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Bill Dexheimer Field Manager bdex@socket.net

Bill Dexheimer Field Manager bdex@socket.net. PMissouri One Call System, Inc. 824 Weathered Rock Rd. Jefferson City, MO 65101 www.mo1call.com. Planning and Design in Damage Prevention. Reasons to prevent damage. Prevention of damage to buried utilities is important for several

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Bill Dexheimer Field Manager bdex@socket.net

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  1. Bill DexheimerField Managerbdex@socket.net PMissouriOne Call System, Inc. 824 Weathered Rock Rd. Jefferson City, MO 65101 www.mo1call.com

  2. Planning and Designin Damage Prevention

  3. Reasons to prevent damage Prevention of damage to buried utilities is important for several reasons:

  4. Safety Safety is the number reason for preventing damage to buried utilities. Some of the utilities that are buried in the state could, if damaged, pose an immediate threat to the health and safety of excavators and the public. Pipelines Gas lines Electric lines 911 communication lines

  5. Financial The cost to repair and restore damaged utilities can be very high, depending on the type of the facility and the severity of the damage. The environmental impact can be devastating in some cases. Court costs and legal fees can be extremely expensive in the event of litigation.

  6. Financial(continued) Insurance premiums and deductibles can increase dramatically as a result of damages. Availability of insurance could be jeopardized as a result of damages. Fines and penalties could be levied for violations to Missouri law, OSHA, DNR, and EPA regulations, and local code and ordinance requirements.

  7. Financial(continued) Expenses can be incurred from loss of productivity as a result of down time while utilities are being repaired.

  8. Public Welfare Damage to buried utilities effects the communities that those utilities serve. These communities consisting of our families, friends, neighbors, and local businesses can be negatively impacted. At the least, they can be inconvenienced, and in a worst case scenario they could be catastrophically impacted.

  9. Even if utilities aren’t damaged during construction, unexpected conflicts with buried utilities can result in significant financial impacts: • Relocation of existing utility • Redesign of the project • Loss of time • Delay of the project

  10. Missouri Law Revised statute of Missouri Chapter 319 requires every person excavating in the state of Missouri to make notice at least two but not more than ten working in advance of the excavation. However

  11. Waiting until construction is about to begin to obtain information about existing buried utilities ignores a critical opportunity to identify potential utility conflicts. FAILING TO PLAN CAN IN FACT BE A PLAN TO FAIL.

  12. Planning and Design The first step in utility conflict avoidance is the consideration of existing utilities in the PLANNING and DESIGN phase of any project involving excavation. Avoiding conflicts with buried utilities is a shared responsibility.

  13. If a possible utility conflict is recognized in this phase, viable alternatives can be found to resolve the issue and almost always at a lower cost. Knowledge is power, and in damage prevention, Information is protection.

  14. Public Welfare The responsibility of every professional should be a consideration for the public welfare in all aspects of their work. Most would agree that utilities are critical to the public welfare. It follows then that protection of the utilities should be one of the highest priorities on any project being planned and constructed.

  15. ASCE CANONS OF ETHICS CANON 1 Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the publicand shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their professional duties.

  16. Cannon 1Continued a. Engineers shall recognize that the lives, safety, health and welfare of the general public are dependent upon engineering judgments, decisions, and practices incorporated into structures, machines, products, processes and devices.

  17. Cannon 1Continued b. Engineers shall approve or seal only those design documents, reviewed or prepared by them, which are determined to be safe for public health and welfare in conformity with accepted engineering standards.

  18. Cannon 1continued c. Engineers whose professional judgment is overruled under circumstances where the safety, health and welfare of the public are endangered, or the principles of sustainable development ignored, shall inform their clients or employers of the possible consequences.

  19. An All Too Frequent Scenario The project owner does not consider existing utilities when planning a project. Or if considered: The main concern is the issue of liability instead of damage prevention.

  20. Project Owner • The Owner of the project may ,in the scope of work, assign responsibility to the Design engineer for acquiring and mapping utility information.

  21. Design engineer The design engineer could do one of two things: • Ignore the utilities and put a disclaimer on the design to shift the responsibility to the excavator. • Compile utility information from various sources and correlate this data with the site survey for the project.

  22. Design Engineer(continued) Being aware of the possibility of the acquired data being incomplete, the Designer would place a disclaimer on the plans and again shift the responsibility to the excavator. (example) “Utility information has been obtained from available records. The actual locations may differ. Contractor to verify all utility locations. Any utilities damaged shall be the responsibility of the contractor”.

  23. Contractor The contractor who bids the project based on the depicted utility information, would likely have a contingency built into the construction bid to account for the informational uncertainty surrounding underground utilities and the likelihood that claims, and extended schedules, would have to be developed and negotiated for delays and costs associated with unknown or differing site conditions.

  24. Project Owner impacted Depending on the wording of any contingency language in the contract, the project owner could be saddled with additional costs of construction downtime, schedule delays, redesign and utility relocation; and in a worst-case scenario, utility damage, service outages, consequential damages, injury to workers or the public and possible litigation.

  25. Although in this scenario attempts are made to avoid liability or shift responsibility, the reality is that unforeseen conflicts can and have resulted in issues affecting all parties involved.

  26. The proper approach The owner of the project should assume the initial role of responsibility in ensuring every possible consideration is being given to the protection of subsurface utilities. .

  27. As a function of that role: All RFPs and RFQs for engineering and design should include a requirement for the gathering and depiction of existing utility data information on all plans for bidding and construction.

  28. The preferable and most comprehensive level of requirement would be ASCE C/I 38-02 as the standard to employ

  29. The ASCE C-I 38-02, Standard Guidelines for the Collection and Depiction of Existing Subsurface Utility Data was adopted by the ASCE in 2002.

  30. “This National Consensus Standard (NCS) follows the legal procedures for adoption as not only an ASCE standard, but also as an American National Standard Institute (ANSI) standard.

  31. “The Justice system holds these standards in high regard, and courts and lawyers use these standards to assist in both defining a professional's standard of care and in adjudication of blame”. (NHWA document)

  32. What is ASCE 38-02 “The intent of this standard is to present a system of classifying the quality of existing subsurface utility data. Such a classification will allow the project owner, engineer, and constructor to develop strategies to reduce risk, or at minimum, to allocate risk due to existing subsurface utilities in a defined manner”. (NHWA document)

  33. Supporters of 38-02 The NTSB, AGC, ASCE, FHWA, NUCA, AASHTO, NCHRP, APWA and other organizations are firmly behind this standard development and implementation. The Common Ground Alliance also stresses the importance of providing this level of information on designs and plans.

  34. The Common Ground Alliance (CGA) was established as a result of a U.S. Department of Transportation sponsored study of best practices for Damage Prevention. CGA promotes damage prevention as a SHARED RESPONSIBILITY The CGA promotes several best practices involving Planning and Design.

  35. CGA Best Practices Practice 2-1 Plats prepared for the development of real property should identify and show the alignment of any existing buried facilities and the presence and extent of any existing easements and or rights of way.

  36. CGA Best Practices Practice 2-2 Designers should use all reasonable means of obtaining information about underground facilities in the area of the planned excavation.

  37. CGA Best Practices 2-3 Designers should indicate existing underground facilities on drawings during planning and design. 2-14 Advocates the proper application of Subsurface Utility Engineering(SUE) practices as a means of providing significant cost and damage-avoidance benefits.

  38. APWA Guidance Position Statement “The APWA believes that the public interest is best served when governmental agencies follow the guidelines for subsurface utility engineering(SUE) described in the ASCE Standard Guideline for the Collection and Depiction of Existing Subsurface Utility Data (ASCE 38-02).” (APWA Guidance Position Statement)

  39. SUE • The ASCE standard defines SUE as a branch of engineering practice that involves managing certain risks associated with: • utility mapping at appropriate quality levels, • utility coordination, • utility relocation design and coordination, • utility condition assessment, • communication of utility data to concerned parties, • utility relocation cost estimates, • implementation of utility accommodation policies, and • utility design.

  40. These activities, combined with traditional records research and site surveys, and utilizing new technologies such as surface geophysical methods and non-destructive vacuum excavation, provide "quality levels" of information.

  41. Quality levels of SUE There are four recognized quality levels of underground utility information ranging from Quality Level (QL) D (the lowest level) to Quality Level A (the highest level).

  42. Quality Level D • Quality Level D. QL-D is the most basic level of information for utility locations. It comes solely from existing utility records or verbal recollections, both typically unreliable sources. It may provide an overall "feel" for the congestion of utilities, but is often highly limited in terms of comprehensiveness and accuracy. QL-D is useful primarily for project planning and route selection activities

  43. Preliminary Design Missouri One Call System provides for a preliminary design request to be used to acquire contact information for buried utility owners in the area of the project. A list of the names of the utilities with contact numbers will be emailed to the planner as a result of this request.

  44. Quality Level C Quality Level C. QL-C is probably the most commonly used level of information. It involves surveying visible utility facilities (e.g., manholes, valve boxes, etc.) and correlating this information with existing utility records (QL-D information). When using this information, it is not unusual to find that many underground utilities have been either omitted or erroneously plotted. Its usefulness, therefore, is primarily on rural projects where utilities are not prevalent, or are not too expensive to repair or relocate.

  45. Quality Level B Quality Level B. QL-B involves the application of appropriate surface geophysical methods to determine the existence and approximate horizontal position of virtually all utilities within the project limits. This activity is called "designating". The information obtained in this manner is surveyed to project control. It addresses problems caused by inaccurate utility records, abandoned or unrecorded facilities, and lost references.

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