Excavation Safety Alliance (ESA) Podcast

Cross bores are extremely dangerous and can lead to disasters. This Town Hall will focus on both how to prevent future cross bores as well the best ways to find existing cross bores. Listen to the experts on the panel and bring your suggestions to share. Passing on solutions could save lives. This ESA Town Hall was sponsored by ULC Technologies.

Insurance costs for utility damage coverage can be significant for both contractors and facility owners. During this Town Hall, the panel will talk about the biggest underwriting indicator for future rates, “past claims”.

One of the most important factors in damage prevention and safe excavation is ensuring that locates are on time and accurate. This was not an easy task even before huge fiber builds started popping up, sometimes with almost no warning. Hiring, training and keeping good technicians can be a big challenge, especially with downward pressure on per ticket prices. All stakeholders benefit when these problems are solved. The March ESA Town Hall will focus on solutions issues that face locate companies and internal locate teams. Our discussion will cover both short term and long-term solutions involving communication, technology, locating a career, and ways that state laws can be improved.

It is easy to track the basic hard cost to repair a damaged cable or pipeline, but that is usually only a small portion of the full cost. How do you track the cost for labor costs associated with investigation, collection efforts, out of service complaints, employee travel time, traffic control, etc.? Do you track costs for traffic control, site restoration, permits, etc. and link them to the total cost? On top of that how do you attribute costs to the outages due to damage your brand as well as the societal costs? Moderator: Kelley Heinz Panel Members Bob Edwards: Citizens Dane Lobb: PG&E Mark Seaton: JNR Andrea Stainback, Lumen Technologies

Moderator: Ed Landgraf, Texas 811 & CAMO Panelists: Pascual "Paco" Alvarez, Damage Prevention Coordinator, Chevron Devon Carlock, VP of Safety & Govt. Relations / President, Cottrell Contracting Corporation / CDMCS Sam Minifie, Policy Advisor - Pipeline, American Petroleum Institute

Everyone's goal is to avoid hitting a cable or a pipeline during excavation. Unfortunately, damages still occur for a wide variety of reasons. When there is a damage someone has to pay the repair and related costs. This can range from several thousand to seven figures. A thorough, timely investigation is the best way to defend yourself. Moderator: Jim Proszek, Attorney, Hall Estill

Moderator Ann Rushing, Education Manager, NC811 Panel Members Marty Mead, Director of Damage Prevention, CO811 Chris Stermer, WGI – FUCC Chair Becky Kinsey, Liaison Manager, Georgia 811

Hitting an electric cable when digging or working near overhead cables can be fatal. The big push to move electric cables underground along with increased spending on infrastructure highlight the need for a focus on safety and preventing damage. In addition, we will talk about damage prevention ideas when dealing with natural disasters and protecting wind energy lines. We will be looking for ideas on things that have worked in the past and ideas on how to improve safety in the future. Moderator Mike Sullivan, Utility Safety Partners Panelists Kelley Heinz, ComEd Glen "Cookie" Cook, Energy Queensland Cliff Meidl, Safety Speaker-Spokesperson Sher Kirk, Utility Safety Partners

Moderator: Ketha Molina, Texas811 Panel members: Whitney Larson, Safety and Health Specialist/ DEI Advocate, Minger Construction Co., Inc. Kristina Mahler, Director of Marketing, Greiner Construction & Executive Director, CREW Collaborative Alejandra Vera, Manager, INSET, Rocher Ingenieria S.A. DE C.V. Whitney Price, Special Projects Coordinator, Infrastructure Resources Denise Elliott, Business Development, 3M Jose Espino, Vice President of Operations, Colorado 811 Kesley Tweed, Executive Director, PAPA

Every stakeholder group will be impacted by the construction projects included in the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Bill. This Town Hall will focus on the steps we can take to ensure we're prepared for the significant projected increase in 811 ticket submission. Do you have the right number of people on staff? Do you have mature/established operational processes in place? Can your critical technology scale with the increases that are coming? Together, our goal is to ensure excavator safety and prevent an increase in damages. Moderator Jim Plasynski, KorTerra CRO, moderates a panel of industry stakeholders while bringing forward the thoughts and ideas from the Town Hall participants. Sharing ideas and early preparation are essential to meeting the demands of the Infrastructure Bill.

Ron Peterson, Executive Director of Nulca, talks about the top three issues that locate technicians face in the field.

Daniel Bigman, Founder of LearnGPR.com and Bigman Geophysical, discusses the benefits of using multi-frequency systems for your projects.

In 2018 Sher Kirk led a group of industry professionals to successfully align the business rules and ticket formats of the four western Canadian One-Call centres. Standardization is about creating a common language that reduces the risk of misinterpretation: best practices, industry standards, regulation, consistency, safety controls. These things give us ways of cleaning up potentially dangerous inconsistencies and finding more efficient, cost-effective ways to share information among stakeholders.

Daniel Bigman talks about a few things that GPR professionals can try to identify deeply buried pipes below the frostline boundary.

Ed Landgraf, Found of Coastal and Marine Operators, talks with Scott Landes about his article in dp-PRO magazine, Closing Gaps in Damage Prevention With New Best Practices and First-ever Online Training.

Lawyers Jim Proszek & Tony Jorgenson discuss the importance of collecting and preserving evidence when damages occur. Learn what is needed to support your case.

Scott Landes interviews Daniel Bigman (Bigman Geophysical and Learn GPR) to discuss points from his article in dp-PRO Magazine, titled 5 Uses of Ground Penetrating Radar for Civil Engineering and Damage Prevention.

Scott Landes and Ron Peterson talk about the important role locators play in damage prevention and the complexity of the job that locators have.

Hear Scott Landes, Michele Moe, Ron Peterson and Whitney Price discuss the history of LSAW (Locator Safety Appreciation Week) and how it came to be.

Attorneys Jim Proszek and Tony Jorgenson discuss the importance of preparing for depositions and give practical advice on how to testify during a deposition or trial so you can win your case.

Attorneys Jim Proszek and Tony Jorgenson talk about what a legal locate request entails. Learn what you need to know about making and acting on a locate request and how to determine what the statute requirements are surrounding locate requests.

Scott Landes, President of Infrastructure Resources (IR) tells how his company came to be and how it has grown into several different initiatives over the years, inlcuding the recently formed Excavation Safety Alliance.

PASA is working to transform the relationship between utility operators and the agricultural community, by working closely with the National Association of County Agricultural Agents to keep our buried infrastructure, our environment, and America's farmers and ranchers safe with tools and resources designed to prevent damage to buried utilities through education and improved communication. Learn more about this program from Scott Landes, Chris Thome and Whitney Price.