What’s next for public safety in the right-of-way? Wayne Jensen Director of Safety Stahl & Associates Insurance, Inc. St. Petersburg, Florida here is no question that there is a need to develop new strategies to protect the integrity of buried facilities in the public rights-of-way. The number of instances is increasing where damages result in major losses of life. With each catastrophic event we hear the public outcry to protect buried facilities to protect the safety of the public. The challenge of damage protection professionals everywhere is to uncover new strategies to protect the public and all parties working in and around the public ROW.
Current status of damage prevention The current status of damage prevention in many regions is good enough to keep the rate of damages to buried facilities to about one damage per 1,000 excavations as represented by a one-call system locate ticket. For instance, Florida had 872 damages to a reported 981,000 tickets for the 2010 year which is roughly one damage per 1,000 locates. Some data suggest that overall averages for damage may range between three and five damages per 1,000 locates. It is interesting that locating organizations, which all strive for zero damages, will often accept a quality metric for acceptable damage ratios of their locators to be about the same ratio of one “at fault damage” per 1,000 locates performed.
The “norms” for damage prevention This opening comment about the current status of damage prevention 76 APWA Reporter
August 2012
is used to tell the reader that we may be fighting the “norms” for acceptable risk in driving damages to even lower levels. The damage prevention industry is focused on failures to prevent damage much more than on industry successes. Utility Risk Managers, however, may be looking at the success of most utilities in preventing damage described here and believe little more can be done to lower damage rates without incurring extraordinary costs.
Cost vs. benefit for improving damage prevention The cost versus benefit barrier surfaces when it comes to investment in damage prevention that may be required to improve the quality aspects of utility locating. The quality of utility locating is a direct function of: (1) the quality of information provided to locators; (2) the quality of the technology being used to locate facilities; and (3) the skill of the locator in using the technology. Out of those three areas almost nothing is being done to improve the quality of data provided to locators for use in locating because the cost is perceived to outweigh the benefit. We continue to uncover many instances where the utility believed their facility was on the other side of the street from where the damage occurred. The facility was marked where the utility’s records stated it was in some cases 100 feet from where it actually was found and damaged. The truth is that improving the quality of buried facility location data—the area of damage prevention which has the most direct bearing on public safety—
is the area of greatest opportunity for public safety.
Critical drivers for the adoption of best practices What may cause a shift in the adoption of best practices on the part of all stakeholders to damage prevention is the fact that the density of buried facilities has reached a critical mass of vulnerability. There is an ever-increasing public outcry to do more to protect the public with regard to damage prevention. The human cost of damage in the “court of public opinion” will likely drive the next generation of damage prevention.
Responsibility for protecting buried facilities Today the current condition is that the responsibility of protecting buried facilities has been totally shifted to the realm of the locator and the excavator. And, the ability of both of these stakeholders to prevent damage is largely dependent on the quality of facility location data which falls into the realm of responsibility of the utility and public owners of the ROW. It is well established that the utility will not provide Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE) services for locates. That is easy to understand when the utility is trying to keep the cost of locate tickets in the field down to $10 when they would have to spend $2,000 to $3,000 on a surveyed SUE vacuum excavate to verify the location of buried facilities at a single point or $200 to $400 per point documenting facilities in a ROW.
