Page 7 - West Virginia 811

along with excavator-focused outreach tools to encourage excavators to take an active role in their jobsite safety through consistent use of 811. CGA’s Summer Summit, set to take place in Gulf Shores, Ala., from July 31-Aug. 3, will focus on the failure to notify root cause.
2. Key excavator practices (potholing, maintaining clearance, etc.): Potholing–or test holing–to confirm the location of buried utilities, and then maintaining the required clearance around those utilities, are key steps for protecting the integrity of underground infrastructure. These two excavation processes have long been CGA Best Practices (5.19 and 5.20), but continue
to be common causes of damages to buried utilities. Implementing potholing and maintaining proper clearance on the jobsite could dramatically reduce damages to buried infrastructure. CGA’s Next Practices Initiative highlights
one way that damage reductions were achieved by operators who contractually compensate excavators for potholing.
3. Accurate, timely utility locating:
CGA’s Locator White Paper and the work of the Next Practices Initiative
reveal that improving the accuracy of facility maps and implementing electronic white-lining would help locators complete their work more quickly and accurately. Efforts like a Minnesota pilot program to make 811 ticket-level facility visualizations available to locators and other
volume so locators’ workloads are more manageable.
With damage rates remaining static year-over-year, and increasing infrastructure investments foreshadowing even greater construction activity to come, the damage prevention industry is at
an important inflection point. We must take strong steps now toward reducing damages by addressing
the key areas of inefficiency that are contributing to damages. CGA’s “50 in 5” challenge is a response to this need for definitive action to drive damages down in a significant way. Every stakeholder involved in the damage prevention process should commit their organizations to contributing to CGA’s “50 in 5” challenge, making bold decisions and investments that will help cut damages to vital underground infrastructure in half.
For more information about CGA
and annual damages to buried infrastructure, including how your organization can become more involved in damage prevention, visit www. commongroundalliance.com and dirt. commongroundalliance.com.
The “50 in 5”
challenge aims
to address
damages to
our Nation’s
critical assets
head-on...
system end users have the potential to increase locating efficiency, among other systemic benefits. Decreasing over-notification practices utilized by both contractors and facility owner/ operators themselves would also help decrease overall 811 ticket request
2023, Issue 3 West Virginia 811 • 5