Photos or drawings

**NINJA** · November 26th, 2009, 10:50 PM

What is your companies policy?? take pictures at every locate or do drawings..or vidio...or they do not require you do either or what do you do to cover your ass. And what would you do to improve on the system your company has in place???? (owners may want to take notes)......

**headcipher** · November 26th, 2009, 11:02 PM

Originally Posted by NINJA

What is your companies policy?? take pictures at every locate or do drawings..or vidio...or they do not require you do either or what do you do to cover your ass. And what would you do to improve on the system your company has in place???? (owners may want to take notes)......

Sketches, as detailed as possible.

Document, document, document, CYA.

May lean toward pics some day.

**Goldenboy** · November 27th, 2009, 08:13 AM

We take pictures. I still don't understand why any company would waste their time with sketches. The nice thing with digital cameras is they take video also. If you are at a damage you can quick take some video of the area also. If you have a digital picture of the damaged cable your ass is covered. I could have my five year old draw a sketch of the damage after it got cut and say I had it marked.

**big boots mcghee** · November 27th, 2009, 10:28 AM

Lots and lots and lots of photos for us. Occasionally we'll utilize video on damages, but typically it's just digital photos, oh, and as much documentation as possible.

I did sketches years ago when I first got in the business. I'm an art geek so I loved all the drawing I did, but that turned into A LOT of excess paperwork. Nowadays we only sketch something up when we meet with a contractor and they don't provide any maps.

**TheCableVine** · November 27th, 2009, 11:12 AM

We still do sketches. We receive the tickets over the computer and then print them out. We don't have the software required to do the picture thing. I will on occasion take a picture if I think the contractor might hit it. Sometimes you know when they are gonna hit something. I'll have that available on my camera if needed.

**MOJO** · November 27th, 2009, 12:00 PM

Pictures (with date/time stamp active) were a requirement. No set number of pics though. You just had to take enough to cover yourself. Also needed lots of documentation!!!

**Mke** · November 27th, 2009, 12:18 PM

as of right now.... neither. I do however, take pictures depending on the area.

I tend to think that damage investigation could be hampered by the mis-understandings of people who are not locators. We all have been in situations that utilities that should locate don't, and we have also seen examples where utilities are shadowed by other utilities and unless you know they are there, you may blow right pass them.

You have a picture of your mark, may it be a duct or a single cable, if they dug down on the marks and that facility is different then what you have marked, that opens you up for liability. Regardless of the fact that the utility has paint on it, the paint does not match what is in the ground so you have "mis-marked" the utility.

If you don't think this argument comes up in court or at an arbitrators...guess again.

mke

**FiosKing** · November 27th, 2009, 03:24 PM

we have a perfect system for once... we take pics and attach them to the ticket... pictures are the best idea gives you 100% proof you did the locate and were the marks are

**yahoo** · November 27th, 2009, 06:12 PM

we have e sketch , pictures, and offsets wrote on the rd tree pole or anything you can put it on......esketch is really neat but can't talk about it .....

**headcipher** · November 27th, 2009, 09:23 PM

Originally Posted by Goldenboy

We take pictures. I still don't understand why any company would waste their time with sketches. The nice thing with digital cameras is they take video also. If you are at a damage you can quick take some video of the area also. If you have a digital picture of the damaged cable your ass is covered. I could have my five year old draw a sketch of the damage after it got cut and say I had it marked.

While I can see the advantages of pics, especially when you figure in the time to draw a big job, a pic doesn't afford me the opportunity to add the notes that have saved me from damages more than a few times.

We write down the measurements we get from the records dept. for any facility that will not scope that we mark on measurement. We can also make a contractor sign a ticket with a specific drawn in dig area. We can document all the steps taken before declaring something unlocatable.

As for just drawing things up? Well when we mark gas, electric, h2o, at the very least, on every locate... The degenerates who don't do thier job right stick out and are dealt with.

Still wish I didn't have to draw all those big jobs though.

**JMilbragen** · November 28th, 2009, 06:13 PM

I do exclusively video taping. No pictures. We only do sketches for the damage investigations which is useless because I have to take a video of those anyway. Usually all I do for those sketches is pull up google earth on my laptop and zoom in onto the address and put the paper up to the screen and trace it. Comes out perfect every time with proportion and street names and distances.

I kinda cheated on my land surveying final in college that way. Got an A on it too LOL.