Excavation Safety Alliance (ESA) Podcast Infrastructure Resources

Cross bores are extremely dangerous and can lead to disasters. This Town Hall will focus on both how to prevent future cross bores as well the best ways to find existing cross bores. Listen to the experts on the panel and bring your suggestions to share. Passing on solutions could save lives. This ESA Town Hall was sponsored by ULC Technologies.

Insurance costs for utility damage coverage can be significant for both contractors and facility owners. During this Town Hall, the panel will talk about the biggest underwriting indicator for future rates, “past claims”.

One of the most important factors in damage prevention and safe excavation is ensuring that locates are on time and accurate. This was not an easy task even before huge fiber builds started popping up, sometimes with almost no warning. Hiring, training and keeping good technicians can be a big challenge, especially with downward pressure on per ticket prices. All stakeholders benefit when these problems are solved. The March ESA Town Hall will focus on solutions issues that face locate companies and internal locate teams. Our discussion will cover both short term and long-term solutions involving communication, technology, locating a career, and ways that state laws can be improved.

It is easy to track the basic hard cost to repair a damaged cable or pipeline, but that is usually only a small portion of the full cost. How do you track the cost for labor costs associated with investigation, collection efforts, out of service complaints, employee travel time, traffic control, etc.? Do you track costs for traffic control, site restoration, permits, etc. and link them to the total cost? On top of that how do you attribute costs to the outages due to damage your brand as well as the societal costs?  

Moderator: Kelley Heinz 

Panel Members


Bob Edwards: Citizens  
Dane Lobb: PG&E 


Mark Seaton: JNR 
Andrea Stainback, Lumen Technologies 

Moderator: Ed Landgraf, Texas 811 & CAMO

Panelists: Pascual "Paco" Alvarez, Damage Prevention Coordinator, Chevron Devon Carlock, VP of Safety & Govt. Relations / President, Cottrell Contracting Corporation / CDMCS Sam Minifie, Policy Advisor - Pipeline, American Petroleum Institute