Ticket Routing by decree

[ProfessionalLocator]

One of the blanket orders I have run into from time to time is to not route tickets in the order of best efficiency, do the tickets in the order of the time the call was taken by the call before you dig call center.

For those of you who have not had this or heard of this I know you are open mouthed in disbelief but this is true. Let’s take a look at what really happened over the years.

The office I worked out of had a bunch of locators working under a number of different foremen. The workload was generally heavy and a lot of tickets were starting to get done after the due date with some of the locators.

The reason varied with the problem locators. Some exercised poor judgment through no ill intent and chose the wrong routing in scheduling their work. Others were trying to rack up impressive hourly production numbers and were completely disregarding time constraints. Worse case were locators who had some difficult tickets they did not wish to mark and would wait until the excavator had finished, go to the site and declare that none of their utilities were in the way of the dig.

The first breakdown in the management chain was the foremen who did not correct the individual locators.

The second breakdown was with the manager over the foremen who instead of correcting the foremen issued a direct blanket order to all locators to do the tickets in the order of the time the ticket was received at the call center.

The result was that the locators who were not having problems with tickets being completed suddenly had this problem. Because they would do a ticket and the ticket for the house next door, across the street or the next block over was not allowed to be done because a ticket several miles away had been called in five minute earlier. Now they were spending a large about of time, gas, wear and tear on a vehicle, driving back and forth across the area.
They repeatedly were passing tickets that could have been efficiently done.

After awhile the tickets were again being done on time and the manager removed the equipment that tickets be done in order of their received time thinking that his order was the reason for the success, nothing could be further from the truth.

The locators who had not been having late tickets until the flawed order were being berated for now having late tickets. So they did what they had to, they did the tickets in the order they would have done them anyway and falsified the completion time. I do not know what the poor locators who caused the mess did to eliminate their on time problems but somehow they came around enough or left the firm. So the good locators got the company back to making money and keeping the client utility happy.

I must make one very important point, no tickets that were not completed were called in as completed. Only tickets that were completed were reported as completed, just the completion time reported as later than it actually was.

I have seen this repeated numerous times over the years. Each time the command was disobeyed so the tickets were completed on time and the completion time falsified to make it appear the order was being followed.

As the years progressed the method of how the completion times were adjusted to make it appear the order was being followed adapted to the changes in how tickets were recorded as completed.

Whatever the method used by the locators the manger always thought their order which resulted in more late tickets had solved the problem rather than making it worse.

The relevancy today is that many of those old managers who did this are still out there and trying to rely on this old failure which they never could understand was a failure. But in many cases today the locators cannot save the managers from themselves. These managers are scratching their heads trying to understand why their old tried and true method no longer worked. I imagine some of them think there is some sort of rebellion among the locators. No rebellion, just quiet acceptance of what they can no longer change.

This practice of pulling the bosses fat out of the fire by circumventing foolish orders is ancient and not restricted to the locate industry. Chuck Yeager wrote in his autobiography of being in change of the aircraft maintenance crews on one airbase. The aircraft’s routine maintenance schedule is dictated by flight hours of the craft. The base commander ordered that all planes get their maintenance by the order of their tail numbers, starting at the lowest. This of course would have resulted in catastrophic failures, crashing planes and dying aircrews. So Yeager got a can of spray paint and some stencils and changed the tail numbers to whatever they needed to be to get their required maintenance. (After he transferred out they spent years straightening out which plane was which)

Now with GPS tracking on trucks and cell phones (and a GPS tracking paint stick is under development) if the locators followed the most efficient routing instead of doing them in order of the time stamps they would be fired. The locators just cannot save their bosses from themselves as they have done over the previous years.

[Bad Robot]

It is a bitch trying to make a contract locating company work efficiently. Most of us know this by now. I really feel for the DM's sometimes even though I questiion their motives often, and I know that we are not treated well by them more often than not. But these operations can run well. Mine did so for a very small window of time a few years back.

The latest trick is routing according to overall workload, disregarding all else with the exception of your time on the clock. Move people in and out of areas according to whatever whim the supervisor happens to have that day. Move tickets in and out of a locators assigned areas according to the whims of the supervisor as well. Work as fast as you can, post high production levels, and juggle any and all long and involved projects. Do it on your own time if that is necessary, just do it in a way that makes us look good and gets these guys off of our backs. Just do not work over a 40 hour workweek. If you get anywhere near that magic number, you go home. If you have too much work piled up at the end of the fiscal workweek, just get up early and chase the clock the first day of the new workweek because we have budget constraints and can't allow any OT till ticket levels reach a certain ( unknown to us) level.

Nice guy contractor needs his project refreshed? I'm sorry sir, I have worked too many hours and must leave the field. Emergency on the way back home? I'm sorry I have to get off the clock now. Customer utility has a pressing matter and contacts you directly because they know it will be resolved to their satisfaction? I'm sorry sir, I have worked to many hours and must now leave the field!

[HWYRIPR]

I have never worked in MD, but I am told the State Corporation in that state does not enforce any laws upon the contract locate companies. I suppose the utility company penalizes your company for late tickets. Does the company you guys work for get paid for tickets that go past the due date? VA is heavily regulated in that regard.

[ProfessionalLocator]

It is a bitch trying to make a contract locating company work efficiently. Most of us know this by now. I really feel for the DM's sometimes even though I questiion their motives often, and I know that we are not treated well by them more often than not. But these operations can run well. Mine did so for a very small window of time a few years back.

Do it on your own time if that is necessary, just do it in a way that makes us look good and gets these guys off of our backs. Just do not work over a 40 hour workweek. If you get anywhere near that magic number, you go home. If you have too much work piled up at the end of the fiscal workweek, just get up early and chase the clock the first day of the new workweek because we have budget constraints and can't allow any OT till ticket levels reach a certain ( unknown to us) level.

Overtime constriction could be a topic in itself. I have run into this as well and not just when the workload is down, in the middle of a busy Summer. This is when if the locator does not get their tickets done they are not done by anybody else as everybody has maxed out their 40 hours. This lasts until the client utility gets after them for the late tickets.

The thing about this practice is they, not even considering the various state requirements, signed a contract with the client utility company to do these tickets. I doubt very much it says in the contract that they could arbitrarily decide not to mark tickets becasue they did not make high enough profit margins.

Let's say I have been working at 4 tickets per hour.

I have been told that if I work overtime I have to mark 6 tickets per hour in that time period. (It is 1 1/2 times the rate of doing tickets per hour, do the math for any rate) Then the next day I come in and and they are mad at me becasue I did not work overtime. I say you ordered me not to work overtime unless I marked at a certain rate. Well I might have been able to mark at that rate but since I could not guarantee that rate I could not work on overtime. This was the only thing I could do and not get in trouble.

When whatever an employee does will get them in trouble they will do as they choose.


We go out and the temperature is scorching with high humidity, we walk though deep mud, high winds, freezing temperatures, wrap our equipment in plastic and work in the rain and we get the job done. We do this becasue we are there to get the job done, it would be nice if some of our bosses developed the same attitude about their end of the work. Well, apparently most of our bosses. I have worked in positions where the boss had the same get it done attitude and we still made a profit. Those were good and rare days.

[ProfessionalLocator]

I have never worked in MD, but I am told the State Corporation in that state does not enforce any laws upon the contract locate companies. I suppose the utility company penalizes your company for late tickets. Does the company you guys work for get paid for tickets that go past the due date? VA is heavily regulated in that regard.

In Maryland a ticket has a 48 hour due time. In addition the locating firm / utility has the power to extend the ticket by either 24 or 48 hours if they cannot get it done and do not need the permission of the excavator.

In addition if for any reason they ticket is not marked after it is late the excavator still cannot dig as to do so would be a risk to public safety.

There are some contracts where the utility will not pay for an extended ticket and for a late ticket still no pay plus a "fine" paid to the client utility.

I leaned from a sales class many years ago there are some customers / clients you do not take on. They are not worth the trouble they create and what you do is steer them towards you competitors. The idea is these customers / clients cause a lower or lack of profits and you want your competition to sign their contracts with them. Maryland has a dense area between DC, Annapolis and Baltimore and much of the state has a high ticket load so getting done in 48 hours can be a real problem. These clients are for the locate firms that are desperate to keep their foot in the door.

[randomiam]

Thank you for these posts.

They are very well thought out and logical. Once these series of posts are complete we should organize them as a manifesto of sorts and distribute them to people up the chain. I think it represents a pretty good consensus for how things are often backwards in this field.

[ProfessionalLocator]

Thank you for these posts.

They are very well thought out and logical. Once these series of posts are complete we should organize them as a manifesto of sorts and distribute them to people up the chain. I think it represents a pretty good consensus for how things are often backwards in this field.

Something in the form of a manifesto would be rejected out of hand, they probably would not even read it.

There is something called sales resistance that must be overcome. I say sales because everything is subject to being sold, especially ideas.

The form of resistance I am referring too is the resistance management has to the source, the locators. Many managers regard the locators as unskilled labor, lazy and looking to get out of work, not smart enough to come up with a good idea. I recall one locator being told by their foreman that they could get trained monkeys to do the work.

A coworker I know worked in the tech industry and his firm had a problem. He walked up in his lab coat and told them how to fix it, they ignored him. A few days later he walked in to the same people wearing a jacket and tie and they listened to him and corrected the problem. They had forgotten him from the first time, he was just one of the techs, could not really know anything. The second time they did not even recognize him as before they only saw the lab coat and he knew not to announce his name or title.

Appearance is very important in sales. A guy selling you his used 1990 Chevy van can wear shorts and sandals. The people buying a new Mercedes expect a professional appearance from the salesman and if they do not see it feel distrust of the salesman. A guy wearing shorts, sandals and a tie dyed T-shirt would not sell many Mercedes.

As a locator there is no way to alter your appearance if your managers have an aversion to locators. Just print out the idea you want to get across and leave copies lying around. Somebody will find them and if they are high enough up they will present them as their own idea. Think it out and be inventive.