Mke

My on-going saga...

I went out into the field yesterday to do a "Diagnostic locate" which pretty much means to figure out exactly whats going on in a certian area with a certian utility to clean it up for mapping purposes. Its something we do to keep our maping system as current and as accurate as it can be.

This utility and area has been marked by my coworker at least 5 times in the past 3 years. Once he had exposed pipes to go off of. Because of this, I thought it would be easy enough to get him to locate the area so we can figure out what exactly is going on.

He was about 45min to 1hr into it when he threw up his hands and said "i just can't do this right now.... I need a break".

I looked at him in disbelief.

I've been to that point. Hell, I have even called my boss and told him I was at that point, but I never actually gave up.

I told my co-worker that If I pick up the reigns, I don't put them down. He said he was fine with that. Within 30 min I had the utility marked out, and making sense. And most importantly 2' off of his marks. Consistantly 2' off of his marks.

List of his mistakes:
1) 2' off of 2 serperate water lines for over 200'.
2) Showing one line capped where it did not.
3) Showing one line tieing into another line where it did not.
4) Showing 3 seperate signals where there was only 2 utilities.

At the end of the locate I looked at him and asked... " How does this make you feel?" I know its kinda a crappy question to ask but its the only thing that came to mind.

He looked back at me and said "well, how do i know your right?"

He tried to cover that question up but it didn't matter. I looked at him, and gave him the equipment to double check my work. He got the signals exactly where I had my paint.

He even started to go down the "its an extremely difficult line to locate" path. For you guys out there who locate water, there is some waterlines that locate like crap. These two were not that. To CIP water lines. smaller diameter that located great.

Towards the end, he looked at me and said "well, i'm still within 2'. That make is still within legal limits."

No offense to you one-call guys, but our tolerances are much tighter where I'm at. The 2' rule is saved for court and arbitrations, not field work.