TAKING ADVANTAGE OF A GOOD SITUATION

In today’s society, you do not need to look very far to see many examples of people taking advantage of a situation. Whether it is insurance fraud, stealing supplies at work, or simply a friend that continues to borrow money from you, too many people feel comfortable taking advantage of others.

Diggers Hotline and its members have seen increasing amounts of abuse in a couple of areas. The first is the emergency locate, the second is the "crew on site" relocate. Both of these types of locate requests require the facility owners to respond and mark in less than three working days. In most cases the caller requests the facility owners to respond as soon as possible.

The problem is that when the facility owners respond by rushing to the job site to locate, they arrive to find no emergency situation, or no crew waiting to begin work.

There are basically two reasons this abuse takes place: faulty planning and no concern for the inconveniencing of others. Putting off calling Diggers Hotline till it’s too late, or claiming "crew on site" for a relocate when you know the crew isn’t there, tests the locators patience.

The question Diggers Hotline most often gets is, "Why do you allow excavators to file these bogus locate requests?" Most callers to Diggers Hotline know that the center has to take the information the caller provides, and that if someone claims they have an emergency, and the job they need to perform meets the criteria for an emergency, our operator has to process it as an emergency. The members of Diggers Hotline have to respond as if it is an emergency and upon arriving at the job site then realize they have been conned.

Up to now, the utilities and their locators have done very little to excavators who abuse these procedures, but that could change.

What excavators often forget is that while calling in locate requests and getting job sites marked is free to them, someone is paying a cost. Diggers Hotline members not only pay to receive the messages from the call center, but many also pay to have the areas painted and flagged. Forcing a locator to rush to a job site causes all the other work he/she has to be pushed back, which potentially creates longer hours or rushed locates which raises safety issues. There are more than enough legitimate emergencies and relocates for the locators to accomplish, without adding bogus ones.

If you are an individual who feels comfortable taking advantage of these situations, then chances are this article will not affect your mode of operation all that much. But be warned, it is not out of the realm of possibility that facility owners will start billing those excavators who abuse these policies.

On a final note, we all have to work together in this process. Abusing any part of the process will only serve to weaken the system, which in turn will pose problems for the excavator who may at a later date require something of the very facility owners he is inconveniencing.