Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Tracking Utility Damages

Over the years there seems to be more awareness in the underground utility locating industry on the root cause of why facilities get damaged. Contractors, utilities, and locating companies are more proactive in getting down to the bare bones of why a damage occurred. The Common Ground Alliance (CGA) has developed a tool to help everyone involved with protecting underground facilities and track why damages are occurring. This tool is what they call DIRT. It has been in use for a couple of years and is gaining momentum on it's use. The information they collect gets stripped of any identity markers so that no one can identify who was involved in the utility damages. The purpose of DIRT is to find trends throughout the US and Canada, report on the trends on an annual basis and create awareness on how to minimize facility damages. Users that submit information to DIRT may use a variety of reporting tools to help track trends within there own company as well. The tools are available to the user at no charge and can be accessed at anytime. The information the user submits for it's own internal tracking is not stripped of any identity markers but is only visible to the user and whom ever they identify within the company. Only when the DIRT report is published for all to see is the identity markers removed. For more detailed information on the CGA DIRT Report visit http://www.cga-dirt.com/.

Consolidated Utility Services, INC (CUS) is a supporter of CGA and the DIRT Report. CUS has an objective to protect utilities by putting the best locating technicians out in the field to find these facilities. Because of that, our root cause analysis is much more in depth then what the DIRT report offers, simply because we want to pinpoint exactly where our weaknesses are within every region, within every supervisors group, for every employee and give them the training needed to improve on those weaknesses. For example the DIRT Report offers a choice of 20 reasons why a facility damage occurred, which is sufficient when looking for a broad range of trends across North America. CUS however looks a 70 different reason within 10 categories on why the facility was damaged. This is key in helping CUS pinpoint the exact reasons why utility damages are occurring and focus valuable training resources on the individuals and/or groups that need it.

As more utilities get buried daily, more facilities become at risk. It is vital we give our locating technicians every tool, opportunity and training to accurately find those buried lines. Root cause analysis is a great tool that opens the door for fast, factual and precise information that can help reduce damages. The CGA and CUS have both recognized that.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Damage Reporting - Is It All in the Details?
The article below brings to question what level of detailed reporting parameters would best serve the user's of CGA's DIRT - Damages Reporting Tool.

One of the biggest hurdles to Damage Reporting nationwide is the consistency of the reported data. The final statistics are only as good as the numbers reported. DIRT provides an excellent virtual platform that allows broad-ranged damage reporting to be easily accessable to all stakeholders. This platform is a valuable resource for One Call centers to utilize in their qwest for full compliance of damage reporting among the One Call members.

However, each industry/stakeholder is unique thus resulting in a wide array of reporting requirements from the very broad, compliance centered to very specific information from an individual incident.

Based on the article below, underground locating companies and similar industries follow a very detailed, specific model when reporting damages. Would incorporating a similar model into the DIRT reporting tool benefit the users by providing more detailed data on damages or would it hinder current efforts towards compliance by making the reporting function too labor intense?