A brief review of tidbits from the backhoe convention, aka underground damage prevention conference. These folks take their marking paint very seriously. I didn't know how many different types of orange paint existed before. A review of 582 damage incidents caused by excavator error resulted in an average cost to the excavator of $1,488 per incident. It is often less expensive for the excavator to dig through the utilities than around them. In one court case, the excavator's president testified that it was his company's standard practice to ignore OSHA regulations, ANSI standards, and guidelines set out in Bell South brochures and to always excavate with mechanized equipment directly over the orange paint marks showing the location of underground telecommunications facilities. He further testified that his company averaged one and one-half cable cuts a month, and considered damging underground facilities as simple a cost of doing business. My questions: If he always dug directly over the orange paint marks, why was the locate so poor he only hit a cable once ever month and a half? Directional drilling has resulted in a dramatic increase in damage to underground facilities. The US Department of Transportation has a safety study published in 1999. AT&T has developed a system for monitoring the drillhead called DrillCheck, and is licensing it for use by others. AT&T receives 3,000,000 cable locate requests per year. Due to competiton AT&T has stopped its flying route survellience. AT&T found stopping the fly-overs didn't affect the number of cable cuts. MCI/Worldcom has found one of its most effective tools is handing out $2 hats and other trinkets to railway workers and excavators. Hats appear to serve the same purpose as T-shirts for the Internet. Sprint estimates the cost to repair a single cable cut between $50,000 to $65,000. Loss of Use costs may be over $200,000. In 1995 cable cuts affected 32 air traffic control centers according to the NTSB. One-call centers are operating in 49 states and District of Colombia. Kiewett/Level 3 reported they averaged about 5.5 miles of installed fiber duct per utility strike. Their best run was 10 miles per strike, their worst performance was 3.77 miles per strike. The $350 million judgement against Qwest was a big topic of discussion. The National Telecommunication Damage Prevention Council (www.ntdpc.com) was giving out videotapes of the new "Dig Safely" campaign. They've decided the "No Digging" symbole (the backhoe and shovel with the red No symbole) was a bad idea. The new campaign is focusing on educating excavators on how to "Dig Safely" instead of stopping them from doing their work. Although there are no hard numbers, parallel builds by other carriers appeared to be the major source of cable cuts among the long-distance fiber carriers. Several of the other carriers were hoping one of the more recent entrants into the long distance business would finish their build soon, so they would stop cutting other carriers. Perhaps more important, since it is often the utilities themselves who hire the excavators, several of them have now realized it is in their own best interest not to always use the low-bidder. They are now keeping track of indvidual contractors performance, including damage to other utilities, as part of their bid and contract evaluation. Several of the major carriers are proposing model state legislation, which among several things would include the name of the project owner on the dig permit and one-call notification.