Episode 21: Glorified Locators – Excavators Double Checking Locate Marks

October 2nd, 2020 | Excavation, Featured Episodes, Locating, Pipelines, Safety

Our Planet Underground crew met up with NPL Construction, a large contractor firm based out of Chicago, as they were working on a gas main replacement and double checking locate marks in the West Elston neighborhood. This project is part of a Peoples Gas initiative in the city of Chicago, where they plan to replace all of the old gas lines – from steel to polyethylene. In this episode, the NPL foremen do a wonderful job of showing how they do a post-locate verification to make sure they know the 811 marks are correct before they start digging. They use different frequencies and locators, such as the Pipehorn and ViperMag, to double check the 811 marks, and without much surprise to anyone, they see that a lot of the marks are wrong. This simple locate sweep saves them hours of downtime and ensures they don’t hit any lines when they drill.

Glorified Locators is Episode 21 from Planet Underground TV.