to share a sheet.
The build
- Platform
- Android 7.0 and up
- Version
- 1.0
- Specification
- SROH 4th edition
- Trackers
- None
Get the app
Ready to check your dig?
Free to download. No account, no sign-up, no trackers. Works on any Android phone running 7.0 or later — even without a signal.