Grant Piraine
Apr 2, 2026
The industry continues to pursue goal zero damage, yet the structure required to achieve it has not been fully defined.
Most of the current discussion is focused on improving locate performance, refining One Call processes, and increasing awareness. These are important elements, but they do not address a more fundamental issue.
The damage prevention lifecycle is incomplete.
To understand where the gap exists, the industry must look at the problem through a lifecycle framework.
Subsurface Utility Engineering operates in the design phase, providing higher confidence data before construction begins
One Call systems operate as the notification and coordination gateway, ensuring utility owners are engaged and information is provided
The final phase occurs immediately before and during ground disturbance, where information is interpreted, verified, and acted upon in real time
It is this final phase where most failures occur.
And it is this phase that remains largely undefined.
This is where the Damage Prevention Specialist operates.
The Limitation of the Current Model
Public utility owners retain responsibility for locate delivery, but frequently execute that responsibility through low cost outsourced models. Locate service providers operate under cost pressure, turnover is high, and quality varies. Excavators are left waiting, projects are delayed, and responsibility becomes diffused across multiple parties.
This creates consistent failure points:
Inconsistent locate quality driven by workforce turnover
Delays caused by volume driven scheduling constraints
Weak accountability between asset owner, contractor, and field execution
Excavators treating the locate as a completed task rather than an input to decision making
The system places performance responsibility on the party least connected to the consequence of failure.
That is the flaw.
The Shift That Needs to Occur
The industry does not need to remove the One Call system. It needs to reposition it within the lifecycle.
One Call should remain the legal gateway and continue to serve as the central notification system, the clearinghouse for asset owner response, and the mechanism for documenting clearances and conflicts. It is a critical component of the system, but it is not the final control.
Subsurface Utility Engineering should be recognized as the preferred upstream solution during the design phase. On larger and more complex projects, including right of way, commercial, industrial, and institutional work, it provides the level of investigation required to reduce uncertainty before construction begins.
However, most projects do not receive that level of investigation. Residential work and a large portion of private property ground disturbance proceed without Subsurface Utility Engineering. When that happens, the risk does not disappear. It is transferred downstream into the operational phase.
The industry must acknowledge this reality and put structured measures in place to manage that risk.
Locate execution should move toward qualified Damage Prevention Specialists who are either embedded within excavation organizations as in house teams, retained directly by the project owner or contractor, or operating as independent private locate firms where damage prevention is a career discipline.
This is the role of the private locator when properly defined.
Not simply marking buried utility infrastructure, but verifying, interpreting, and managing risk across the entire work area.
When the excavation side pays for this service, behavior changes. They are no longer waiting, no longer deferring responsibility, and no longer treating locating as someone else’s obligation. They are actively managing risk.
Know before you dig becomes an operational control, not a message.
Skin in the Game Changes Performance
When excavators control the timing and quality of locating, they become accountable for the result. That accountability drives better planning, stronger interpretation of locate data, more disciplined exposure and verification practices, and fewer assumptions about subsurface conditions.
This is already proven in projects where qualified Damage Prevention Specialists are engaged early and given authority over field verification. The work becomes controlled instead of reactive.
This is how the industry moves from compliance to ownership.
This is how you begin to operate with the mindset of know what’s below.
The Alberta Signal: Certification and Controlled Flexibility
Utility Safety Partners in Alberta is advancing Alternate Locate Provider delivery models and a Damage Prevention Certification framework.
This reflects a shift toward recognizing that locate execution can be performed by qualified third party providers under controlled conditions, while maintaining alignment with the One Call system.
While this model continues to evolve, it signals a broader industry recognition that damage prevention requires a defined and competent operational role beyond traditional locate delivery.
Alignment with NAPUA certification creates a pathway to standardize this role across North America and integrate public and private locating into a single damage prevention discipline.
British Columbia: A Partial Model
British Columbia already operates closer to a records driven system, where asset owners often provide mapping rather than dispatching field locators. This demonstrates that universal field marking is not required for the system to function.
However, it also exposes a limitation. Records are often approximate, lack confidence attribution, and do not provide the level of certainty required for execution.
Responsibility has been shifted downstream without providing the information needed to manage that responsibility effectively.
The lesson is clear. Shifting responsibility without improving data does not achieve goal zero.
The Missing Investment
The largest structural issue is misallocated capital. Too much investment is directed toward reactive locate delivery, and not enough is directed toward building authoritative subsurface records.
Utility owners should be investing in:
Progressive mapping of buried utility infrastructure
Geographic Information System platforms that reflect verified field conditions
Data structured around Subsurface Utility Engineering quality levels
Continuous record improvement through project lifecycle feedback
This strengthens field verification rather than replacing it.
When high quality data reaches the field, the Damage Prevention Specialist is working with intelligence rather than approximation.
The Business Case: Speed, Certainty, and Cost Control
This shift is not only about safety. It is about project performance.
The current system introduces delay risk into every project. Late locates, incomplete locates, and rework driven by poor information all translate directly into cost. Delays cost money.
When locate execution is controlled by the excavation side through qualified Damage Prevention Specialists, projects move faster, scheduling becomes predictable, rework is reduced, and crews are not standing down waiting for locates.
The cost of locating becomes a defined project cost rather than an uncontrolled delay risk. It becomes a standard line item, a pass through cost built into the project budget. When applied across the industry, this creates a level playing field.
This is directionally aligned with what is being explored in Alberta through the Alternate Locate Provider model, where project owners have the ability to retain qualified providers directly rather than relying solely on traditional locate delivery structures.
The question is no longer what locating costs. The question becomes what delays and damages cost. And that answer is always higher.
Field Evidence: Why the Current System Still Fails
Case Study – March 2026
A project completed in March 2026 demonstrates how risk is routinely transferred into the operational phase.
An electrical contractor, working on behalf of a utility owner, was installing new primary conduit within a 20 building apartment complex, feeding seven transformers across the property. The design called for the new installation to be placed directly above existing energized primary cables that were between five and six feet deep. The running line for the drill was established using 811 locates, and no Subsurface Utility Engineering investigation was completed. The work was scheduled to be completed over a five week period.
The 811 locate request for the site was submitted as a single large scope ticket covering the entire property. This required the locator to identify and mark primary electrical, and two separate communication utility lines for each of the 20 buildings within a compressed timeframe. Given the size and complexity of the site, a phased approach aligned with the construction schedule would have allowed for more focused and controlled locate delivery.
This type of large scope request is commonly referred to in the field as ticket dumping, where the volume and extent of work assigned to a single locate request exceeds what can reasonably be verified to a high level of confidence within the expected timeframe. When this occurs, locators rush and the risk is increased.
The contractor was instructed to pothole every 50 feet to confirm depth while drilling above energized infrastructure. This represents a design decision made using locate data that was never intended for design purposes.
Immediately prior to construction, the utility owner advised the property owner that it was not responsible for privately owned buried utility infrastructure within the site that it may be crossing. At that point, the property owner retained a private Damage Prevention Specialist. The private locate work began the same day drilling was scheduled to start.
At project kickoff, the drilling contractor was prepared to begin potholing along the proposed alignment. The initial drill run impacted multiple buildings and required verification of both public and private infrastructure crossings. The drilling operation was forced to stand down until locate verification could be completed.
The level of rapid private locating required under time pressure, including locating sewer laterals using camera and sonde methods, tracing secondary electrical systems, and verifying communication infrastructure, would not have been achievable across the first work area within the expected start time. The drilling crew was prepared to begin immediately based on the completion of the 811 locates. The private locator required the crew to stand down until at least the first 100 feet of the drill alignment was located to ensure all privately owned buried utility infrastructure crossings were identified.
To minimize delays and initiate work as quickly as possible, the private locator coordinated with the drilling crew and enlisted them to assist with locate activities. This allowed the first drill run area to be verified and potholing to begin by midday, resulting in the loss of approximately half a day of drilling.
During this process, the existing public locate for the primary system was found to be significantly inaccurate, with deviations of approximately five feet.
Field Conditions Identified
The site contained:
Legacy primary electrical cables at depth
Seven transformers fed by those primary systems
Secondary electrical distribution to multiple buildings
Sewer and water infrastructure crossing the work area
Numerous coaxial cable mains and services crossing the drill path
Numerous twisted pair communication mains and services crossing the drill path
A separate, newer primary feed supplying additional transformers
The public locate results contained critical deficiencies:
Primary locates were inaccurate, with deviations exceeding four to five feet in places
Private infrastructure was not included
The newer primary feed system in the work area was completely missed
This additional primary system was independent of the original network and crossed both the existing primary lines and the proposed drill path multiple times. It was not identified through the 811 process and was only discovered through field verification by the private locator.
Following the private locate investigation, the 811 locator was called back to the site and confirmed that the additional primary system had been missed. The locator indicated that the size and complexity of the original ticket contributed to the oversight and acknowledged that the record for the newer installed primary had not been accounted for during the original locate.
The Damage That Still Occurred
Despite accurate identification of both public and private buried utility infrastructure, the contractor was required to expose the primary cables at regular 50 foot intervals. Vacuum excavation was not used, and all potholing was conducted using hand digging techniques.
A five foot deep excavation was completed by hand directly above a direct buried energized 20 kV primary cable. During excavation, a worker used a jabbing motion with a shovel, which contacted the energized primary.
The result was an arc flash event. Two transformers were damaged, the shovel blade was partially melted, the surrounding soil was burned, and the worker, positioned in a confined excavation, was not physically injured but was visibly shaken.
The hazard was known. The location was known. The risk was communicated. The failure occurred in execution.
The Lesson
Damage prevention is not achieved through locating alone. It is a system that requires:
Trained ground disturbance professionals who understand the role of a Damage Prevention Specialist and can identify gaps or errors in locate quality
Accurate information
Qualified interpretation
Competent workers who understand the risks of working near buried utility infrastructure and apply proper verification methods
Disciplined field execution
Remove any one of these elements and the system fails.
Remove any one of these elements and the system fails.
Conclusion
The industry continues to focus heavily on improving individual parts of the system, particularly locate delivery and notification processes. These improvements are necessary, but they do not address the full lifecycle of risk.
The gap exists in the final phase, where information is interpreted and applied in the field.
This is the role of the Damage Prevention Specialist.
Private locators, when properly defined and trained, are not simply service providers marking buried utility infrastructure. They are the final control in the damage prevention lifecycle.
Knowing before you dig must lead to informed decision making.
Knowing what’s below must influence how work is performed.
Owning your safety must define accountability in the field.
This is the missing link and it's where the industry must evolve if goal zero is to be achieved.