Stakeholders at Underground Safety Board workshop wrestle with 30‑day turnaround and what design tickets must include
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Summary
Designers and utility operators at a Jan. 6 workshop told the Underground Safety Board that a 30‑day response target for planning requests is useful but often impractical for complex projects; stakeholders urged clearer scope, contact lists and metadata standards and highlighted that operators typically provide horizontal location but not vertical depth.
Travis Clausen, vice chair of the Underground Safety Board, opened a Jan. 6 workshop seeking stakeholder input to implement Senate Bill 254, which requires a regulated statewide planning-and-design information exchange and directs the board to adopt regulations by July 1, 2027. Stakeholders spent the morning defining what information should be required in design tickets and how quickly operators should respond.
Designers and utilities repeatedly returned to timing. "We provide our plans within a 30 day turnaround time," said Celeste of the Metropolitan Water District, noting that engineering reviews for projects touching agency property can take months. Several utilities and designers said 30 days is a reasonable goal for basic as‑builts or standard projects but that larger, congested or multi‑agency projects routinely take 45 to 60 days or longer.
Operators described common practice for design requests: a designer or consultant draws a 30% plan, calls 811/DigAlert and sends data to regional contacts; the utility then returns a confirmation letter or an as‑built extract. Dustin of SoCalGas said his company "provides horizontal" location data and GIS prints within typical timeframes but "we do not specify vertical," leaving depth confirmation to potholing or project-specific SUE investigations.
Transmission and long‑haul fiber operators added practical limits. Wayne Scott of AT&T cautioned that federal rules and trade‑secret protections sometimes require redaction and re‑drawing of historic engineering material, which can extend response times: "We have to redact a lot of our information on our records," he said.
Technical standards and confidence levels were a recurring theme. Adam Zachery, who co‑chairs subsurface and locator technology committees, urged the board to adopt or reference ASCE 38‑22 quality levels for subsurface utility data. "Quality Level A is going to be vertical data," he said, and only an engineer‑qualified SUE investigation produces that level of vertical certainty; routine locates and GIS often map to Quality Level B or lower.
Stakeholders recommended concrete ticket fields to speed responses: a polygon or start/end coordinates, a written scope that specifies construction method (hand dig vs. boring), whether the work is public or private, anticipated depth for the planned work, and project contact details. Several speakers suggested that requesters mark tickets with priority (emergency, residential, undergrounding projects) so operators can triage responses.
The morning also surfaced process fixes widely supported across participants: maintain a central, up‑to‑date engineering/design contact list (rather than routing requests to individuals who may change roles), allow operators to use shared inboxes to avoid delays when staff are on leave, and require an acknowledgment of receipt (for example, within two business days) when operators cannot meet the target response time.
The workshop produced no formal action; staff said comments will inform future rulemaking and a follow‑up survey and workshop on ticket procedures planned for late February 2026.