A Damage Prevention Liaison gets the opportunity to meet with a wide range of stakeholders in the utility world. One of our core duties includes safety presentations to utilities, excavators, locators, government bodies, and other groups who deal with underground utilities. While our presentations vary depending on our audience, I always like to give an overview of the 811 system to clear up any misinformation about our process and how locate tickets work. We discuss local, statewide, and national examples of the root cause of damage, “reasonable care” violations, tolerance/ safety zone issues, and best practices that can be used to avoid damage and violations of the Tennessee Underground Utility Damage Prevention Act. These always appear to be popular topics with the people who work in the field doing excavation and utility work especially when I can use photos of actual damage from job sites and talk about the issues surrounding how the damage occurred.
The questions, comments, and discussions that take place during our presentations are educational for me, as I get to hear first-hand the problems that people run into and frustrations they deal with in their world. These are all things we take back with us to share with our damage prevention co-workers to make our
presentations more relevant and engaging for the groups we deal with the most.
Sometimes the inspiration to completely revamp presentation material comes from one of those questions or comments from the audience. An example would be last year when I was presenting to a group of construction workers and heard:
“Man, I just dig the holes…”
A light moment for sure, as the very seasoned gentleman who made this comment had his fellow co-workers erupting in laughter. They also proceeded to remind him of other things he did and DIDN’T do at work…
What stuck with me about this comment was the fact that maybe people on the job site actually feel this way. “I just dig the holes.” Joking or not, it reminded me that it can be easy to get focused on our given task and rely on others to manage the peripheral issues.
What I hear most often, and what was echoed in that gentleman’s comment, is when the boss tells you the site is clear towork, you show up and go to work. You show up with the assumption that everything not related to your particular job duties on a site have been taken care of. This prompted me to look at my presentation and ask, “But what if it hasn’t?”
Were underground utility issues covered during a site survey and safety briefings to ensure workers are fully aware of the risks and hazards of known and possibly unknown underground utilities? Is there an accessible copy of the locate ticket on site showing which utilities have responded and which utilities they should expect to see marked in the area? Are they aware that maybe a listed utility did not enter a response on the locate ticket even though the ticket is now valid and open for work? Were these issues discussed and pointed out?
If this information is not provided to workers onsite, do they know how to use our online ticket portal to look up the locate ticket for that job from their phone and verify the utility responses?
Are they aware if they see evidence of, or discover an unmarked utility, they should be reporting it to a supervisor and that a Second Notice should be made to 811 before they start excavation?
I have to thank my commenter for the inspiration to adjust my presentation to focus more on the actions individuals can take, owning their own safety and the overall safety of their co-workers around underground utilities. And, by the way, we know you do more than just dig the holes!