Submitting Large Project Requests

Sher Kirk - Operations Director - Utility Safety Partners

Large Project Tickets are designed for pre-planned jobs that continue over a significant area and length of time. The large scope of these projects typically requires a planning meeting between excavators and affected facility owners in the area before locates are requested.

Although USP’s software allows large area maps on a single ticket, Large Project Tickets with a work area exceeding 5 kilometers in length pose challenges to facility owners and locators and can compromise damage prevention and safety practices.

• The physical locate will take multiple days and / or multiple locators to complete.
• The large work area increases the risk of a facility being missed during the physical locate.
• The resulting records of locate are long and can be difficult to read and manage.
• Requesting locates for areas of the project where work will not begin for 14 days results in multiple relocates, increasing the burden on the damage prevention process.

To maintain the integrity of the damage prevention process and to ensure the safety of all involved parties, facility owners may reject Large Project tickets where the length of the work area exceeds 5 kilometers. It is in your best interest to plan your work to divide the project into sections that are 5 kilometers in length (or less) and where the work will be undertaken in 14 day periods. Each work section of the project can then be placed on individual tickets that are submitted consecutively, as required.

When planning a Large Project, consider taking advantage of the Alternate Locate Provider (ALP) program. You can hire an approved Alternate Locate Service Provider from the list to work on your project through its lifespan – giving you greater control over when locates are completed and ensuring you always have a locator familiar with the scope and area of the project. When you place your locate requests, simply click the ALP button to let asset owners know that you have hired an approved locator for this ticket.

Best Practices for submitting connected tickets over a large work area:

1. Submit one ticket covering the first 5-kilometer length of your work area.
2. Click the ‘Continue Ticket’ button from the ticket confirmation screen. The Continue Ticket function will create a new ticket with the same details as the previous ticket automatically filled in.
3. In the Location tab, the area you drew for the previous ticket will be highlighted in grey. Draw the next section of your work area. This dig site polygon will ‘snap’ to the previous dig site polygon to create a continuous work area if required.

Note: It is not required that your polygons touch.

Tickets submitted using the ‘Continue Ticket’ function are automatically linked by the software through information in the Remarks field. This allows facility owners and locators to identify multiple tickets as part of one large job.

*TIP* An additional way to link your tickets is by entering a job ID number in the ‘User Reference’ field. This field is searchable in your ticket history so you can easily pull up all tickets related to this job.

Following this guideline helps stakeholders keep the damage prevention process running smoothly and efficiently. It is the best means to ensure that your work can continue uninterrupted throughout the duration of your project.