Underground Infrastructure - November 2023 - 18

DIRTREPORT
CGA's DIRT Report Correlates
Infrastructure Investment
with Increased Excavation Damage
Reporting Tool Provides Recommendations to Address Challenges, Achieve Goals
Common Ground Alliance (CGA), the national nonprofit
trade association dedicated to protecting underground utility
lines, people who dig near them and their communities, recently
announced the findings from its 2022 Damage Information
Reporting Tool (DIRT). It revealed concerning in-creases
across key damage indicators.
The report found that damage to underground utilities,
which pose severe risks to public safety and interrupt commerce,
has trended upward over the last three years. Excavation
activity continues to increase, as states work to improve infrastructure,
along with a significant influx of funding from the
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Three-year modeling from 2020-2022 indicates that damages
per construction spending rose 12.35 percent and damages
per 1,000 transmissions rose 9.34 percent between 2021 and
2022. A regres-sion analysis of consistent 2020-2022 data,
which considered additional variables including weath-er, population
and infrastructure density further confirms that damages
were at best flat and likely increasing.
The annual DIRT provides a comprehensive accounting and
analysis of damages to buried infra-structure in the U.S. and
Canada to help stakeholders understand the current landscape
and the fac-tors contributing to underground facility damages.
As excavation activity continues to increase, the report underscores
the importance of addressing the ongoing causes of damage
to vital facilities to drive these numbers down.
Data
The report analyzed all 2022 data submitted voluntarily to
DIRT by facility operators, utility locat-ing companies, 811
18 NOVEMBER 2023 | UndergroundInfrastructure.com
centers, contractors, regulators and others from the U.S. and
Canada, and con-textualized the data as part of a three-year
trend analysis (2020-2022). Reflecting excava-tion/construction
stakeholders' increased engagement with damage prevention,
that key group was the leading source of damage reports
for the first time in 2022.
The analysis of 2022 data indicates that a few persistent
challenges are responsible for nearly 76 percent of damages
that occur, including no notification to the 811 centers, failure
to pothole and/or maintain sufficient clearance, facilities not
marked or marked inaccurately due to locator error, and other
improper excavation practices.
No-notification damages make up more than 25 percent of
all damages, with 77 percent of these attributed to professional
excavators. Focusing industry efforts and outreach on these top
challeng-es is key to making measurable progress in reducing
damage and near-miss incidents.
The report urges stakeholders to commit to working within
organizations and across stakeholder groups to generate new
solutions to the persistent, systemic issues causing the majority
of damag-es. Recommendations provided to address specific
root-cause groups included:
* No-Notification Root Cause: Focus excavator outreach
on behavioral change - namely con-sistent and effective
use of 811 - and help restore excavator confidence in
the system through improved locating processes.
* Excavation Root Causes: Prioritize tolerance zone safety,
address contracts to provide adequate compensation
for potholing, and provide excavators with access to
map visualizations.
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Underground Infrastructure - November 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Underground Infrastructure - November 2023
