A. Yes, all sites where drilling is being undertaken must have proper locates, regardless of occupancy.

A. Yes, although it is unlikely that there are buried utilities, it is a legal requirement that utility locates be completed.

A. Yes, you must provide all addresses to One Call. It is our understanding that this confusion may have contributed to the Bloor Street 2003 explosion.

A. Yes, all locates must be completed regardless of whether we are drilling on private or public property. For some unknown reason, many people have the impression that if it is on private property, you do not need public utility locates; this is completely false. Public utilities are owned by the utility up to the demarcation point, which is normally on the private property. Therefore, the locator contacted by One Call will locate to that point.

A. This may have happened in the past as even if you called Ontario One Call and you had a private locator, like it is required, you still may not have had complete locates. Not all hydro service providers were members of Ontario One Call and therefore you had to ensure that if the hydro provider for your site area was not a member, you had to contact them to request a locate. With the recent implementation of Bill 8 (Ontario Underground Infrastructure Notification System Act or “One Call Act”), it became mandatory for all owners of public utilities to be members of One Call.

A. Almost everyone has an opinion when it comes to witching, but until it becomes an acceptable practice to the scientific/geophysics community and becomes an industry standard procedure for utility locating, we will not be drilling based on the results of your witching clearance. We are glad though, that you have been successful (lucky?) in the past, as we hate it when we lose clients to electrocutions and explosions.

A. No, as-built drawings can be very useful in assisting a locator, but often as-built is not actually as-built. Proper utility locates must be completed regardless of drawings.

A. No – What does that mean, “take responsibility”? Regardless of locates, you are already responsible for anything we hit, because you instructed us to drill in that location. Being responsible for hitting something has nothing to do with protecting the health & safety of the drill crew, complying with the legal obligations, or protecting the utilities from damage, which are the three main reasons we get locates in the first place. Perhaps when people say they will take responsibility, they mean that they will tell the drillers family, at his/her funeral, that they “thought there was nothing there”. Although this is a frequently asked question, it is an extremely frustrating one, and we hope we never ever hear it again.

A. No – Memories are great things, and they may even be able to help the locators’ do their jobs, but we cannot drill on the basis of someone “knowing” where everything is located.

A. Kodiak will only drill when we are confident that all aspects of utility locating have been completed properly. The willingness of another drilling contractor to work at a site where the utilities are not adequately located is up to them and does not affect our drilling. Unfortunately we do not have consistent, enforced policies with regards to utility locating amongst the environmental and geotechnical drilling companies. We hope someday, our industry will do a better job in this regard. You can help with this, by advising other drillers when their work is not consistent with good locating practices.

A. Do we have to provide an answer to this question? Hopefully by now, the answer is self evident. Well, we should answer it anyway…..NO !!

A. No, absolutely not—all appropriate locates must be complete.

A. Yes, there are no provisions in the legal stuff for “re-excavation”, i.e. there is nothing that indicates that if you drilled there before, you don’t have to obtain locates again. That may seem extreme from a practical perspective, but unbelievably, there has been a case where a monitoring well was installed only inches from a gas line, causing no problems when it was installed. If locates were not completed prior to the well removal, the larger auger size used for over drilling would have damaged the gas line and may have caused a disaster. As with many locate issues, being 99.9% sure is not enough.

A. No, there are three main reasons you cannot call a private locator only: 1) Private locators are not legally allowed to locate public utility infrastructure, 2) Private locators do not have access to all the information the public utility may have with regards to infrastructure location, and 3) You have not complied with the section of the legal stuff, that indicates the owner of the utility must be requested to mark its location.

A. Yes, although One Call (and the hydro provider, if not covered by One Call) will likely tell you that they don’t do locates indoors, you must still submit a request to them. In some rare circumstances, public utilities do extend under buildings. In these cases, the locator should be able to tell you this, when they locate around the edge of the building.

A. No, we cannot drill at a site where the locates are out of date, even if you or the site owner are sure that nothing has changed. Legally (and for safety reasons), we must have valid, unexpired locates.

A. Yes – You are responsible for completing the legally required locates. Hopefully information in this website will help you comply with the law in this regard. We cannot take responsibility for the costs of you not undertaking locates in a complete manner. If we do not invoice you, it means that we are losing the costs of mobilizing the crew and drill to the site and losing a day’s revenue due to someone else’s error. In most cases we could have completed a project at another site that day and that is a lost job for us. In many cases we are losing money by only charging a minimum charge, as another project could be larger than a minimum charge. Therefore, your mistake has already cost us; please don’t expect us to pay for things beyond our control.