Meade’s Post

Transcript

So it seems like to me there's all kinds of inefficiencies in the system that get cured by deploying the locator to the excavator as opposed to having him deployed to the utility to locate every request that the utility wants. And what would, I don't know, It's a different model, but that would mean you have to share information and probably a change in legislation. So we know how that. Yeah, we have a good idea how that. How would you feel if you said I'm going to install? Electric for the next mile and the gas company turned around and said, well, we want you to take on the cost of the locator part of the cost of the locator locating that, that part of the extent that's a hard pill to swallow because I don't know the integrity of the data that I'm getting. So again, what we look back at is our first thing is liability and responsibility. You know, if I'm going to be liable for any hits or damages is not something that we don't have. The intimate knowledge of is it right, is it wrong? I don't know this gas company, I don't know if historically there right. I don't know if they did you know if they came out and there was reasons 50 years ago that when they tapped this mean that they had to go in an inconsistent manner. And if it is as expected in the construction industry, it becomes a little bit easier to understand and put a cost to what that responsibility is. So could you price for that? So you like you price for other risks, right? You already know like what your other risks are. You've got an idea about it and then your risk management USMC. Get a price for that and their risk the risk that they're taking on and then same located what they would be asking you to do and then why wouldn't you go to UIC and say, yeah, we'll take it on we're going to save it to Isaac and let them do it. And now you're taking the risk transfer mechanism that the utility currently takes advantage of and using it yourself. You could if the if three would adopt that as a whole and everybody would be that it would be an even playing right. So that's what he said so if he's saying this is going to go out to everybody this way everybody who's been in the works going to get the. Exactly offer, right, but it's why not it would be hard to do that because first of all, as we know in the contracting market, it's not always a fair playing field. Everybody's always looking for the angle and part of that angle is to shed the responsibility of their liability to the subcontractor below you. So if we're taking on something that you know in this, we do quite a bit of locating obviously as well as excavating. But if we were strictly excavating contractor, we're not experts in locating. So at that point we don't have the fundamental. Understanding of exactly what it takes in the back office to do it. So for every time you take on a new task, there has to be some level of training and some level of what's required if something goes wrong. So that's where I struggle saying that the smaller contractors, yeah, wouldn't be able to identify that. So we would be at a disadvantage. Subcontract to somebody though, who does have that expertise, like you would with other things where you don't have the expertise you could. But now we're getting in a situation where I'm partnering with somebody and is that partner really understand what he's liable for? We truly have a hit now. Is he going to take on the responsibility of the hit cost and our downtime, right. And if you have a miss, Mark? Are you going to be willing to take on the cost of our downtime even though we didn't hit anything? So that's where it just becomes a little bit more complex instead of saying I think every excavator should have a locating in house or subcontracted locator, well, most contractors have. Locators that work for them are people who know how to locate for verification. So I think that. You guys are doing the best that you can do and doing the right thing. There's no doubt about it. Contract locating, I mean, utility owners just take that contract locator and what they're doing is that they're just pushing their risk off on them. Absolutely, Sir, That's that's really all it is. Locating companies are just basically modified insurance company for the utility order. That's correct. But you know, so you know, I mean, they're doing the locates too. Yeah, don't know how accurate they are, but they're doing them. Book.