Underground Infrastructure - November 2023 - 19

* Locator Error Root Causes: Enhance facility maps to
GIS-grade, address contract structures to emphasize
timeliness and accuracy, and increase efficiency through
effective use of the 811 system.
Recommendations
The report also provides recommendations to enhance
reporting and analysis of damages to better understand and
address trends, including the implementation of standardized
data collection fields and creation of damage prevention indices
to gauge progress over time. Stakeholders are also en-couraged
to participate in the Damage Prevention Institute's (DPI)
accreditation and peer review processes to help develop the
next generation of industry performance metrics.
" Earlier this year, we challenged the industry with the
ambitious goal of reducing damages by 50 percent over the
next five years, " said CGA President and CEO Sarah Magruder
Lyle. " The find-ings of the DIRT Report are critical to focusing
the industry on key areas contributing to more than threequarters
of all damages to buried infrastructure.
" To make significant change and reverse damage rates, it's
critical that our industry rapidly adopts the recommendations
outlined in this report to target the most persistent challenges. "
To illustrate that the " 50-in-5 " challenge is achievable, the
2022 DIRT includes a case study from 811 Chicago, which did
reduce underground utility damages in the city by 50 percent
over five years through collaboration and mapping efforts.
The case study serves as a resource for other or-ganizations to
improve their processes and focus their investments on proven
strategies that reduce damages, so they can contribute to the
50-in-5 industry challenge.
" We'd like to thank the dedicated damage prevention organizations
that make the DIRT Report possible each year
through their voluntary submission of damage and near-miss
data, " said Louis Panzer, executive director of North Carolina
811 and CGA Data Reporting & Evaluation Commit-tee cochair.
" The data makes it clear that we have areas we need to
improve upon but offers us a great direction forward to definitively
reverse these concerning damage trends.
" With the new influx of data from excavators, as well as the
monthly reporting required for Dam-age Prevention Institute
participants, we can look forward to unprecedented insights
that will help shape the future of damage prevention and drive
industry progress. "
CGA is a member-driven association of nearly 3,200 individuals,
organizations and sponsors in every facet of the underground
utility industry. The complete DIRT Annual Report
for 2022 is available for download at dirt.common ground alliance.com,
and stakeholders interested in submit-ting data to
the 2023 Report or establishing a Virtual Private Dirt account
should visit the DIRT website: cga-dirt.com. UI
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
CGA, commongroundalliance.com
CGA's GIS Case Study Highlighting Value
in Facility Mapping Information
Common Ground Alliance (CGA) recently released a groundbreaking
case study as part of its Next Practices Initiative titled " PILOT: Improving
Efficiency and Reducing Damages by Providing Ticket-Level Visualizations
of Underground Facilities to Designers, Locators and Excavators. "
The case study introduces the ambitious Minnesota Utilities Mapping
Project (MUMP), which aims to provide real-time, ticket-level mapped
visualizations of underground utilities to accredited designers, locators
and excavators to improve the damage prevention system's efficiency
and out-comes.
The pilot project leveraged widely accessible technology to create
a first-of-its-kind tool that has the potential to revolutionize viewing of
underground utility maps for major stakeholder groups. This effort was
led by Gopher State One Call (GSOC), with input from the Minnesota
Geospatial Advi-sory Council, to address the persistent challenge of
inaccurate or incomplete maps, which contrib-ute to a significant number
of damages to buried utilities.
The pilot program uses an open-source software solution that connects
to the GSOC ticketing sys-tem and captures all relevant ticket information,
including the geographic area indicated on the tick-et. The program then
returns a digital report of the area of interest in the form of a visualization
of buried facility data, which can be accessible to end users, including
designers, locators, excavators and others, for the life of the 811 ticket.
" We are proud to have designed a scalable tool that will improve the
safety of industry stakeholders and communities, as well as the longevity
of our vital underground infrastructure, " said Barb Cederberg, chief
operations officer of Gopher State One Call. " We're excited about the
possibilities that this technology has to improve damage outcomes as we
look to build out the program on a state and then possibly national level. "
Encouraging innovation
This case study was documented by CGA's Next Practices Initiative, which
seeks to encourage in-novation and new practices to address the most
critical challenges facing the damage prevention industry. The Next
Practices Initiative identified " pursuing an accurate, accessible GIS-based
map-ping system/database, " as one of the opportunities for improvement
in the damage prevention sys-tem with the greatest potential return on
investment for the industry.
In an effort to encourage the deployment of new technology, CGA
provided a grant to MUMP to help develop an open-source software
module for broader use based on the unprecedented pilot program.
" The Next Practices Initiative is a critical component of CGA's efforts
to recognize and address ar-eas of improvement in damage prevention,
while also promoting groundbreaking technologies and innovations that
can help us overcome our most pressing challenges, " said Sarah Magruder
Lyle, president and CEO of Common Ground Alliance.
" This case study highlights the power of Next Practices in driving
positive change within our stakeholder industries, and we encourage all
stakeholders to work on furthering technologies and targeted strategies to
help us achieve our '50 in 5' industry goal to cut damages in half over the
next five years. "
To read this full case study, along with other Next Practices case
studies, please visit CGA's web-site at comongroundalliance.com. UI
UndergroundInfrastructure.com | NOVEMBER 2023 19
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Underground Infrastructure - November 2023

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