Re: FCC Hurricane Michael after-action report

[Brandon Martin <lists.nanog () monmotha net>]

On 5/15/19 8:51 AM, Mike Hammett wrote:
> The majority of people doing locates are terrible at their job. 
> (Un)fortunately, people doing the conduit installations are often 
> terrible at their job as well. It's about a 50/50 split if the line was 
> located correctly and the installation crew was careless or the line 
> wasn't located correctly in the first places. Sometimes lines can be off 
> by 10 feet

We had some issues around here where the locates were literally on the 
wrong side of the street.  Crews were hitting gas lines left and right. 
 Apparently in some cases they didn't actually LOCATE at all.  They 
just sprayed and flagged based on some ancient (in many cases 50+ year 
old) "as-built" drawings.

Didn't stop the county and cities from putting a stop to it after a 
while, though.  Probably because, as you say, it was maybe 50/50 whether 
the locates were off vs. whether the boring crew just wasn't paying 
attention.  How you can't know where an active pinger on your drill head 
is to within a few inches let alone several feet is beyond me.

I dunno how the big guys get away with it.  If I hit something, you can 
darn well bet someone's going to be on my neck immediately to shut the 
job down and pull my bond if possible.
--
Brandon Martin