When the One Call, now referred to as the 811 industry, first began, the criteria for how members were notified were very broad. A facility owner’s service area was listed as either county-wide, receiving any request placed for a particular county, or as inside or outside the city limits of incorporated areas.
From there, we moved to utilizing legal descriptions of where their facilities crossed Township, Range and Sections grids as outlined across the state. These were mile grids, which could impact over notifications for a member if their facilities only crossed in a small part of that mile grid.
As technology improved, the 811 system database model began to utilize spatial data and GIS (geographical information system) for both our member utility service notification areas and landbase for mapping proposed excavation requests to determine the members to be notified. This technology allows us to utilize pinpoint notification for members, especially those with limited exposure at the excavation site, as opposed to earlier methods, which may have excavation being conducted nearly a mile away from their facilities.
GIS data is also used to build parcel data, landmarks, milepost markers, railroad markers, points of interest, and aerial imagery to help the contact center agent or remote user use the base maps more efficiently to find the proposed excavation site when placing their locate requests.
Moving forward, we foresee the inclusion of digital white lining, where the excavator will “mark” on our software system maps where they plan to excavate at the defined excavation site. This image will be transmitted to the member, who then can review the site in real-time to determine potential conflict with their facilities, to know if they need to route a locator to the site or “clear” the request as not conflicting.
This is just the beginning of where this technology is impacting the 811 programs to help build more efficient and quality processes.