2019 DIRT REPORT
Appendix G: How National Grid Uses DIRT to Reduce Damages By Robert Terjesen, Damage Prevention Manager, National Grid Like all facility owners in North America, National Grid’s Damage Prevention program is designed to reduce excavation damages to our buried infrastructure. The three main components to a successful damage prevention program are: • Educate and promote the 811 call-before-you-dig number/process. • Respond to all 811 excavation notification requests and accurately locate our underground facilities. • Educate and promote local state safe digging requirements and CGA’s Best Practices. National Grid focused on those three components for over a decade and saw consistent, annual improvement in reducing the number of damages to our system, as well as a significant reduction in the damage rate per thousand tickets. National Grid New York
2006
2014
Improvement
Damages
1,424
841
41%
Damage Rate per 1,000
5.36
1.89
64%
But suddenly the year-over-year improvements slowed, we plateaued, and our damage rates stayed within a narrow range. An internal review of our program revealed that our damage prevention program was doing what we had always done. So why did we stop seeing that continuous, annual improvement? We promoted 811 and were slowly reducing the number of damages due to No Notification. Additionally, we worked with our locators on their performance and continued to see incremental improvements in marking our facilities accurately. But despite our best efforts to educate and promote safe excavating best practices, the excavator-at-fault damage rate flatlined. And since that was our biggest driver of damages, that explained why we plateaued. National Grid turned to CGA and recent DIRT Reports to help us assess our program. The 2018 DIRT Report showed that we were not alone: the analysis of submitted industry data indicated that “…progress in reducing damages has plateaued.” But the DIRT Report does more than just analyze the data. It also provides valuable recommendations on how to improve and interpret your own data to inform your education, outreach and damage prevention efforts. More importantly, the DIRT Report recommends that companies embrace new, emerging technologies and approaches to improve their Damage Prevention efforts. National Grid agreed with these recommendations but needed to identify which data was most valuable and how it could be used to improve our performance. COMMON GROUND ALLIANCE
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