Utiliquest lost PEPCo

**ProfessionalLocator** · April 27th, 2011, 07:31 PM

Odd that I should have missed this but Maryland Utiliquest lost all or part of the PEPCo, Potomac Electric Power Company, contract maybe 3 months ago.

PEPCo serves all of Washington DC, a small part of northern Virginia near the DC boarder and Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland. PEPCo has 778,000 customers (778,000 individual accounts) .

Utiliquest in it's early form was Byer's Engineering and PEPCo went from in-house to contracting out their locate responsibility to Byer's Engineering. After holdimg the contract for about 30 years they lost it.

**orangeboots** · April 27th, 2011, 08:24 PM

did byers buy kelly cable a few years ago? started out with kelly maaaaany years ago but lost track of them

**Locator in NY** · April 27th, 2011, 10:06 PM

Premier took a piece of ACE & all of Delmarva Power. ECSM took the other piece of ACE.

**ProfessionalLocator** · April 28th, 2011, 01:45 AM

Originally Posted by orangeboots

did byers buy kelly cable a few years ago? started out with kelly maaaaany years ago but lost track of them

Utiliquest Maryland, by then Byer's had changed it's name, purchased the Kelly locate division in at least Maryland. This is how they got the BG&E, Baltimore Gas & Electric, contract which Kelly then held.

Last year BG&E began putting out feelers to locate firms seeking a replacement for Utiliquest and now the formal bidding process has begun.

Utiliquest Maryland is shaping up to be another Utiliquest Fort Worth which shut down due to having only one contract left. Utiliquest Maryland has lost PEPCo, Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission and I forget which but I hear some others portions of contracts.

From what I am hearing from around the country their idea of replacing good locators and managers with technology has backfired on them.

**Bad Robot** · April 28th, 2011, 06:39 AM

Let's hope this is a trend, and that it continues in other parts of the country as well. It was a bad idea then, it is a bad idea now, and it has had an overwhelmingly negative ripple effect on the entire utility industry friend.