Author Archive
Indoor Locates – ON1Call
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Feature Article
One of the problems we often encounter, is misunderstandings related to having ON1Call locates completed for indoor drilling projects. We are facing challenges with locate requirements due to the approach of ON1Call to locate requests that involve drilling inside buildings. The feedback we are getting is that ON1Call is refusing to provide the requisite locates when a request is made that indicates that drilling will be undertaken indoors. We can partly understand the response, as ON1Call needs to make it known to callers that they do not locate privately owned services, which are the predominant utilities normally found indoors. However, we don’t believe that this is fulfilling the regulatory requirements of ON1Call utility members to mark the locations of their infrastructure. Although we are aware that it is rare for member utilities to have infrastructure under buildings, it does occur in some locations. We are not aware of any exemptions within the applicable Acts (and associated Regulations) which specifically exempts one from obtaining locates when the drilling is being undertaken within a building. Discussions with TSSA personnel have suggested that TSSA also interprets the regulations this way.
The problems noted above are leading to very frustrating and costly experiences for Kodiak, our consultant customers, and their property owner clients. We are arriving at sites, prepared to drill, but having to refuse to do the work because the locates are incomplete (i.e., they do not have ON1Call locates). When we are told that ON1Call refuses to do the locates, we are all in a state of paralysis, as we can’t drill without proper locates and consultants can’t obtain them from ON1Call. We are aware that some customers, who are familiar with the issue, are getting around this problem by requesting ON1Call to locate the entire site.
Because of the above noted problems, Kodiak has brought the issue to the attention of Ontario ON1Call. Kodiak concerns were then presented to the Board of Directors of ON1Call, which includes representation from TSSA regulated utility companies. Based on our submission, ON1Call has completed a re-education project of their staff to advise staff that they DO ACCEPT locates for areas on the inside of buildings. Therefore, when calling in for l
ocates, consultants should be able to indicate that their boreholes are inside and still obtain proper locates for their project. ON1Call has asked that if there are any problems with these requests, people should call the Help Desk at 1-866-466-7613 or email solutions@accu-link.ca. We commend ON1Call staff for moving quickly to address this issue and hope that the implementation is as smooth as possible.
No Locates – Jail Time ?
Posted by: | Comments48 hours in jail for not calling 1-Call…..We need a law like this in Ontario !
From Bristol Tennessee, we get this news report – Fencing Company admits to Failure to Call Before Digging.
Most of the downtown was shut down after a gas leak. A fencing company official said his company was supposed to call the one-call center for a locate request prior to digging fence post behind a local shop. Instead, a company employee called 30 minutes after one of their augers ruptured the gas line. The company spokesman said there should have been checks and balances in place, but there were not. The fencing company was completing the last steps of a renovation at the shop that began last year. To get it done quickly, the auger crew began drilling even though the ground had not been marked. Gas line owner Atmos Energy spent nearly three hours patching the leak. About 10 downtown businesses were evacuated and streets were closed and traffic re-routed. In Tennessee, failure to call before digging is a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to 48 hours in jail, a $2,500 fine or both. Atmos Energy would estimate the cost for the amount of gas lost and for the repairs.
Read the news report by clicking news report
Updated Utility Contact Lists
Posted by: | CommentsOntario 1-Call has recently (Spring 2010) updated their list of contacts for their member utilities. You can get to that list by clicking member utilities.
We have some locate contacts on our website as well, that you can get to by clicking locate contacts.
We also have a printable pdf version that you can get by clicking on printable version. As it is a few years old, it still shows our old logo, prior to rebranding to Kodiak Drilling.
Frontier Utility Locating Services has a good system on their website for finding the phone numbers for locate contacts. You can select the municipality and see the phone numbers for contacts. You can get directly to that system by clicking Frontier.
Bloor Street Explosion
Posted by: | CommentsNew Trial Ordered
The legal saga surrounding the Bloor Street explosion continues, as a retrial was granted on April 14, 2010. Anyone who has any involvement with borehole drilling and utility locates is encouraged to familiarize themselves with the Bloor Street explosion. We have previously posted a number of articles related to the explosion in the “Resources” section of the website.
Based on media reports, it appears that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has overturned the directed verdict and is ordering a new trial for Enbridge and their locate subcontractor. The company doing the excavation work without complete locates (Warren Bitulithic Limited) plead guilty in 2006 and was fined over $275,000.
In addition to the news items in our Resources section, some of the stories about the explosion and media reports on the appeal can be found below:
A good description of the incident and the recent appeal ruling, can be found in the April 21 summary provided by John Goudy:
http://landownerlaw.blogspot.com/2010/04/enbridge-bloor-street-gas-explosion.html
For some photos of the site
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/gary/blastweb/blast.html
Toronto Star story on re-trial being ordered (April 16, 2010)
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/796843–enbridge-subcontractor-face-re-trial-in-fatal-blast
Etobicoke Guardian stories on redevelopment, the appeal, and the names of the victims
http://www.mosun.com/news/MA-19032008.pdf
Story on the redevelopment of the site and the memorial garden honouring the 7 people who lost their lives because the locates weren’t complete.
http://www.insidetoronto.com/news/centre/article/55689
Whenever someone wants us to drill without complete locates, we would like them to read the press stories related to the incident, and to think about the seven people killed in the explosion, knowing that the reason for the explosion was that the locates were not complete.
1-Call Memo
Posted by: | CommentsThird Party Locate Requests
Ontario 1-Call has issued a memo (May 21, 2010), regarding requests for locates being submitted by third parties, which can be read by clicking here. It would appear from this memo, that one can no longer request a third party to look after the locates on their behalf. We have heard through the grapevine that some private locators have been providing this as a service to their consultant clients. This would also imply that one cannot use locates obtained by others on a site, such as a contractor who may also be working on the site at the same time who provides a copy of their locates to the consultant. Therefore, when Kodiak is drilling at a site, the locates must be in the name of the consultant who has hired us to drill, unless the other party will be “responsible” for directing the drilling.
Tragic
Posted by: | CommentsThere Must Be A Hydro Locate
It is absolutely imperative that at every site we drill there is a proper locate from the local hydro provider. Unfortunately we have had a number of sites where we could not drill because there was no hydro locate available from the consultant. In some areas these are obtained through Ontario One-Call, and in some areas the hydro provider must be contacted directly. A sad story from the Philadelphia Inquirer tells us all why.
A plumber excavating a trench in West Philadelphia was electrocuted yesterday after striking a 13,000-volt underground power line, causing a short circuit that shut off service to 1,300 customers for several hours, said Michael Wood, a spokesman for Peco Energy Co. Wood said the contractor had failed to notify utility companies before digging in the 800 block of North Brooklyn Street, near Lancaster Avenue. About 3:25 p.m., the plumber’s equipment came into contact with the high-power line, killing the plumber instantly and shutting down power to a large area. His name was not released.
Electrical service was restored after two hours, but it took two more hours more to make sure the excavation was safe to enter to remove the body, Wood said.
Under state law, anyone planning to excavate is required to call Pennsylvania One Call System at 1-800-242-1776 three days in advance so that utilities can mark the location of underground lines. “It is essential for the safety of workers and the public to call before you dig,” said Wood.
If we drill without a proper local hydro provider locate, we could be substituting the words “a driller drilling a borehole in ………”
Casing Drilling Under Structure
Posted by: | CommentsFeature Article
Kodiak Drilling is routinely involved in drilling projects to solve non-routine drilling problems. As the company specializes in limited access areas, solving a problem of how to get the drill to the borehole location and complete the required work program is a daily challenge.
A recent project was presented that involved drilling in an underground parking garage. The location initially did not present a problem as many projects have been completed in parking garages. The combination of the additional constraints presented below however, looked like they were going to be impossible to overcome:
- Borehole depth requirement of 40-50ft (~12-15m),
- Overhead clearance of approximately 7ft (2.1m),
- Requirement for Standard Penetration Tests (SPTs),
- Firm silt till materials, overlying unstable flowing sands below the water table, and
- Use of hollow stem augers was not permitted due to the potential for structural disturbance of the sand formation.
Together with the geotechnical engineering consultant and colleagues at Walker Drilling (who worked together with Kodiak on this project), a method was developed to overcome these obstacles. The primary components of the developed method include the following:
- A Big Beaver drill was used with the tower removed from the drill to allow access to areas with restricted headroom. Extended hydraulic hoses were used to allow the machine to operate without exhaust fumes within the confines of an indoor environment.
- To overcome the issues of depth and a requirement to limit the disturbance to the sand formation, the drill head was used to rotate BW size drilling casing, with a cutting shoe at the base of the string. Given the short stroke available, fabrication of custom casing lengths was required before starting the project.
- In order to prevent blow-back of the heaving sands into the casing, the interior of the casing was pressurized (through a swivel), with a dense, viscous drilling mud.
- As a traditional recirculation mud pit could not be accommodated within the low overhead environment, a vacuum extraction system was employed for retrieving the expended mud/cuttings mixture. A mud pump, operating from an auxiliary hydraulic power unit, provided the mud solution to the casing string, while the vacuum system returned it to a recirculation tank.
- The remaining problem to be overcome was the requirement for SPTs in an area lower than the 8ft minimum requirement for this drill. This issue was overcome by using a manual slide hammer to advance standard split spoons through the hollow casing. The requirement of 300-400 blows per foot in some areas made this aspect particularly challenging for the site crew.
Operation of the casing, the manual hammer, the mud pumping system and the vacuum recirculation component required a large crew, working in off-hours to minimize the impacts to the ongoing garage operations. By the end of the project, several boreholes along with piezometer installations were completed to a depth of 48ft.
Although the casing/washboring method is commonly used by larger rigs in unlimited access areas, the confines of this site made this seemingly impossible project possible with unique limited access equipment and teamwork.
I Don’t Need a Private Locator – It’s Only a House
Posted by: | CommentsKodiak Drilling – Feature Article
Why does Kodiak insist on having private locates done at most houses? That question can best be addressed by relaying the stories told within a recent TSSA press release related to deaths and injuries at two homes.
“On July 30, 2008, a residential explosion in Niagara Falls killed one occupant and injured another when a landscaper drove a bar into the ground, installing a “rail tie” wall. The bar punctured a propane service line, running from the home to a pool heater, and the escaping gas migrated to the residence. The gas built up to an explosive level, and found a source of ignition.”
The story is discussed in two press reports below:
Read the Niagara Gazette Article Here
A portion of the second press story is below:
While investigators have determined a cause, there are many unanswered questions. The most significant being why the landscaping crew didn’t call someone to locate the service lines before they started hammering rebar into the ground. “It’s up to the contractor to call in before digging.” (Brian Biggins – Niagara Falls Fire Department) Contractors are obligated to call a organization known as ‘Ontario One Call’ before they put anything into the ground. “They do all the ground locates for all services.”
Unfortunately this is somewhat misleading, as the propane lines were owned by the homeowner and therefore the locators dispatched by Ontario-One-Call member utilities would not have located this propane line. Only a private locator would have prevented this tragedy.
The second incident occurred in September 2008; a man was killed while his wife was injured in an explosion in their home in East Linton Ontario. The story is described in the following press article:
A key quote from the article: “…..the excavator, is also charged with failing to ask the owner to locate and mark his services. That company is charged as well with failing to protect the worker by ensuring that person knew the propane line was there”.
This highlights the potential liability of Kodiak Drilling and our client consultants for not having the owner provide the information about private services. Providing that information is normally done by contracting a private locator to review the property. This liability pales in comparison to the tragedy of an injury or death of a driller, consultant, or homeowner.
In nearly all cases, in addition to Ontario-One-Call, a private locator should be contracted for a residential project. Private services can include pool heater and water lines, communications lines for TV towers or satellite dishes, electrical lines for landscaping or pool lights, electrical cables or water lines leading to sheds or detached garages, BBQ or gas fire pit lines, and infra-red heater lines, among others. Relying on a home owners memory of where they “think” the lines are located is not a suitable alternative to proper locates, from either a legal or safety perspective. If a Kodiak driller observes any services such as those above, their pre-drill safety inspection process prevents them from undertaking any drilling. Our benefits plan does not cover funerals !
Kodiak Drilling specializes in drilling in limited access areas and therefore completes projects at private residences on a regular basis. Our drills are particularly well suited to providing minimal disturbance to front lawns and accessing backyards by traversing walkways, driveways, steps, fences and gates. Many of these projects relate to geotechnical investigations for foundation and footing designs, slope stability studies, retaining wall designs, and home additions. Other projects are for environmental consultants conducting assessments at homes related primarily to heating oil contamination problems or issues of offsite migration of contaminants from a neighbouring property.
The full press release can be viewed at the TSSA website; October 16, 2008, Reference No. FS-140-08.
Drilling Is Not Dangerous
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There is a saying that goes like this: Drilling is not dangerous; it is potentially dangerous. There are many potential dangers faced by personnel working on and around drilling equipment. Personnel in this sense includes drillers, helpers, field sampling staff, site occupants, and the general public. One of the most substantial dangers to all of the above mentioned parties in a drilling project, are the risks associated with underground utilities. Utility issues are so important to the work of drillers, there is a standalone section on the website along with articles and blog posts on this topic in other areas of the website. Besides requiring utility locates, what other measures are required to ensure the safety of drillers and the other stakeholders mentioned above?
One of the common methods used by (some) drilling and consulting companies to reduce the potential dangers, is the completion of a pre-start meeting, commonly called a “tailgate safety meeting”. These meetings vary in format, but are generally developed in-house by company health and safety personnel, and are generally designed to achieve two main objectives, 1) to make sure that all site personnel are thinking about the safety aspects of all the tasks they are completing in the upcoming site work, and 2) to ensure that all personnel are aware of the site specific hazards that may be encountered at the job site.
As there are no standards for the content or format for such meetings and the quality of the analysis required to complete a tailgate meeting vary widely among companies, Kodiak Drilling undertook to establish a new protocol for completion of tailgate safety meetings. The development of this new protocol was undertaken with two guiding principals, 1) the process must be comprehensive enough to address many expected and unexpected site safety issues, and 2) be streamlined enough to be completed quickly so that it does not significantly impact on our ability to complete the site work expeditiously.
Achieving either one of these objectives would be easy, but achieving both required the development of a unique system. The system that was developed has two components:
Tailgate Safety Checklist: This is one piece of paper that is completed at each job site. It is a checklist style form that covers topics within each component of the analysis:
- Project Information and Emergencies
- Identify Hazards and Concerns
- Utility Clearances
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
- Safety Equipment
- Traffic Control
- Equipment Inspection
- Safety Plan Acknowledgement
- End of Project Meeting
- End of Project Sign Off
Health and Safety Plan – Field Work: This document discusses each of the above listed ten components and provides the necessary information for site personnel to complete the site specific analysis.
When the Kodiak Drilling crew arrives at the work site, they will complete this process with the other project staff. All site personnel should be familiar with the results of the site specific tailgate assessment, in order to ensure that the drilling is not dangerous.
Kodiak has raised the bar when it comes to tailgate safety checklists, but hopefully others will follow suit and improve the process for everyone involved in undertaking drilling projects. The tailgate safety meeting process undertaken by Kodiak Drilling is only one component of the company Health and Safety Management System. For more information on this system, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Basement Drilling
Posted by: | CommentsFeature Article
Over 15 years of experience conducting drilling investigations in limited access areas, has led Kodiak to develop an array of methods for accessing and drilling very complicated locations. Many of these methods have been developed as a result of a challenge presented by clients. A very typical phone call to the office would sound something like this: “…….and these holes are located in a yada yada yada spot that there is no way we can fit a truck mounted drill into……I have called every driller I know and they all say they cannot do it…..” In the mid 1990s, these challenges led Kodiak to alternative equipment that was not within the fleet of a conventional drilling company. Over the last several years the focus has been on tweaking these machines and developing alternate methods and various tricks to push the machines to more far reaching limits. It has now reached the point where a client can mention virtually any type of location and Kodiak will likely have a proven method (that is not to say however, that new challenges are not welcome).
Kodiak pioneered the Big Beaver drilling method in Ontario in 1996; a method specifically developed for fly-in locations in Northern Ontario. Since that time, many variations on the method have been developed and implemented at a number of sites. While drilling indoors with the machine has been undertaken countless times, it has increasingly been used to access basement locations by winching the machine down interior staircases.
Some recent challenges have taken this method to new limits. A recent job highlights some challenges presented by a number of projects undertaken over the last few years:
- The boreholes and monitoring well locations were in three very small basements of a strip plaza with a narrow rear alleyway and operating businesses,
- Other drillers, using rapid percussion methods were unable to advance the holes to sufficient depths due to the soil conditions,
- All holes were to be large enough to install 2inch monitoring wells to facilitate hydrogeological testing in addition to the contaminant sampling,
- All drilling was to be undertaken using hollow stem augers, preventing the usage of a small probe type of drill.
- Overhead clearance was approximately 7ft (2.1m),
- And most significantly, the interior configuration of the building units and stairways would not allow for a Big Beaver to be winched into the basements.
As rapid percussion equipment alone was not suitable for the project, the only way to fulfill the mandate was to disassemble the Big Beaver, carry it down the stairs in pieces, and reassemble it in the basement. This has presented a significant challenge on similar projects, as the machine is not only structurally assembled, but also contains three hydraulic motors and an array of fittings and hoses. Once disassembled, the largest piece of the drill is still over 250lbs and a challenge to manually carry down the stairways. Key to this process was the ability to complete the disassembly and reassembly process in a tight time frame in order to keep drilling costs down and minimize the disturbance to the tenants. Kodiak has made a variety of modifications to the drill so that the tear down and rebuild may be done quickly.
Once in the basement and the drill reassembled, drilling was completed by using a combination of hollow stem augers with the Big Beaver and a PEP (Portable Electric Percussion) drill for soil sampling. The PEP was needed as the restrictive overhead clearance did not allow for the use of the cathead and 140lb hammer component of the drill.
Of course once the drilling was completed, the disassembly process needed to be repeated in order to move the drill back out of the basement, moved to the next basement and then reassembled. This process was repeated for each of the units where drilling was required.
For more information, contact Kodiak Drilling, the limited access specialists for environmental and geotechnical drilling in Ontario.