NAPUA News & Insights

The ground disturbance lifecycle is incomplete at the point where risk is managed in the field. This paper defines the role of the Damage Prevention Specialist and introduces a structured approach to verifying, preserving, and applying locate information during execution, strengthening existing One Call and SUE processes.

Even when One Call locates are completed, damage still occurs. This article explains why. Using a real world case study, it highlights the gap in the damage prevention lifecycle and shows how private locating, led by Damage Prevention Specialists, provides the final layer of verification required to manage risk at the point of ground disturbance.

The launch of the North American Private Utility Association during Dig Safe Month marks a step toward addressing long standing safety gaps on private property.

Ground disturbance on private property carries significant legal, financial, and safety risk that is widely misunderstood. While public damage prevention laws and One Call systems focus on publicly owned infrastructure, they were never designed to manage the vast network of privately owned buried facilities beneath private property. When legislation is unclear or silent, responsibility does not disappear. It shifts to those authorizing and performing the work under principles of duty of care and due diligence. NAPUA exists to address this gap by providing a consistent best practices framework that supports defensible decision making, proactive risk management, and accountability where regulatory systems fall short.

For nearly two decades, I have known that our industry lacked a coherent lifecycle framework for managing subsurface risk. Public locate systems, Subsurface Utility Engineering, and private locating operate in separate lanes, yet most projects move forward without integration. When SUE is absent, risk is not eliminated, it is shifted downstream to those performing the ground disturbance. This article explains that structural gap and why NAPUA was created to bring governance to the private lane.

The North American Private Utility Association has been established to provide lifecycle governance for privately owned buried utility infrastructure on private property. While public locate systems and Subsurface Utility Engineering address specific phases of subsurface risk management, no unified framework has defined how these lanes connect through the ground disturbance phase where physical exposure occurs. NAPUA formalizes that structure through its Lifecycle Model, Best Practices, and governance framework, bringing clarity, accountability, and consistency to private property risk management across North America.