Grant Piraine
Aug 19, 2026
Completing the Ground Disturbance Lifecycle: The Missing Link in Damage Prevention
The North American Private Utility Association would like to thank ACTS Now for hosting NAPUA at the Global Damage Prevention Summit in Tennessee and for giving us the opportunity to introduce the Ground Disturbance Lifecycle Framework to the damage prevention community. For those who were unable to attend my presentation, Completing the Ground Disturbance Lifecycle: The Missing Link in Damage Prevention, this article summarizes the central ideas behind the discussion and the mindset shift we believe is necessary to continue reducing buried utility damages.
The presentation started with a simple question. We have 811 and One Call systems, utility locates, regulations, engineering standards, Subsurface Utility Engineering, increasingly sophisticated locating technologies, and decades of industry Best Practices. With all of those systems and tools available to us, why are buried utility facilities still being damaged?
The answer is not that the existing damage prevention system has failed. One Call systems, public utility locating, SUE, engineering practices, and industry Best Practices remain essential components of safe ground disturbance. The challenge is that much of the industry's structure has historically concentrated on planning, notification, and delivering locate information, while significantly less structure exists around what happens when all of that information finally reaches the people who are about to disturb the ground.
That is the operational phase of the Ground Disturbance Lifecycle.
Risk Moves Through a Lifecycle
NAPUA views subsurface utility risk through three connected phases: the Design Phase, the Notification and Locate Phase, and the Operational Phase. Each phase has a different function, but they are sequential and the level of uncertainty remaining at the end of one phase directly affects the next.
During the Design Phase, Subsurface Utility Engineering can be used to investigate buried utility infrastructure, review records, establish appropriate quality levels, identify conflicts, and reduce uncertainty before construction begins. On projects where comprehensive SUE is properly applied, the design team can make decisions using significantly more information about the subsurface environment.
The Notification and Locate Phase occurs immediately before ground disturbance. The Ground Disturbance Professional contacts 811 or the applicable One Call system so public utility owners can respond, and on private property a private locate contractor may also be retained to investigate privately owned buried utility infrastructure beyond the public utility demarcation point.
In an ideal lifecycle, the current public and private locates can then be compared against the information developed during design. That gives the people performing the work another opportunity to verify that the available information correlates before equipment enters the ground.
The problem is that many ground disturbance projects do not follow that ideal sequence. SUE may never have been commissioned, private buried infrastructure may not have been considered during design, records may be incomplete or unavailable, and private locating may not begin until the excavation or drilling crew is already mobilized.
When that happens, the risk that could have been reduced upstream does not disappear. It moves downstream into the Operational Phase, where the Ground Disturbance Professional inherits the remaining uncertainty immediately before physical ground disturbance occurs.
Receiving a Locate Is a Process
One of the central messages from the presentation was a distinction that I believe the excavation community needs to understand. Receiving a locate is a process, but what happens after the locate is received becomes a safety practice.
The notification is submitted, the utility owner responds, the locator performs the locate, and the information is eventually delivered to the people performing the work. It is easy at that point to assume the process is complete and that responsibility for the buried infrastructure has somehow been transferred to the locator.
It has not. The information has simply reached the next stage of the lifecycle.
The Ground Disturbance Professional now has to determine whether the information makes sense for the actual site conditions and the work being performed. Are expected facilities accounted for? Do locate markings correlate with visible utility appurtenances? Do the public and private locate results make sense together? Are there unresolved limitations? Is ownership clear? Does something on the property suggest that buried infrastructure may exist that has not been identified?
The Ground Disturbance Professional does not need to become a utility locator. They do, however, need enough knowledge to recognize when the information available is not sufficient to proceed safely.
Verification Is the Key Operational Control
Verification was one of the most important words throughout the presentation because it connects the locate process to informed field decision-making. A locate mark should not be treated as absolute truth simply because paint has been placed on the ground.
Consider the fundamental process used by a public utility locator. The utility owner has records or mapping, the locator reviews that information, and then uses locating equipment, visible appurtenances, field conditions, and professional judgment to identify the buried facility. The locator therefore has multiple sources of information that can be compared against one another.
The records indicate what should be there. The locating equipment indicates what appears to be there. Visible site conditions and appurtenances provide additional evidence about how the infrastructure should logically connect.
When those sources correlate, confidence increases. When they do not correlate, the discrepancy itself becomes important information because something requires further investigation.
That is verification and this is the practice that the majority of public locates are based on.
The same principle applies to the Ground Disturbance Professional. If a transformer is visible but no corresponding electrical facility is marked, that should raise a question. If a gas meter exists and nothing beyond the meter has been considered, that should raise a question. If a public locate and verification locate by a private locator differ significantly, the correct response is not to choose whichever paint appears more convenient. The discrepancy needs to be understood.
Verification gives us the opportunity to challenge an assumption before the excavator challenges it with a bucket, drill, saw, auger, or other ground-disturbing equipment.
The Tools Already Exist
The encouraging part of this discussion is that the industry already has many of the tools required to reduce residual subsurface risk. The problem is often not the absence of tools, but knowing when to use them and understanding what each one can and cannot accomplish.
Depending on the project, additional risk controls may include SUE, utility records and as-built drawings, independent private verification of public locates, electromagnetic locating, Ground Penetrating Radar, vacuum excavation, test holes, potholing, hand exposure, critical zones, increased excavation controls, or employing a Damage Prevention Specialist to help coordinate, interpret, and reconcile all of the available information. Lastly, it may simply mean stopping work until unresolved uncertainty can be properly investigated.
On some higher-risk projects, I have seen project owners retain two independent private locate contractors to investigate the same buried infrastructure. If their results correlate, confidence increases. If they differ, the discrepancy triggers additional investigation, and the area may be treated as a critical zone until the uncertainty is better understood.
The Ground Disturbance Professional does not need to personally operate all of these technologies or perform every investigation. They need to understand that the options exist, recognize when additional verification is necessary, and know which qualified professionals can be brought into the process.
That is what due diligence looks like during the Operational Phase. It is not simply being able to say that 811 was called and a private locate was obtained. It is being able to demonstrate that when uncertainty existed, it was recognized and reasonable steps were taken to reduce it before ground disturbance proceeded.
The objective is not to trust a locate. The objective is to satisfy yourself that the risk has been reasonably investigated before you disturb the ground.
Best Practices Are Necessary, but They Are Not Enough
The damage prevention industry has spent decades developing Best Practices, and that work has provided an important foundation for the industry. Best Practices help define what good damage prevention should look like and establish expectations that organizations can incorporate into their programs.
However, publishing a Best Practice does not change field behavior.
A worker, supervisor, project manager, asset owner, or private locator still needs to understand how that Best Practice is applied under actual field conditions. Telling someone what they should achieve is different from teaching them how to recognize the conditions, follow the process, apply the appropriate controls, and make the correct decision when uncertainty remains.
This is where NAPUA is taking the next step. NAPUA Best Practices define what should be achieved, companion Guidelines provide step-by-step direction on how those practices can be implemented, and training teaches stakeholders how to recognize and apply those requirements in the field.
Best Practices define the standard. Guidelines make the standard usable. Training makes it operational, and accountability is ultimately what changes behavior.
The objective is not to publish another document and hope that people read it. The objective is to create a structure that changes how people work around buried utility infrastructure.
Education Has to Reach Every Stakeholder
The solution cannot focus only on the excavator or only on the locator. NAPUA has identified four stakeholder groups that influence private-property ground disturbance outcomes, and each group controls a different part of the risk.
Ground Disturbance Professionals need to understand the locate process, recognize gaps and limitations, know when verification is required, understand the tools available to them, and make informed decisions about whether ground disturbance can proceed.
Private utility asset owners and property managers need to understand that ownership of buried utility infrastructure creates responsibility. They need to maintain and provide records where available, provide access to relevant areas and knowledgeable personnel, understand their demarcation points, and recognize that withholding or failing to maintain information can increase risk for everyone working on their property.
Risk professionals, including insurers, claims professionals, lawyers, and organizational risk managers, need to understand how the lifecycle actually functions. Their involvement should not begin only after a utility strike occurs. Understanding the lifecycle allows them to help establish defensible systems, training requirements, contractual expectations, and accountability before an incident occurs.
Private locators and Damage Prevention Specialists also require a broader level of competency. Their role increasingly involves more than placing paint on the ground. It may include investigating records, identifying inconsistencies, documenting limitations, verifying public locate information, communicating residual risk, and helping Ground Disturbance Professionals understand the information available to them before making an excavation decision.
Damage prevention improves only when every stakeholder understands and fulfills their role in the lifecycle. If one group fails to recognize or communicate uncertainty, that uncertainty can continue downstream until it reaches the point where someone physically disturbs the ground.
The Mindset Shift
At the beginning of the presentation, I asked the audience to give me forty minutes to challenge the way we think about the locate process. Many people involved in excavation have expressed the same frustration at some point: I called 811, where is my locate? They are required to respond. Just show me where the facility is and give me the locate on time.
Those expectations are reasonable. Utility owners have responsibilities, locate providers have responsibilities, and the notification system should perform the function it was designed to perform. But once the information reaches the field, the Ground Disturbance Professional still has an important role.
Receiving a locate does not mean the job is finished. It means the information has reached you.
From that point forward, the responsibility is to understand what was received, recognize where gaps may exist, verify what needs to be verified, and use the tools and qualified professionals available to reduce residual risk as far as reasonably possible before ground disturbance begins.
The Ground Disturbance Professional must ultimately satisfy themselves that they have performed their due diligence and that the subsurface risk has been reasonably investigated before equipment enters the ground.
That is the mindset shift behind the Ground Disturbance Lifecycle Framework. Do not simply receive the locate and assume the process is complete. Take ownership of what happens next.
Others are counting on you.