Not always, it could be them just clearing their underground ducts to clear space for infrastructure like copper or fibre between agg nodes, slitters or towards cabinets, but yeah it "could" still be for FTTP.
I know when I saw them doing that near me it was FTTC and not FTTP.
The pole next to the FTTC cab has a bundle of cable/fibre ready to install (hanging off one of the foot holds). Nice if it happens considering it wasn't a viable Cab until I emailed Clive Selley.
A1024 labels/tags were (and looks like they still are) a simple way to let other BT engineers know about a defect that has already been identified on that piece of equipment. Hopefully helping to prevent other engineers reporting the same issue up their management chain (think there probably is a A1024 app on engineers smart phones now), they use to be bright yellow in colour and expired after 6 months. I can't read what it says but hopefully somebody will be round to fix the defect and will then remove the label/tag