Silk Contractors hiding damage

[radiotechfios]

Have you ever had a contractor that tried to cover up a damage in your area

[Goldenboy]

Yes. And that is exactly why I take so many post locate pictures.

[ProfessionalLocator]

Oh yes.


Perhaps the best was one who dug a trench line within inches of my marks. The trench destroyed all the marks and they moved all the dirt to the street to make a 3 foot pile of dirt to cover the offsets I had painted on the asphalt.

I had suspected this contractor and made extra offsets. I keep a shovel in the truck to test pit and dug up my off sets.

Another was one whose CATV mains ticket only gave the rear of an address and said to follow the white line. Turned out he wanted to put in more mains then the white line covered so he just put down new white lines and dug without calling. Fortunately I had made good notes of where the original white line was found. This particular contractor was notorious for stunts like that so I always documented his tickets very very well. He had so many damages one county banned him from working there.

[MOJO]

I had a contractor cut a fiber and then tried to change my marks...with some orange paint he bought from Lowe's. Luckily, you could tell a difference in the pigment from his paint and mine.

[ProfessionalLocator]

I had a contractor cut a fiber and then tried to change my marks...with some orange paint he bought from Lowe's. Luckily, you could tell a difference in the pigment from his paint and mine.

I find that contractors have the paint on their trucks usually becasue they use orange, red or whatever rather then while line for their proposed dig area.

Some do carry paint just to alter marks. I use offsets painted on the street or curb showing the distance to the utility.

Digital cameras are now cheap enough to make photoing your own work feasible. That and the costs of hard drives is such that you have space to download your photos. So if your company does not provide you with a camera protect your job and get your own.

Also add a memory card so you do not run out of space on the camera for photos. If nothing else download them onto you home computer when you get home.

[Mke]

Another Yes from me as well. The one that stands out the most was a TV cable mainline install. They were boring parallel to the road, and hit a 50pr crossing the road. They called in a emergency ticket and stated that the crossing wasn't marked. So, when I show up, the crossing they hit was right in front of a Pedestal and they conveinently dug to expose the damage, so there was no paint on the shoulder of the road. The Road had a distinct lack of my orange paint for the crossing, that went straight to another ped accross the road. Because of the Newer asphalt, the black paint marks were really hard to pick out. The one thing they didn't take into account, was that I always paint the yellow stripe in the middle of the road. So right in the middle of the road was a Yellow striped with a fresh coat of black paint. It was so obvious that the Repair tech on site gave them a verbal once over, but I don't think anything happened after that.

I've also had crews burry damages before any sign of outages. The best was a company who's head guy was an A$$, he tried to splice a 5pr back together and cover it with about 20bucks of electrical tape. He probably would of got away with it, except...... He was color blind, and didn't splice it back together in the proper order, and the home owners came home to no phone service. When the repair tech came out, he seen a new plow mark from the newly installed TV cable and dug up where the phone line crossed, and found the makeshift repair.

mke

[MOJO]

I find that contractors have the paint on their trucks usually becasue they use orange, red or whatever rather then while line for their proposed dig area.

Some do carry paint just to alter marks. I use offsets painted on the street or curb showing the distance to the utility.

Digital cameras are now cheap enough to make photoing your own work feasible. That and the costs of hard drives is such that you have space to download your photos. So if your company does not provide you with a camera protect your job and get your own.

Also add a memory card so you do not run out of space on the camera for photos. If nothing else download them onto you home computer when you get home.

PL...I've been out of the business for over 3 years now...just commenting on the thread. Thanks for the advise, though.

[GWJ_CAS]

We had a situation where we marked a fiber (Police/Fire Comm Ring for a large City) that was installed at the back of the sidewalk. It was a single address mark for a new sanitary tie-in for a small multi-unit bldg. The contractor ripped the fiber out with his backhoe and then had his crew flip sidewalk flags around to make it look like we mis-marked the fiber at the front of the sidewalk which would have put us out of the tolerance zone. Thankfully, we took really good pictures with enough "landmarks" to prove that the original marks were at the back of sidewalk and spot on.

They should have arrested this scumbag contractor for purposely altering the marks and lying to the investigators for the City. Instead he got a citation for a measly $250. He had the nerve to come up to me after the investigation and tryo to shake my hand, the whole time he was chuckling saying "well, I had to try something to get out of paying for that hit, if it had been XXX (different 3 letter company that will remain nameless) I probably would have gotten away with it".

We still cross paths with this company from time to time. Contractors like this give the rest of them a bad name. What is scary is this same contractor had a board seat on the Underground Contractors Association (UCA) and you have to wonder about the other contractors if this is a guy that they elected to represent them on the board.

[radiotechfios]

I had a guy hit a 50 pair and a 200 pair right under the ped using a big kuboda..so he called in for damage emergency and gave 811 his his ticket number ,when i arrived i didnt remember the house so i called dispatch and ask them to look at the old ticket and make sure the address matched..well long story short, he almost had me ,he was tryingb to use an old ticcket number on this damage...Good thing i checked ,if someone else wouldve done the investigation ,i wouldve received that damage..

[TheCableVine]

This is the first I've ever heard of a contractor lying or covering up marks to try and get out of a damage.

[Doc Brown]

This is the first I've ever heard of a contractor lying or covering up marks to try and get out of a damage.

Just great... Now I have to replace the fuse on my sarcasm meter.....

[mattm211]

i've had them try and repaint my marks with their own paint to make it look different.
i've had them rub out my marks completely and move the flags over outside the area to make it look my fault.
i've had them hit something and then move their vehicles and park them in a line all on top of the marks. so just taking a picture standing there you wouldn't see any marks! needless to say i'm not stupid and took pictures underneath their vehicles (they didn't feel like moving them) where you could see the marks in the pics

[TheCableVine]

Just great... Now I have to replace the fuse on my sarcasm meter.....

[Utilitrack]

Silk or Slick???
Anyways we've had them trying to scrape the marks off the pavement by dragging a bobcat bucket along the ground. Pull flags and leave them in an inconspicuous pile...but most of that has stopped since they figured out that we videotape all markouts.

[yahoo]

Just great... Now I have to replace the fuse on my sarcasm meter.....