1. The DIRT Tool Impact on Damage Prevention
Sandra Holmes
Tempe Mission Palms - Tuesday, August 20, 2013

2. Also known as Arizona Blue Stake, Inc.
Been in existence as a non-profit since 1974
Arizona’s statewide one call center
Process is required by state law
One of more than 60 one call centers nationwide
Business Hours: 6 a.m. – 5 p.m. M-F, excluding holidays

3. Representing 16 different stakeholder groups
In 1998, U.S. Congress commissioned RSPA to study damage prevention best practices – Damage Prevention is a Shared Responsibility
162 persons
Representing 16 different stakeholder groups
132 Best Practices plus Emerging Technologies in 9 Chapters
* Planning & Design * One Call Center
* Location & Marking * Excavation
* Mapping * Compliance
* Public Education * Reporting & Evaluation
* Emerging Technologies
“Common Ground” Study was presented to Secretary of Transportation in June 1999 (Jim Hall)
Just a quick review of who the CGA is and where they came from….

4. After the study, industry wanted to keep the shared responsibility momentum
In 2000, the CGA was formed
Member-driven association dedicated to public safety, environmental protection, and integrity of services by promoting effective damage prevention practices
2013 – 1,600 individual members; 250 member organizations and 58 sponsors
Mission
Identify & disseminate stakeholder best practices
Develop and conduct public awareness & education programs
Share and disseminate tools & technology for DP
Serve as resource for damage & OCC data collection & analysis

5. Committee Structure
Best Practices
Technology
Education Programs & Marketing
One Call Systems International
Regional Partner
Stakeholder Advocacy
Data Reporting & Evaluation
In 2007, after years of CGA work, FCC assigned 811 to OCC’s

6. Through the work of CGA Committees, Best Practices have continued to be reviewed and added
Definitions refined
released Version 10.0

7. Data Reporting & Evaluation Committee launched Damage Information & Reporting Tool (DIRT) in 2003 –
Provides method for collecting damage data nationally
Data is used to analyze root causes of damages, conduct trend analysis & assess educational programs
How many damages occur each year?
What are the primary causes of damages and near misses?
Are these events increasing or decreasing – and why?
Are some educational campaigns more effective than others?
What types of equipment are being used when damage occurs?
What type of work was being performed?
First report contained 2005 damage data

8. Why should stakeholders submit data to DIRT?
Leads to improvement in internal damage reports
Helps to set benchmarks and develop appropriate damage prevention messages
Analysis & Recommendations play a role in producing new best practices
Submissions are encouraged by stakeholder groups nationwide – AGA/NTDPC
Access to data is secure
Confidentiality is highly regarded and data is kept anonymous

9. Submissions are encouraged for all stakeholder groups Excavators
Facility Owners
Contract Locators
One Call Centers
It’s an already available system for organizations that lack resources or time to develop their own database
Virtual Private DIRT allows stakeholders to collect additional company/state specific information
LAUNCHED IN November, 2003

10. 2011 Report – released in September 2012
More than 200,000 events were submitted
Rates of damage are normalized to #/1,000 OCC tickets created
2011 findings include:
When no call is made to OCC, 36% chance a damage will occur
When call is made – 99% chance that job will be completed without damage
LAUNCHED IN November, 2003

11. 2011 - Natural Gas Supplemental Report
Focuses only on damages to natural gas lines
Represents 67,000 of the 200,000 national events
Enough of a data spread nationally to keep the data providers anonymous
2011 findings when compared to all others:
Includes higher quality data
Greater percentage attributed to no notice
Greater percentage had visible & correct marks
Higher % of damages by Occupant/Farmer were not preceded by a ticket to OCC
1) In general, natural gas distribution facilities events included more and higher quality data (i.e., less
Did Not Collect, Unknown, and Other responses) than the average for all other DIRT events
submitted in Greater completeness suggests greater clarity of the issues surrounding damages
to these specific facilities, although opportunities for improvement still exist (e.g., Excavating
Practices Not Sufficient Other).
2. A greater percentage of events are attributable to Notification not made for natural gas distribution
facilities (i.e., damage root cause) than all other 2011 DIRT events.
In addition, natural gas
distribution events that included the Occupant/Farmer excavator group were a third more likely not
to be preceded by a locate request than all other 2011 DIRT events on a percentage basis (see Table
2) involving this same excavator group. This brings into question the role of exemptions for this
particular group. In addition, a noticeably greater percentage of events (more than half) were
attributed to Notification not made in region 8 (Canada).
3. Contract and utility locator performance (as measured by visibility and correctness of marks) was
comparable for natural gas distribution facilities. However, the percentage of visible and correct
marks was higher for natural gas distribution events than all other 2011 DIRT events.
4. Half of the damages to natural gas distribution facilities submitted to DIRT for 2011 occurred in city
streets.
5. The largest number of natural gas distribution facility events was submitted for region 6
(Southwest). Regions 4 (Great Lakes) and 5 (Plains US) are the only regions with more than half of
events attributed to a single damage root cause, Excavation practices not sufficient for bot

12. Analysis of Root Causes for Damages
National Report
The full report analyzes the breakdown of causes for all damages that occurred in 2011 with 41% being excavation practices not sufficient; 22% Locating practices not sufficient; and 26% notification not made at all
When you compare it to the natural gas supplemental report, you can see the root causes are a little different…..

13. Root Cause by Facility Type`
Here’s a look at all the facility types individually and their perceived root causes.
National Report

14. Deeper Dive into Excavation Practices Not Sufficient
41%
The report dives deeper into the specific root cause of “excavation practices not sufficient”.
Overall, the damages with this root cause are broken down as follows. When they took a look at only the Natural Gas Damages you can clearly see first that more data is gathered about the damage so the events that fell into the “other” category are far fewer, but then, you can see that 13% of these gas damages were because clearance was not maintained, meaning the excavator did not use the careful & prudent method of hand digging within a certain distance on either side or below the facility. That compares to 3% of the rest of the national damages being as a result of this.
11% of gas facilities were damaged because hand tools were not used – where only 1% of the rest of damages resulted from this
6% of gas facilities were damaged because marks were not maintained on site – where this was the cause in only 2% of the rest of damages
3% of gas damages were because a test hole was not used to verify the exact location of the facility – where 2% of the rest were caused by this.
1% of gas damages were as a result of not supporting the facility once it was uncovered and less than 1% of all other damages weren’t supported
And then last, Less than 1% of gas damages resulted from backfilling not sufficient – so that could mean the backfill material used wasn’t appropriate or compaction methods could have caused some type of tension damage where the facility was actually pulled away from connections the might not even be in the immediate vicinity of the work.

15. Who Isn’t Excavating Sufficiently and
How are they Digging?
Natural Gas Data
National Data
So who’s not excavating sufficiently when these damages occur….. And what type of equipment are the using when they do it?
The national report illustrates that on the majority of the damages this data is not collected – mostly because the data is being reported by somebody who either wasn’t on site or did not gather the information at the time of the event, but is reporting the damage to the DIRT system.
For the damage events where the data is collected, the majority of those are cased by contractors/developers with a backhoe with hand tools being the next highest used tool.
You can also see that work being done by government agencies using a backhoe or trencher are the next highest cause of damages – with utility companies doing work
When you look at the natural gas only report, you can see that the same trends hold true, but there seems to be a higher percentage of damages occuring while using a wider range of tools.

16. What Type of Work are They Doing?
Natural Gas Data
National Data
Looking at those same excavator types, the reports dives deeper into what type of work they were performing. Again you see a high percentage of that data not being collected, but for the events where the data was collected, you can see the highest percentage of damages were caused by contractors/developers doing sewer/water work and/or energy or telecom work followed by government agencies doing sewer/water work and utilities doing either sewer/water or energy/ telecom work.
On the natural gas specific report….. More data was gathered about the events so more is known…. The highest percentage of damages were caused by contractor/developers doing sewer/water work followed by street/roadway work, energy/telecom work and then construction/development work being don by contractors or developers. Government agencies and utilities doing sewer/water work

17. Did they Call 811 Before Digging?
Natural Gas Data
National Data
The report takes a little bit deeper diver into whether or not the one call center was called and a ticket existed for the location of the damage.
When you look at the Natural Gas specific report, it shows that more of the damages that are perceived to be caused by contractors or developers are related to having no ticket.

18. Who Marked the Facilities?
All facility types except gas
Natural Gas only
The report starts to also analyze who was reported to have actually marked the underground facility
For all damages occuring to facilities other than gas you can see that

19. In What type of ROW Did the Damage Occur?
For all damages where data was collected, This chart demonstrates where the facility that was damaged is located.
You can see 48% of gas damages occur in city streets and 22% occur on private non-commercial land
For all other facility damages, the highest percentage, which is 19% occurs on private, non-commercial land and 16% take place in city streets

20. Excavator Downtime National Data Natural Gas Data
When a facility is damaged – how long does it impact the excavator by causing downtime – and at what cost

21. Estimated number of damages resulting from excavation (U.S.)
Total damages estimate is developed 11 states believed to have all or the majority of their damages reported (based on legislative requirements).
These states include Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia, Vermont, and West Virginia.
The variables include building permits, construction spending, infrastructure, land area, population, and population density.
This approach suggests an estimated total number of damages to be approximately 350,000 (see Exhibit 1).
Although the 2012 estimate represents an increase over the 330,000 estimate for 2011, it is believed to be largely the result of greater construction activity in 2012 compared to In addition, for the states where both 2011 and 2012 one call center data is available, there was about a 7% increase in the number of tickets received in 2012.

22. Where Are Damages Occurring?
2012
2011
U.S. census divisions

24. Distribution of events by root cause by region

25. Ratio of Damages Per 1,000 Locate Tickets Created?
2011
2012 = 5.42 damages per thousand… only slightly higher than the 5.1 for 2011

26. Impact of Notification Exemptions on Damages
Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 (passed by Congress on Dec 13, 2011) requires PHMSA to conduct a study on the impact of excavation damage on pipeline safety 
Includes an analysis of exemptions to one-call notice requirements in each state and their potential adverse effect on damages
50 states have 50 unique combinations of exemptions
2012 DIRT report performs some analysis of exemptions impact on the damages
In the 36 states where damage rates can be calculated:
18 states have 5 or more exemptions
18 states have less than 5 exemptions

27. Avg damage rate per 1,000 tickets – considering exemptions
A comparison of the damage rate per 1,000 tickets calculated for the 36 states examined in the damages per 1,000 one call ticket analysis above suggests that as notification exemptions increase, so do damage rates (see Exhibit 24). Half of the 36 states analyzed have less than five notice exemptions, whereas the other half have five or more notice exemptions. The average damage rate per 1,000 tickets is 108% greater for the 18 states with five or more notice exemptions (7.33 vs. 3.52). Furthermore, a 0.51 positive correlation coefficient is calculated for this comparison.
A coefficient of correlation is a mathematical measure of how much one number can expect to be influenced by changes in another. It is closely related to covariance. A correlation coefficient of 1 means that the two numbers are perfectly correlated: if one grows so does the other, and the change in one is a multiple of the change in the other. For this particular analysis, all it means is that about half of the damage rate may be explained by the number of notification exemptions present for a given state.

28. Impact of Notification Exemptions on Damages
Report suggests:
It is possible that the number of exemptions in a state could have more impact on damage rates than actual exemption itself
The inconsistency of exemptions across states could be a contributing factor
The variety of exemptions may lead to excavators wrongly assuming a notice exemption exists when in fact it does not
Performing similar calculations on your own damage data to assess the impact of exemptions
Report also provides caveats to keep in mind:
States with many exemptions, but having good education & enforcement might still have low damage rates
Calculations for individual states might have substantially different results when compared to a calculation for an aggregated group including that state.
. For example, when neighboring states have different notice exemptions, an excavator that works in these states may become confused about which exemptions apply in which states. Or it may be that as the number of notification exemptions increases, public perception of the overall importance of calling 811 decreases - i.e., "the process can't be that effective if there are so many exceptions for it."

29. 2012 Recommendations Read the complete report
Report your damages to DIRT
Remind and refer other stakeholders to report their damages
Continue promoting “call before you dig” – even when notification exemptions exist.
Consider the number of, combination of, and rationale for notice exemptions and their potential impact on damage rates
Educate the public on existing DP best practices
Identify additional stakeholder-specific DIRT reports
Urge 100% one call center submission of incoming ticket volumes to the CGA One Call data reporting tool
Determine additional external data and information sources – like the PHMSA notice exemptions study – that might introduce new analyses.
Jay Bowman, FMI Corporation

30. More information and the history of DIRT reports back to 2005 can be found at:
LAUNCHED IN November, 2003

32. Questions?
LAUNCHED IN November, 2003