Page 9 - Alabama811

I sit on the ICC’s Advisory Board, and I see some of the complaints. Almost all the excavator complaints I see have to do with 811 requests not marked by the utility companies on time.
In the first seven months of 2023,
the ICC has surpassed its previous record annual dollar amount of willful violation penalties.
In the case of late 811 ticket responses, the utilities receive the ICC penalties although virtually all of these locates are performed by contract locators. The contract locating company typically pays, however, due to a contractual agreement with their clients.
Will these penalties motivate the contract locating company to hire more locators? Well, the locating companies say not a lot of people out there want to become a locator and no amount of penalty money is going to change that.
If successfully addressing late 811 locates is a priority, the locating industry must improve people’s perception of locating as a career path if employers want
to get more people at the top of the hiring funnel. There’s also the issue of retaining people already on the payroll.
Locating Completely and Accurately
Let’s circle back to “the best locators in the world are doing it now” statement. Locating completely and accurately is the basis for what constitutes excellent locating results.
If there were more people wanting
to locate than locating positions, competition would determine who becomes a locator. The odds of customers getting excellent locating results would be much higher in this scenario than if there were more locating jobs than people who wanted those jobs.
Except for 811 locating, the end customer has the final say in who is hired to perform locating work and the timeframe in which the work is completed. The customer can make decisions based on the quality of the locating results received. Competition determines which company wins more work.
There may be a couple of things that work in the favor of these locators, namely vacuum excavation and the absence of stress created by unpredictable incoming workloads.
Construction crew locating may have these advantages, also, as well as enjoying the benefit of working in real-time with the people who need the results.
Career-enhancing Training
I’ve had thousands of conversations over the years with locators regarding their training, and there are too few career-enhancing learning opportunities after initial training. For most locators, excellence in locating comes only following training later in one’s career. Here are the key areas of strength exhibited by excellent locators:
A. A command of the locating instrument
B. Knowledge of utilities including the ability to determine what structures are associated with which utilities
C. An understanding of how utility maps assist with completeness and accuracy of locating results
A desire to do the work cannot be ignored. A locator can have all the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job to a level of excellence but not have the desire to do the job well. This is true
in any endeavor but in the locating industry, desire takes on a unique form because of locators’ occasional low self-perception due to external negative perception of the job.
There are people who locate 10 feet off and while there are multiple reasons this can happen, when it does, the mockery begins. How much derision can a person take before they lose their desire to do the job?
How can a line be located 10 feet off? One big reason is that some people don’t understand their locating instrument enough to fully analyze the information the receiver is giving them.
Here’s one real-life example: A veteran 811 locator mismarks the location of a 2” plastic gas main locating instead an abandoned 2” steel gas main five feet away. He says he got “good tone” on the abandoned line and that’s why he marked it. What does it mean to have got “good tone?” It’s like saying I got a good vibe that I was marking the gas main correctly.
A Sense of Purpose
The desire to provide excellent locating
results is most likely based on the sense of purpose the locator feels for their job. In the case of providing accurate X, Y, and Z inputs for mapping technology, the locator may think of their purpose as building the Google Earth of the Underground.
The desire to provide excellent
locating results may also be driven by the respect one feels for their work. Verifying 811 marks, getting accurate depth estimations on those marks,
and finding private utility lines for a construction crew may make the locator feel like an invaluable member of the team due to the time and heartache that this locating work can save the crew.
Utility Mapping Technology
We trust that technology can solve issues with late response to 811 tickets because we trust that technology can produce accurate maps that can take the place of people putting down paint and flags.
To create accurate maps, the technology needs accurate X, Y and Z inputs. Where do we get those? From the guy who says he got good tone?
Mapping technology needs a lot of competent people doing locating if, in fact, technology is going to effectively replace manpower in the field.
When you consider technology reduces the amount of manpower necessary to perform field locating, we’ll ultimately reach equilibrium, a point where the number of people who want to be locators is the same as the number of people who want those jobs.
The time will come when there are more people wanting to locate than there are locating jobs. Then, only those with superior skills and knowledge and the desire to perform locating work will be locators.
Science
Each locate result is explained
by science and for locators to
provide excellent results, they must understand the basic science behind electromagnetic locating. Unfortunately, there is no industrywide acceptance
of the need for locators to know the
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2024, Issue 1 Alabama 811 • 7