The Western Canada 2014 Damage Information Reporting Tool (DIRT) Report provides detailed analyses and recommendations pertaining to the submitted buried asset damage event reports in British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
DIRT is the result of the efforts of the Common Ground Alliance (CGA) to gather meaningful data regarding the occurrence of buried asset damage events. An event is defined by the CGA DIRT User’s Guide as “the occurrence of downtime, damages, and near misses.” DIRT allows industry stakeholders to submit data anonymously to a comprehensive database that is used to analyze the factors leading to events.
Again this year, One-Call Practices Not Sufficient was the root cause in over half of all the reported damage events and appears to be a major factor in damage to underground infrastructure. Increased awareness of safe excavating practices and the use of One-Call by all responsible parties (for example, home owners and contractors) is imperative to reducing the number of damage events.