Ep. 91 - Damage Prevention Redefined: Tech Tactics with CGA Co-Chairs

When excavators saturate the system with massive, multi-block requests for minor digs, the entire ecosystem stalls, pushing schedules out by days and trapping crews in costly holding patterns. In this episode, we sit down with Adam Zeciri of Subterranean Consulting Group and Jim Plasynski of KorTerra, who co-chair the Common Ground Alliance technology committee, to map out the high-stakes reality of utility locate management.

We get into the technical mechanics of subsurface investigation, moving past standard electromagnetic locators to break down how ground penetrating radar handles shifting soil densities and where acoustic frequencies pick up the slack on untraceable plastic lines. The conversation details the logistical strain of managing the post-infrastructure bill volume surge, the friction caused by 21 states still operating without positive response mandates, and the process of shifting field crews toward high-accuracy GPS data capture. Our guests share a critical reality check on the state of utility documentation, highlighting the fact that perfect digital as-builts do not exist and that maps must be treated as fluid guidelines rather than absolute truth.

When it comes to damage prevention, the technology is only as good as the human process behind it. Buying another shiny software platform won't fix your operational bottlenecks if your front office is blindly calling in thousands of free tickets that overwhelm local locators. Viewers will walk away with a clear blueprint for sizing locate requests accurately, an understanding of the physics limiting underground scanning tools, and a systematic framework for reducing mobilization failures.

Transcript

Welcome And Panel Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast, where we discuss the realest, broadest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue collar business. I'm your host, Ty Kirby, and I want to help you with what it took me, trial and error, and a whole lot of money to learn. The information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast, brought to you and sponsored by our wonderful friends over at PayDurge Support. Ben Bruni and his team, I can't say enough about them from the takeoff and quantification uh side of things, sales and estimation. If you have just a solo estimator that's feeling a little overwhelmed, maybe needs to sub some work out and still trust the quantification process back to a takeoff to get you a job out the door, PATERT is where it's at. Maybe you're trying to build an estimating side. Again, those guys will help you understand a very comprehensive takeoff and quantity uh takeoff, obviously. But then even one step further, once you get there to uh the dirt side of things, modeling is also there. Check them out, paydirt support.com. Love them guys. Guys, we are continuing here at the beautiful Broadmoor facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I have two wonderful gentlemen for my third panel here with CGA. And I gotta tell you, we have had some great conversations preemptively up to this podcast. I've got to know these guys very quickly. Uh, we share some common interests, but our duties are very different every day. And uh these gentlemen are co-chairs of the technology arm. We've talked um pretty much every arm of CGA so far, except you gentlemen. And and tomorrow we finish off with Miss Sarah and uh yeah, Miss Sarah Magrudery. Magruder Lyle, yeah. Got it, Magruder Lyle. Thank you, sir. Um, so furthermore, Jim Plasinski, chief revenue officer over at Cortera. Yes. Right. And we've got Mr. Adam Zachiri. I nailed it. Let's go. Co-chair as well over on the technology side. So, what that means to you guys, so ticket management, what happens? Uh, we've been talking very heavily about the contractor, the utility locator, back and forth. And, you know, we're always weaponizing each other and just beating each other up. And I was briefly on these guys because these guys get to see it nationally and see what states are ahead. And, you know, I've learned about positive response and other things that you guys are already focusing on. But um, just take a second, Jim, if you wouldn't mind. Uh brief intro and then follow along.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah, no, thanks so much. I appreciate the opportunity to talk. I'm over more about this today. So, yeah, Jim Plazensky, I'm the chief revenue officer with Corterra. In my role, I've been as a business for the past five and a half years now. Uh, but I've been in software businesses for uh almost 20 years. So really have a lot of familiarity in those uh experiences of helping businesses really achieve better outcomes through leveraging technology, right? Delivering more productive outcomes in the world we're we're living in here, more secure, more safe outcomes. Um, I've been a co-chair now with the CGA for the technology committee as part of my role at Torterra for about the past two years. Excited to have Adam join me in this past few yeah over the past uh six to twelve months, and uh really looking forward to this discussion today. A lot of challenges going on in this space right now, in fact, excavators as well as uh contracted locating uh efforts out in the field and want to talk more about how we can solve those problems together.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

That's perfect, Mr. Adam. Absolutely. Uh thanks for having me. Adrizatiri uh with locating dynamics subtraining and consulting group. We do a lot of locator training and certification, uh, Nelka accredited for electromagnetics, ground penetrating radar, acoustics, RTK locator, and we're about to launch our drone uh data capture as well. Wow. We also provide services for all these things.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Well, that's an ex uh extra arm past that pay dude arm. There you go. That's a full lineup, right?

How 811 Tickets Get Dispatched

SPEAKER_03 4:14

So let's let's talk briefly here behind the scenes. Let's educate our contractors. What what what even goes on? Say I call a ticket in. Let's let's start basics here, and then we'll work into more of you know the problems that we're gonna face here in the long term. But truly, I call a ticket in, um, and contractors, we're gonna start by putting a nice white painted mark and and be very intentional about where we're digging to save that locator some time so he can have a best chance of being successful and accurate. So when you show up, you're not wasting your cruise time and way less chance of a struck. Okay. Let's just wanted to preface that. But call locate in. Where's it go? I'm in Arkansas. We can talk as nationally as far, or you can pick some states apart. Uh, and and however, it's maybe the way it's supposed to go, but some states are definitely behind me being in Arkansas. Yeah, uh, I'm definitely learning. But where's it go? What's it do after that?

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Yeah. So uh as an excavator or homeowner calling in a ticket, you're gonna uh reach out to your local one call center. You call A11 before you dig, and you're to get your local one call center. In the state that I live, it's gopher state one call in Minnesota. Uh, but there's uh you know probably about 57 or so one call centers around the U.S. down in ASI. And so that'll go into your local one call center. They're gonna look at the notification area. And you mentioned something great, but right away, like the concept of white lining the the dig site, right? It's a great way to narrow the scope of the job and make sure people understand where we're in fact going to be digging. Uh, but those tickets will then be uh dispersed out. The the one call center will either take it in via a phone call or maybe through an electronic submission over email nowadays. There's opportunities to do it that way. Um and uh basically get send out to anybody who has facilities in that area, and that's where the obligations begin for anybody who's a facility owner. They're gonna be receiving that notification. They can receive that through a tool like Gortero, which is purpose-built for enabling companies to be able to document that work, manage that work in an efficient and uh effective fashion. Um, but they're gonna go out there and then mark the site, right? And that and that's where you know some of the challenges can start maybe showing up, right? Uh

Ticket Size Is Breaking The System

SPEAKER_01 6:23

but there's a lot of layers that's cool things I'm sure we could talk about as we think about some of the risks or concerns. Certainly, sizes of tickets, I think, is a big challenge right now in the world we're operating in. Um, you know, we all we've all seen that here ever since the passage of the infrastructure bill about four or five years ago. Amount of money going in there, $1.3 trillion, which represented about a $555 billion increase over in the previous elastic. So it's it's killing everything, right? It's a lot of work, a lot of opportunity if you're an excavator to do install jobs of large consequence, uh, but it's also creating a lot of trickiness and you can keep and live safe in our communities time this fall.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

No, for sure. It is the size meaning volume, the volume of tickets, correct?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Well, the volume is one layer of it, but the other aspect is the size specifically. The size is so light. Okay. You know, for so long, the industry has really looked at tickets as the governor for how much work we're doing, right? And and some tickets can be as simple as someone's planting flowers in in their front yard, and that's a very simple job. Go out there and mark the site, it's a hundred feet allocated, maybe. Uh, you can have a in some states, they've got very interesting rules. They don't have a lot of rules actually around how big a ticket can be. And you'll actually see we had a uh interesting article that came out from the folks in Nulka recently uh talking about uh an example where there was uh one that was 8,000 football feeds in size. Um, and so that was one ticket, too, and that counts against uh you know work product for a locator. They got 48 to 72 hours to complete that work in those cases. So you can come out and dig, right? Uh, or you got scenarios where you get a damage against that site, right? That counts as one damage against the thousand tickets when you have a ratio used in the industry. So that's a big challenge too. So the volume's up, the size of tickets is another big thing because you think about all the equipment nowadays that can just drill way faster. Yeah, it's a big challenge.

Private Utilities And Ownership Confusion

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Right. And that's you know, as opposed to like a single address ticket versus a project ticket, right? So a single address ticket could simply be, you know, the meter to the to the uh main, basically. And that's typically where the contract locators or the utilities would stop, is at the meter. So if you could call in a ticket, they might make that assumption that everything's gonna get marked on site when in reality it's focusing on the right-of-way and the utility company's facilities themselves. So they typically stop at the meter. So if you have a barbecue in the backyard, a pool heater, something like that, maybe an outbuilding, that's all considered private, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:49

So it's such a good point because actually it's funnily enough, nobody else has mentioned that the entire time. And it is a huge problem for back to the homeowner tickets, you know, like uh, they didn't mark my water line. Well, it's only about four foot long. Well, if the main's in your yard, ma'am, and the meters run next to the main, it's probably only four foot long. Well, what about the rest of the piece to my house? Like, explaining that to homeowners is so difficult.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

No one understands that. I and it's with the water, right? Because I know your business does work in that area, and uh that is a very little understood thing because they will mark to the right-of-way, not into the yard. Whereas other asset types like gas and it depends on the state. There's a lot of variability, but that's another thing that makes this very hard. And so there's a lot of variability per state. The concept of the project ticket is something Adam mentioned. There's a lot of states that don't have the concept of the project ticket still, and that's something we need to work on fixing. So I think that's causing a big problem for a lot of folks.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Yeah, there they're uh every state's different, like you mentioned, 57, right? Yeah, why is there more than 50? There's 50 states. Yeah, some states have more than one. Chicago, for example, or uh I don't know. California, where I'm from. Uh so yeah, there's a whole lot that goes into all that. But like marking, right? A lot of people don't realize that they own their sewer lateral to the mains there, right? Homeowners have no idea, business. So sometimes it might get marked out, but that depends on the city or the municipality that owns those facilities as a courtesy.

SPEAKER_03 10:16

Exactly. No, and in one older infrastructure town here in my market, uh, they own from the tap. They will only help you from the tap. Like your service line, it goes protrudes into the public. Now there's another local entity that will own it up, pass until the end of the exit of right-of-way. Like it's very even all the way down into the local entity level. It's so difficult as a contractor, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Understanding those law variations, right? And and just some of the risks that can be associated. Yeah, right. It's a big deal because there can be big fines and penalties in surgeon states, um, but in other states less so. So it's it's something that we just need everybody to start uh really work to educate themselves further on, because I think the complexities and the nuances in the laws is what makes it really hard.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Campuses as well. So, you know, an university campus, a college campus, a business corporate campus, are those public or private? Where does that line start to stop? Usually the meter.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

Wow. And then you've got private fire, like in the water side of things, nobody ever thinks about the fire line, but these sprinkle lines right up here in the state of Arkansas, it has to be its own fire dedicated run. I don't know about other states, but it's you can't pull a meter off of it to feed any type of LSD commercial anything. Uh has to be its own dedicated room, totally private from them from the valve. It's it's an owned utility by that warehouse or whatever. People have no idea. Nobody's ever gonna mark that. The water company's not gonna mark that, and they're out, you know, whatever

Stop Using 811 For Design

SPEAKER_03 11:49

the case may be. But the training and education overall, what CGA is doing, I've learned so much truly through these panels and the free resources. Like, as contractors, we've just got to step up. We but also too, why have I been in the industry for 15 years and I'm just now learning about it?

SPEAKER_01 12:08

And it's uh it's great to see folks like you starting to pay attention because I think at the CGA conference over the years, I've come to it now five years in a row. It's the world-class event, isn't it? Har for share. Um, but it is one of these events where contractors are underrepresented. I didn't I think probably a large part of you you would notice is they're keeping their crews working in the field, right? So to come here is an investment of time, but it's super important, right? Because we have to work together in the ecosystem. Uh, if your crews are are getting negatively impacted by locates, be late. Um, understanding the things you can do to help with that, I think is really important, right? Because calling in just very large sites when you don't need that, guess what that does? That's driving locators to have to do massive markouts, which puts them behind. And there's some amazing stats that literally about 40 to 50 percent of jobs right now are not able to start on a time due to pain not being.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Oh, you know what?

SPEAKER_03 13:05

You don't want to know all about it, boys.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

So that comes down to uh at least from what I've seen in California recently, um it's uh does a the design ticket process in most states is not really a thing. There's no such thing as a design ticket in general. Uh we call it 811 because we're going to excavate, right? Not because we're gonna design. So what these companies are doing are calling in, you know, a block, you know, two block, eight hundred football fields because they're expecting the it free 811 process to design the job for them. They want to know where everything is, as you know, as a contractor, it's great to know where it is first. So make my face go ruined, right? It's on the wrong side of the street. Um, so that's a that's a big part of the problem right there. Is we need to revamp and overhaul the design process as a whole to help alleviate the the use of the ticket management systems by calling in two big tickets.

SPEAKER_03 13:53

No, I I completely agree. Like we guys, yeah, I am we can cover 500 foot in a day. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. But if you got a crew that's barely chugging along, doing 50, 80 feet, it's high utility, existing utility volume, why don't you just call in the next hundred feet or the next I mean, even if there's extra tickets, divvy it up so you know exactly what's happening. You know what I mean? Like we've got to do better from the contract range.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

And and if you do that, you're gonna help the ecosystem, right? Because the ecosystem is taxed right now. If you talk to any contract locating company that's here this week, if you talk to any small municipality, right, their ability to keep up with the work right now is untensed, right? So we all have to do our part to kind of help with that. If really we look at ways we can leverage technology too, and that's a big part of Adam and my role as CGA is really helping people gain awareness and trying to drive adoption of new tools that can help solve some

Process First Then Add Technology

SPEAKER_01 14:49

of these problems.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

So it's it's literally where I was going with all of this. We're senior circling the problems, but you two gentlemen are probably the most too vital people in the whole CGA committee call me biased, but like the technology that's I still don't even halfway. I'm a ditch digger, guys. I don't fathom now we have AI integration within our company, Claude, and we do a bunch of different stuff. But what I'm saying is I have no not earthly idea what the capabilities of the software and technology that are out there rice.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

The bigger overarching problem also is the process as a bull. So process technology is only as good as the process. You could have the best, brightest, the shiny magic trouble. It's not gonna do you any good with a process that just is working against itself. So that's another big party, too, is you know process improvement as well as deploying the right technology at the right time, and then personally it's addressing the issue. I mean, how do we solve it?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

There's a lot of pieces of the fuzz of there. And I think like looking in ways that technology is evolving for the positive. You mentioned Claude's, like, I think as recently as six months ago, we would have thought Claude was a guy. Uh, you know, right? He's a great guy.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

He's yeah, he's a great assistant. That's see all it is, he's Claude on the table. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Your advisor claude. It is it is a remarkable thing. As I've been I'm not a developer, uh I'm a software guy, but in recent months I felt like I could be a partial developer with some of the things you could build with these new tools and and understanding data, right? Like I think like data is a big part of this, is like trying to get a lot more surgical and really looking at the way we could leverage data and some of these new capabilities that are out there and making sure all the the folks that are here at CGA, whether you're an excavator, you're a uh utility owner, you're a uh contract locator, whatever it might be, um, really understand how these tools have come down in price in a lot of cases. And Adam's done a great job of the committee just helping people gain awareness on tools that are out there that can really help if you're an excavator out on the site and trying to do some some double checking of maybe the marks, make sure they're accurate so that we don't have a big damage that can cause a lot of safety issues or or costly uh damages as well. Um, but there's just a lot of opportunity to be leveraging technology. This space needs to evolve more. You know, we were talking about it. Yeah, there's a lot of folks doing things the old way. Hey, it yeah, 40 to 50 years old. I know in Arkansas, you get a lot of clients in Arkansas, and it is a tough, tough environment if you're an excavator or locate. Where's a lot of legacy facilities that are buried without tracer wire? Yes, sir. Guess how hard it is to locate if there's no tracer wire.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

Get the sticks out, boys.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Well, here's other technology. That's not unapproved technology.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

I agree, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Notice that's not one of my you know,

GPR Works Until It Doesn’t

SPEAKER_02 17:30

course of what I teach. You're not teaching that yeah, witching stakes, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Yeah, I'm excited for like just to bring that up, one of the technologies, ground penetrating radar, something I have no idea about. Yeah, but I'm sitting here looking at three or four booths, and I believe, you know, as technology comes out, super pricey is starting to come down. I'd love to hear a little bit about ground penetrating radar in the use that us contractors could actually use in the field daily.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

So ground penetrating radar, I would say, is number two. So, number one, what B11 is doing, uh typically when they go out there, they either a company employee or a contractor on behalf of the utility owner, um, which there's a bunch of those guys out here too. They're typically deploying electromagnetic locators. So the pipe and cable locator wallet is right. If it's made of metal, you're gonna start here. If it's non-metallic, well, no, you can't find it with the M. So we have two other technologies that we can use. One of them was GPR, the ground penetrating radar. The second or the third would be Couste. So with ground penetrating radar, it works very well. It's it's basically, if you were to imagine the same type of radar signals that we're sending into the air to bounce off of aircraft, we are focusing in electromagnetic energy in a pulsed wave underground, and we're basically looking for reflections. Um if you're looking for a pipe, you're essentially looking for a hyperbola or an upside down U-shape, and that intensity of the hyperbola was going to vary based off of what's known as the dielectric constant. Uh think of it like you could think of it like resistivity, which is called relative permittivity. I don't want to get too much. You're fine with the whole thing. Yeah, I'm like saying I'm trying to come here. A little bit. So if there's a difference in density, think about it like this with the target versus the background. So a steel pipe and you know, let's say sandy soil is gonna have a very strongly return cycle. However, a steel pipe in like wet clay soil, you might not even get deep enough to see that paill, given the site conditions. So it's limited in terms of um attenuation based off of the dielectric constant. So if you have heavy clay soil, wet soil, salts, nitrates, um, or metals present in the ground. Like I've done uh some GPR out at US Steel and uh just outside of Beerie, Indiana in the past. Worked in some areas, not so much across the whole site. So it could even work on one side of your building and not on the other, given soil conditions, site conditions like that. Um training, if it's raining, I can get GPR in the parking lot where the water's draining, you know, it's packed pretty good. The soil type works great. We can see water pipes, su uh uh sewer pump, storm drains, yeah, and asphalt in the rain, and that's California rain. Okay, but then you can't see anything in the dirt. Now, if it dries out, like starting around now up until August, the soil dries, and that clay soil, we can actually see the water and the soil is dry. So um, soil moisture contents, frequency also comes into play as far as you know how far you can see into the ground, depth, you know, higher frequencies are better for smaller targets of shallower depths that down to about five feet, and that's what we say is the cutoff for shallow versus deep. Deeper than that, you need a larger diameter object to be seen. There's nothing on the planet, and I've tried that can see a one-inch plastic pipe without tracer wire at type ET. Right? So, in those conditions, not out there, guys. The guy would know he's the man. And there's different types, right? There's single channel GPR, there's multi-channel arrays. That's really where GGR has kind of come up from, you know, let's say the 70s, even going back to I think it was 1929, W. Stern uh was the first supported that I could find. Uh documentation of a geophysicist using GPR to measure glacier nips. Um there was so cool. There was an issue with aircraft crashing on uh Arctic bases with radar uh because it was passing through the solid ice and the air at about the same rate. Uh so that's kind of something where we were like, oh, we can do we can focus this energy underground potentially and see different things. Um yeah, so it was smart. He knows it's brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

That's why we added him to the technology. He's the guy.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

He said a little bit, I could keep going, but it wasn't until NASA put a uh GPR system on the moon on the Apollo 17 mission, I believe. Um that really it was like 1972, 1970, before I was born. Me too. I was born in I'm an 80s child, so I was born in 80, but 90s, yeah. People were like, oh, I'm eighty. GPR, and that's kind of cool. So

Acoustics And The Big Three

SPEAKER_02 21:50

if GPR can't see it, acoustic potentially can. So I used to work for a company that traveled I traveled the world basically every Monday for about four and a half years with an acoustic locator. Um China, India, Budapest, UK, France, South America, India, all over the place. And it would see things in a variety of different soil types. So where GPR just can't see it for different reasons. And again, there are units now that you can mount on a vehicle that you can push that'll give you an X and a Y, almost like a 3D image of what's underground, if you post process it and kind of can view it that way. Um so there are the advances with GPR again is gonna be uh processing capability, computing power. Um but the radar is radar, right? EMZN, it's frequencies and processing really that uh and GPS compatibility that I've seen really change over the years though that. But it's still limited in terms of physics, right? You can't you know you can't fight gravity, is what we say. So it's gonna you're gonna see if it's gonna work as soon as you fire it up. You know, there's no magic bullet, unfortunately it works, you know. EM, GPR, that doesn't work. All right, acoustics, what's left over. So that'll actually work rather well because it's a sound wave, it's a completely different type of technology. Decoying in a similar way, we're sending acoustic waves into the ground. Uh there's a Salinas technology device that's actually over here. If you're at the CGA, check it out. Um where it's actually sending acoustic vibrations into the ground between 50 and 200 hertz. It'll actually monitor which is the best frequency for you, send a sound wave through the pipe, and you actually have a geophone sitting on top of the structure. That's actually the receiving component sending that information back. So you kind of deploy this transmitter across the way once it's told you what the best frequency is for that soil, it's kind of self-calibrating for it. It takes a couple of minutes. Then you're able to kind of pinpoint the highest amplitude, plastic, transite, you know, it'll see steel as well. But really, it's designed to find things in conditions where GPR just can't. So that's what I call the big three. So this is actually a presentation I've been giving FTGA going back 10 years or suckle a lot.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

Well, I'm so glad the audience got to hear it because I just learned, like, truly, I thought, you know, if you got one of them pushy carts, you were good to go. You know what I mean? Truly.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

A lot of people say, even with EM locators, they're like, wait, why can't you find it? It's just like turning on a light switch. It's not. There's a lot more to it. A lot of troubleshooting with EM as well.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

We went through the only technology piece.

GPS Adoption For Dirt Crews

SPEAKER_03 24:11

So GPS implementation within a contractor. I don't I know, I don't know if you guys have had any experience, but basically just the base and rover technology for ditch diggers and guys out there in the field that have had zero experience, even owners that are spending the conglomerate's amount of money for their guys to be able to document what they've done. It's not about work we can do, it's about work we can document what we've done every single day, especially in the underground world, like 100%. But on the GPS side of things, we bit the bullet, we jumped off into a very big, and man, the implementation struggle for six, eight months, even a year, trying to just understand the unit, understand the uses of the unit, when we use it. Now, obviously, we've got some systems in play now, everything's great, but that's about the only technology other than softwares. We can go off on a whole nother leg about softwares. I won't drop any names. That's bad. I shouldn't do that, but there's there's some software. I've got a big uh problem with softwares right now because it seems like everybody, and just like I was sitting here viewing GPR, I'm like, that's my end all be all answer. If I really got into a situation, I just learned it's not really. You know, we do have really rocky hard wet source, but um go ahead and it may still be able, it may still be able to work.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Like the GPR is the kind of thing like I tell people don't oversell it, don't undersell it, but you'll know as soon as you start pushing the car what your level of attenuation is. So um, just because it works in one part of town doesn't mean it won't work in the other part of town.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Fair enough. In software, one thing to touch on was softwares, right? I obviously have a have a little bit of knowledge in the software. Um, you know, I do think what you're talking about is really important, and particularly in this sector, right? I've I've served a lot of different uh industries over the years that certainly this sector, you know, we got we're on the blue-collar business podcast here, right? We have to meet our end users where they're at, right? We got folks with dirty boots, we got different levels of knowledge on software products, and it starts with ease of use. I know a big thing we're super passionate about at the Cortera is really getting out there and riding along with the field cuts, understanding how they're using these tools, understanding the jobs that they're doing, right? Because if we're not thinking that way as software providers, we're we're creating friction, creating frustration. And I'm a friction fighter. Yeah, and and you can't have it be hard. You can't have it be hard. You need to understand and be intimate with that end user because those are the folks where rubber meets the road on the ability. It's great that we have these technology tools, you gotta be able to adopt them and use them well, right? Because a lot of people don't understand them. Guess what they're not gonna do? You're not gonna use them.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

I know, and they're gonna get frustrated very quickly. Yeah, and you know, from the software angle from for a contractor, this is a little outside of the CGA, but I'll give you kind of an understanding of what we kind of face is we've got all these software's coming at us. Hey, this is the end all be all for project management through accounting. Uh, hey, this is the end all for sales and estimation CRM. This is the end all be all, end all v all. And we hear it all the time. So we buy in, right? Yeah, because we desperately want the end all be all. And then you go down this rabbit hole chase and you find out oh, this is about 60% of the end all be all in the project management lane or the accounting lane, or whatever, outside of literally QuickBooks. I mean, it's they've got it like throttled. And I've tried, I literally have tried pushing job costing to a another program, but the accounting it just doesn't work. And so the contractor side of things every single day it's a new software in my inbox or a DM on LinkedIn. It's so pushed right now, and especially with the AI integration of now, we spoke on Claude, it can literally code an app within, you know, today. And it's it's literally unbelievable. And so we've got to, to your point, meet these guys where they're at, like truly understand who are in. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

And and knowing the equipment that they're using in fandom with these software products, right? Because it's like, hey, we always say we need our product to be oxygen, like if they're spending time worrying about our product, something's going around. They need to worry about their job they're doing out there on the site because that's what's going to ensure that that job is done well and safe, right? Is that some of these jobs are competent. You're using heavy equipment, you're using instrumentation where if you don't get it right, what could be major consequences, right? So being able to have these tools be really easy to use, understanding ways to create efficiencies. Because if I'm a contractor, it's all about completing the job successfully, documenting my work. You're starting to

Save The Marks As Data

SPEAKER_01 28:53

talk about mapping data collection. It sounds like that's a huge problem as well in this industry. Where you we I was giving a session just yesterday of a closing question of the audience, I said, Raise your hand in here. It's over 100 people are ill if you have perfect maps, and everyone laughed, right? Uh, because it's it's just not a reality. So getting that right as we install is super critical. Investing in tools that can make that easy so the GIS teams at the companies you're serving and get that correct helps the process overall in the future. It's just super important.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

You know, go ahead and synergy. That's that's a word that I want to toss around. So it's not just one, you know, software, it's not just one piece of technology. Again, it's a total systematic approach, I think, that you have to really throw at it, even in terms of excavation, right? There's a bunch of different types of of digging or yes, sir installation or rehabilitation, even right? A lot of different types of translist technologies. Um, so it's like finding those components that work best for you or work well, like you said, can sometimes be a bit of a chalet. Uh-huh. So we hopefully help alleviate that with our with our committee. At least here's what's available for I'm excited, truly.

SPEAKER_03 29:59

I'd like to hear just a little bit. You know, we guys are very involved with committees. I'd like to hear a little bit about where you would like it to go. Maybe not necessarily where you see it trending, but man, it would be really cool if we could get to this point. But also to where it's at right now. Like, we just got it to where in in the state we've already mentioned of Arkansas, like we are just now on the email where you can do the web portal stuff. And I'm over here a ditch digger messing around with Claude. Like, we've got a new wave, new age contractors coming through here. They're gonna be like, what is going on, guys? We are over here, like you, there has got to be something out there to make this a more seamless process. So I'd like to hear a little bit about the future, OP.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Yeah, well, I think it starts with understanding where there are opportunities in the ethos system for just better collaboration, right? So we had a panel yesterday as part of the technology committee, uh, where it really brought each stakeholder to the table. We had excavator representation, we had one call center, he had folks from the utility side of the things, gas operator, telecoms. You know, it was interesting to hear, right? The the gentleman from the telecom side of things stood up there and said right away, I'm part of the problem, right? You know, and and he said that, you know, with with a sense of like, hey, we're putting a lot of work on the system, and that's making it challenging for everybody. But what I loved about what he then went on to say after that was the things that they're doing with technology, with investment, to help make it a little bit better, a little bit easier for everybody. His understanding the impact that you just keep dumping on everybody more work and they can't keep up. That is that system isn't even gonna work well for you. As somebody who's trying to build, right? You folks are builders if you're doing excavation start out there. You want to be able to build faster and in a more safe way. And so leveraging technology tools as a part of your ecosystem to get smarter in the way you're submitting the right size tickets, right? I think is where it begins. You gotta submit the right size tickets. We hear so many stories about these scenarios where it's like, hey, we're gonna be doing some work in a small little portion of the front yard, and then meanwhile, the locator gets the ticket and it's covering four blocks. Yeah, right. We're gonna I'm gonna hammer that home, man. Oh, it's big, it's big. So we have to modernize the tools that are being used to Adams has such a wealth of knowledge on uh so many different phase that field screws can use to help them be safer and more efficient with their on-site. I think the ability for the industry to get really purposeful around investing and improving maps, right? There's so many touch points. I mean, it's crazy how often when I came into the sector, our chief product officer and I talk about it's kind of crazy to us that we just keep going back out to these same locations to put more paint and flax down everything. We're not electronically capturing that information for the purposes of future use. Yep. It's gone as soon as the jobs only it washes away, right? And and it's gone. And and we're losing that data, we're losing that opportunity. And there's technology tools nowadays and add up to touch on some of these uh that are just helpful now when we're doing the low case when we're out there doing the excavation. Let's capture those data. So use technology to get that right because what that's gonna help us all become is more efficient and more safe and more accurate as range.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Yeah, absolutely. I've gone in the industry for about 27 years, give or take, since the late 90s, started on the mapping side of things. We didn't even have maps at that point. We were the guys making the maps, right? Uh so uh you had to make sure you were pretty right. So uh today mapping definitely helps streamline the process, but people are also reluctant to share that data, I think, which is the main reason why it's not being captured and kind of you know more inclusive as a whole. Uh, they don't necessarily trust it as a whole. But again, maps are guidelines. That's something that I always tell folks. It's an indication that something may or may not be there. It could be on the opposite side of the road. And that all goes into how the data got into the GPS data GIS database to begin with. Sure, it could have been from what I say, Bob, on the napkin, right? The As bill from back when it was installed way back in the day. Now that data's put into GIS.

SPEAKER_03 34:04

It could have been I'm laughing because I've installed out there with a guy with a napkin. Hey, this is the last thing I got, you know. Right. 1986, that line was from here, Joey's back fan shroud there. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

And meanwhile, the road was two lanes then and now it's six, right? You know, uh there.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Where's the right-of-way? Yeah, right? Where's that curb? That curb left, you know, 30 years ago. So literally, how'd you get that data? So that's the the tip of the iceberg with why maps may be wrong. But again, I don't think companies should necessarily be reluctant to share that data. I mean, you've got different systems around the world internationally than the United States, and I think we're long overdue for an overhaul. And I think we're trying to get there, and that's baby stepping, but we've got to get better at the data we're sharing downstream with

Positive Response And Digital Locates

SPEAKER_02 34:50

the excavator.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

100% because because what what are we doing here? We we've got a hesitancy. And first of all, there's a lot of states that don't even have a requirement of a positive response of the excavator.

SPEAKER_03 35:01

I've learned I literally learned about it yesterday, and I didn't want to feel you know like a schmuck sitting here going, like I asked him, I said, what is positive response? Yeah, he's like, What do you where are you at? I said, Arkansas. Oh, he did that one of those noise.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

I think it's 21 states don't amp. Well, that's more than I thought. I think that's today in 2026. Yeah, which is crazy. Like, because why are we not providing a that validation that works ready to forget, B, information in that package, right? Because if we could give you the maps, the photos, right, from the local, would that help you when you're out on site? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

There's a company around the the corner that's here, VGIS, right? We just did a webinar with them last week. What they're doing is pretty remarkable with an iPhone. They're using iPhone, LIDAR, RTK locators, GPS, and you know, kind of mapping as you go. Yeah, you know, so if you're putting paint and flags on the ground, you know, it's kind of ridiculous how easy it is to store that data and the full metadata of everything on the device from the frequency, the uh as well as the GPS coordinates, the depth information, which isn't actually true, Jeff, and I don't want to I could take more than 35 minutes just to explain that. But it's pretty remarkable how quickly you can get the whole lot of data, and it's there. The technology is here, it's already, it's not crazy expensive.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

No, I actually VGIS, right? Correct. That was it. Me and uh Will, we spent some time with uh Alec, I believe is the gentleman's name. Toronto Company. Yeah, and Toronto Kid, right? So we we had goalie, seriously, goalies go, baby, not this, let's not talk about it. I'm a wild guy. So I'm gonna win this. Yeah, you're gonna I hope you guys do too. I mean, the least are out of it as long as Montreal doesn't win. But anyhow, we spent some time over at that booth and I was astonished. And we aren't the normal contractor where we daily log everything. I'm talking when an inspector comes on the site, when he leaves the site from who we talked to that day, from our customer lens, what production we take our a next step, and I'm where I'm going at with this is like that the production data is on a different tab, that we can pull results like live time next day for our estimator. He's looking, hey, how does this job progressing? Do I need to do something about it? But that technology all integrated and into inundated with my system that's going on is a no almost a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:30

I didn't quite tell him that, but like I've worked diligently, really diligently to fix our process assistance procedures, policy, everything SOP over the last three years, and it's cool to look at three years ago, honest to God with you, gentlemen. Uh, I had more employees than I've ever had in my life three years ago, and I'd have looked at that and go, we never need that. So isn't it crazy? Yeah, I have half the employees now, and I'm like, okay, I worked on these systems to your point, right? Systematically, the whole entire system needs an overhaul for sure. But that VGIS stuff is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

So imagine I think there was a there was a pilot, I forget exactly who was doing this, uh, using essentially that sort of technology might have even been PGIS in conjunction with an excavator for avoidance, right? So once you have the data, what can you do with it? It could do a whole lot of different things. You would create a buffer zone where the backhoe can't essentially dig because it knows that something is. They're called e fences now, yes, sir.

SPEAKER_03 38:26

Yeah. You could, wow, that's that's kind of game changer, really.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

Yeah, and as far as processes too, excavators starting to do maybe self-perform locates if it's a utility operator that home their own facilities, um, utilizing third parties ahead of the game, right? Not just leaning solely on 811. I've seen that quite a bit lately. This is currently happening. Yes, sir. Um, and uh it's again synergistic approach, it's not just one thing, it's like a layer, right? You have to chip away at it one at a time.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Yeah, no, and it it is interesting, right? Because uh, you know, I I don't know from your experience side, but like the amount of jobs that are day for the start at time is definitely a big deal. You can have sending around.

SPEAKER_03 39:05

Is uh I'll have a PM go check the locate, verify, make sure we've got every mark, we've got pictures of the utilities uploaded on the job ready for the guys to go. Like, I don't send a crew until that's done. Like because it became such an issue when you mobilize into a job. I only get paid to mobilize one time, guys. That's it. And it's not cheap moving these excavators. And luckily we have our own truck, but if you don't, you're looking at 5k in and out. Yeah, these are exactly these costs are plus the downtime of four or five, six guys standing around for two days in and out, right? Anyways, I could go on here, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Yeah, so and that's where your ability to then like have a better line of sight and the status of these jobs, understanding where they're at, making sure you're ready to deploy your crew, and and again, it all starts with upstream from that, right? Like, well, what results in that happening? It's because the location's not done. Why is the locate gun? Because there's a lot of very big tickets, there's too many tickets being submitted. You know, we've heard a lot of series here at the CGA over the years. Well, well, every Monday, my woman at the front desk calls in 386 tickets, you know. And guess what that does? It saturates the system with work that can't be executed. Uh and that hurts everybody. Right, that hurts everybody, including yourselves, right? Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

And that's easy to do when it's free, right?

SPEAKER_03 40:24

Right, yeah, right.

Training Standards And State Reform

SPEAKER_03 40:26

And man, I wish, and since it's at the state level, do you guys I don't I don't necessarily see it ever going to a uh yeah, I I that's what I was hoping for. It's like I'm hearing across all these panels, and we'll probably shut down with this year, fellas, but I keep hearing, you know, picking apart Arkansas, but there's other states that are really lacking as well. But then there's states like killing it. And and and you know, Scott in his area, he's like, I provide the maps to my contractors. Now I'm an entity. We've gone through, you know, with CGA, et cetera, committees and and and asked and made sure this liability wasn't too big of a deal. But he asked me, he said, Sai, what would you do with a map of your dig site? I said, dude, I promise you you ain't getting hit. I guarantee it. Yeah, you come put a mark on the ground, you give me a map and show me where that service kicks off that you didn't locate. Yeah, and and all I need to know is a tap is there, my guys won't hit it. I I can almost guarantee it. In 10 years, knock on wood, damages are a very small line item in our place, but we have standards and practices that right. We we don't use a utility, we're not coming at it like this. Like my guys, uh it's not rocket science, but it does take training. Yes, absolutely. And we've got 15 videos, YouTube videos, like new hire comes on. There's some general housekeeping stuff, but there's also, hey, your first day out on the site, I need you to understand that extraditor's got a swing boon. You can't die your first day because you don't know what you're doing. That's on me. That's not on this kid. I just hired it. Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? And we've got to, as employers, join in this training bucket, we've got to do a much better job of not just having a quick conversation, throwing a shovel across the table. You know what I mean? So, but at the same time, um, it would be so epic to have them at the national level. I love how it's state for state on one side of the fence, but on the other side of the fence, like, man, what we could do to streamline this entire system and process.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

That's fluid. And just having certain standards that are being banned, right? Like, that's a big part of the mission of the CGA is trying to create best practices for the industry to abide by, getting each state to ratchet up. You know, some of these things are hard because it requires law changes, and that's we all seeing doesn't move real quick sometimes. Um, yeah, it's probably a better way to do it. Plus, you need to pay your taxes. That's right. They they take that money out of your account real quick. You know, nothing else works that way. But experience I recently missed.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

So, like the national side, right? The only thing that's for as far as locating goes, that's really a requirement on a federal level is CFR 192, the UCB subpart and section fee. There's the four criteria. If you're essentially working on an oil or gas pipeline that carries a product, eventually crosses a state line. Um that's the only criteria that you have to have any form of anything documented. Training, it's not even training, it's OQ. So it's basically you're able to perform the covered task. Well, the covered task is essentially operation and maintenance task for the integrity of the pipeline. Um other than that, there's really no state well the or federal requirement for specific training, uh, hours in the field. The closest thing to that is the NOLCA accredited training program that's essentially uh neck and neck with CTA best practices, NOLCA best practices. Um so that's something that I'm trying to help, you know, kind of raise awareness of. Uh a lot of municipalities are starting to require that uh for their subcontractor because they should that they have a NOLCA accredited training program, uh, which is why I'm I'm behind that a hundred percent. It's the closest thing we have nationwide. Um

SPEAKER_03 44:00

So wonderful guys. I can't tell you. I was an absolute I learned so much right there. I'm literally still trying to chew through some of the GPR stuff that he said. Honestly, because I want to know. I you don't know what you don't know. And until somebody sits down willing enough to explain it to me in a language that I can understand, I'll never get it. So appreciate both of your times from the software perspective, the technology angle, and the things that it's really cool what you guys just did for the contractor lens, because they just got to see what you're up against. Like they got to understand, like the iceberg. I've never exactly, I could only imagine, but I've never thought about they just think A11, it's across the board. Half these guys probably don't even know it's state to state. Right. They just call one one, right? And so we need to bring some awareness there. Hey, look, this isn't then the national guidelines are here, but man, state to state, we've got to bring awareness. You need to get with your state legislators like and push this. And I'm going to. I I I didn't realize how far behind Arkansas is, and I am going to make sure we are the face of being better because it's people's lives we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Like truly at the end of the day, you have to benchmark uh an Aitland One process, look at Chicago. Um, that's all I'm gonna say. They're they're hey, they're pretty much cream of the crop. The permits are tied to everything along the list step of the way. So if they're outside of the process, they'll pull a permit. You can't even do so.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

And I'll send you some stuff I building clawed for my team, Saiya, about like the different state laws that it's the Arkansas specifically, so you can bring that back and say, hey, imperatively, here's what we're not doing, right? Because I talk with a lot of our clients in Arkansas, like they're battling it too, right? They're the the gas company, there's Summit. They're doing making major investments to solve these problems, but it's hard. They're dealing with lit really old, poorly installed stuff that's hard to locate. It's hard, it makes it hard for everybody, right? It's always uh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:56

These conversations is where the start of the change happens. Yeah, and bringing in for our our lens on the contractor, but also for your guys to open up the lens of oh man, never really thought then the contractor had to deal with that. So can't tell you guys um how appreciative I am of your time

CGA Tampa And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_03 46:13

here. CGA conference guys, if you've never been here, this place, absolutely unreal. First time I've been here. This booth has been awesome. The conversations that we've had, but not only in the booths, guys, in between the booths, the tables, the conversations, the three or four, the networking that you're having here. If you want visibility in the industry, yes, we were at Con Expo. That show's huge. This show is all about damage prevention and you utility guys understanding the process to make things better. We have got to do a better job from the contractor lands to have a much, much larger uh appearance at this show because we can't sit here and go, well, I didn't know if we're willing to put ourselves out there and and make sure that we're getting educated on this process. So, guys, truly, uh, Tampa is next year. I just want to throw show that, throw that out there. Uh, be looking for that, cgaconference.com. Guys, till next time, you be safe out there, and we'll catch you on the next one.

SPEAKER_00 47:15

If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it a like, share it with the fellas, check out our website to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue collar business. Who do you want to hear from? Send them our way, and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. Till next time, guys.