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Published Ground Truth entries in this archive.
PHMSA used National Safe Digging Month to restate what it expects: adherence to CGA best practices, accurate and timely locating, and proactive coordination with excavators.
Tracing a line answers “where does it run?” Fault locating answers “where along it did it go wrong?” Those are different questions, they use different techniques, and confusing them is the fastest way to dig a hole in the wrong place.
The interesting equipment trend is not better detection. It is that the point being marked now carries a survey-grade coordinate at the moment it is found.
A concrete scan is most useful before the drill is on site and least useful after the first core is wet. Here is what to have ready, how to read the markup, and what the marks do and don't say.
A post-tensioned slab holds a large amount of stored energy in a small number of steel strands. Knowing whether you are standing on one changes how the next cut gets planned — and it is a question worth answering before the saw comes off the truck.
Utility quality levels are a statement about evidence, not a ranking of effort. Each level says what was actually done to produce the information on the drawing — and the single most consequential boundary is the one between designating a utility and verifying it.
Two locate reports can show the same marks and mean very different things. The difference lives in the parts people skip: the quality level, the coverage statement, and the method behind each mark.
Radar does not photograph the ground. It sends a pulse, listens for reflections, and produces a record that has to be interpreted. Understanding what creates a reflection — and what kills one — tells you when GPR is the right call and when it is the wrong one.
No locating instrument measures depth. Every one of them calculates it from something else — field geometry, travel time, null spacing — and every calculation rests on assumptions the ground is free to violate.
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