Congress is hard at work reauthorizing key safety agencies. Yet, despite devastating effects, one of the most destructive and fastest-growing safety challenges is virtually unseen. Fortunately, a clear bipartisan solution is within reach if it can gain visibility.
This challenge lies silently underground yet lurks in every neighborhood, under every street, and throughout urban areas. More than half a million times each year, construction and excavation incidents result in cut cables, broken pipelines, and worse: injuries and deaths. From broadband fiber, water, electricity and natural gas pipelines, so much of what businesses, factories and homes need moves literally just beneath our feet. That also means that a significant part of our economy is extremely vulnerable.
The call-before-you-dig system dedicated to preventing damage has changed little since it was rolled out federally nearly two decades ago. Unfortunately, it is no longer fit for purpose as it experiences an estimated $61 billion in annual waste and inefficiency. Added to this are avoidable but unprevented utility damages with social costs that industry research pegs as high as $100 billion annually (combined yearly harm of $161 billion).
The original 811 system was great back when BlackBerrys were the rage. Unfortunately, it has failed to evolve, while over the last decade, societal costs have soared only to hit new records. At that time, I (Brigham McCown) heralded the system. But I also said that, “While today we are advancing damage protection with this state-of-the-art system, it is one I would thoroughly expect to evolve with future advances in technology and innovation.” That was 2005.
Congress recently allocated $1 trillion in federal infrastructure funding over the next decade. The strong correlation between construction spending and excavation damage will greatly exacerbate excavation damage numbers and costs nationwide.
Luckily the solution is at hand and only requires the adoption of consensus technological best practices at a systemic level. Specifically, Congress should ensure that 811 centers provide electronic white-lining (EWL) and enhanced positive response (EPR) platforms so that every excavation project can avoid damage and save resources. EWL facilitates precise pre-marking of a proposed excavation, while EPR equips excavators with the highest-quality information about the presence and location of buried facilities.
Common Sense Regulation
In this instance, the decentralized market has failed to adequately adopt newer technologies to reduce damage to critical infrastructure. Billions in annual losses are spread among many parties, making them easy to overlook. The government’s role in protecting the public is clearer when these billions are explained as direct and indirect societal costs.
Pipeline strikes result in direct costs like infrastructure damage, lost product, repair work and casualties. One incident may directly cost $5 million, but there is a 30-to-1 relationship for the indirect costs rippling throughout the community and borne by innocent parties having nothing to do with the project. For that $5 million pipeline strike, the community will likely absorb $150 million from emergency response, road closures, traffic, lost power, water and internet services, lost productivity and construction delays.
The government should not impose onerous regulations against industry but should implement commonsense and widely validated standards to protect communities from bearing negative externalities from the imperfect damage prevention process. In so doing, they also enhance public safety by protecting the workers themselves and safeguard infrastructure reliability.
Beyond good governance, these reforms enhance economic vitality. From having the highest return on investment to improved jobsite efficiency, electronic white-lining and enhanced positive response are the new baseline standard for every ground-breaking activity.
Addressing Multiple Issues
There is a direct correlation between preventing excavation damage and preventing methane emissions. Construction activity focuses in urban environments, where natural gas distribution infrastructure is concentrated. That means the 67 percent reduction in damage attributable to enhanced positive response would directly result in methane emissions reductions.
Informational asymmetries also plague the damage prevention process. While no party is inherently culpable, certain stakeholders have little bargaining power to improve their circumstances, while others retain broad influence over the system without the incentives to raise standards. Despite locators already commonly collecting enhanced information and utility companies retaining details, relevant information is often withheld from excavators. These can be shared virtually without sacrificing costs, security or sensitive data.
Logically, every excavation damage occurs by the excavators’ hand, but the root causes are not always their fault. Withholding enhanced information from excavators simply puts them in greater danger and infrastructure at greater risk. Simple technology-based communications practices can level these informational asymmetries and make work safer and more efficient for every stakeholder.
Bipartisan Agreement
This issue centers on accessible technology, relying on the use of existing and widely owned technology, like mobile devices.
While together, these technologies would prevent most infrastructure strikes, for the rare damage that still occurs, there are additional benefits for investigators by preserving a digital record of the process. Site markings are easily disturbed during excavation, but electronic white-lining and enhanced positive response offer investigators — from NTSB to insurers and lawyers — vital insight into the condition and markings onsite before the dig began.
Industry and government validation is rock solid. The diverse 16-stakeholder trade group, Common Ground Alliance, unanimously named electronic white-lining and enhanced positive response as best practices and even called for them to be the first and second steps in the ideal dig of the future. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has piloted and studied electronic white-lining and recommended enhanced positive response as its No. 1 recommendation needing “more widespread implementation,” which the safety agency explains will improve stakeholder communication and collaboration.
Importantly, this reform offers systemic improvements without restructuring the damage prevention system itself. It merely streamlines the existing system to work better for all parties — saving lives, sparing resources and protecting infrastructure reliability for all communities. This is the update the system has needed for decades, and Congress can ensure the dig of future is ready today.
Brigham McCown previously ran the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, is the founder and chairman of the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure, and is a professor at Miami University. He has served in multiple administrations and worked for Republican and Democratic Cabinet secretaries. Benjamin Dierker is the executive director of the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure and has published with several infrastructure and construction-related magazines, journals and national publications.