From the legal files, we have a recent conviction and some new charges:

Convicted

October 2011 – An Employer and supervisor pleaded guilty to a charge under section 228(1)(a) of Ontario Regulation 213/91 resulting in fines of $20,000 and $2,500 respectively.  This was the result of an incident investigation from April 2010 where workers hit a 1 ¼” natural gas line while excavating at a residence in St. Catharines.  It was determined that locates were not performed prior to beginning the excavation.

May 2011 – Two employers on the same project plead guilty to charges under section 228(1)(a) of Ontario Regulation 213/91 and received fines of $6500 and $20,000.  This was the result of an incident investigation from August of 2008 where a gas line was cut during and excavation for an electrical duct at an institutional project in Milton.

Charged

October 2011 – A worker was issued a summons – issued under section 228(1)(b) of O. Reg. 213/91 (a section related to utility locates).  We will stay tuned to see if this worker is convicted.

Follow up

A follow up to our article regarding private locates and the explosion that killed one person near Owen Sound – In reviewing Ministry of Labour Court Bulletins, we came across the guilty plea of the construction company with a an imposed fine of $225,000.  The press release can be found by clicking press release.  As a reminder, this incident involved a house where private locates had not been completed.  More information can be found in our Feature Article on private locates at houses in the utility locate section of our articles.

Ministry of Labour Court Bulletins can be found by clicking Court Bulletins.

Information courtesy Ontario Ministry of Labour

The TSSA document “Guidelines For Excavations In The Vicinity of Gas Lines” November 2004 has recently been updated.  For the update, TSSA worked with the Electrical Safety Authority (ESA) to produce a new document to harmonize the requirements with the electrical utility requirements.  The new document  “Guidelines For Excavations In The Vicinity of Utility Lines” is available from the TSSA by clicking here.

The document is relatively short and easy to read.  We would strongly encourage all project managers and field technicians who are contracting drillers, undertaking construction excavations, or overseeing remediation excavations to review this information.

Specific attention should be given to Section 2.0:

Prior to excavation the person responsible for the work shall contact “Ontario One Call” at the telephone or facsimile numbers listed in Table 1 below, or the utility, and request a locate of utility lines in the areas where excavation will be taking place. The Excavator must receive the locate as described in Section 3.0 prior to commencing any excavation.

Consultants should be aware that the phrase “…. person responsible for the work…..” clearly identifies them as the responsible party should there be any problem with incomplete locates.  We always find it surprising that consultants show us the locates and then ask “are these okay with you?”, as if we are some sort of an approval authority.  If a consultant is taking on the responsibility for the excavation, shouldn’t they satisfy themselves that they know what it means to have proper and complete locates and govern their actions accordingly?

In a previous post, we indicated that a new trial had been ordered for Enbridge in the Bloor Street explosion.  For those who have forgotten, this was an explosion that leveled a building and killed 7 people because the utility locates were not completed properly.  We have posted below, information from that release as well as a link to the full press release.  As outlined, the fines related to this incident now total over $1 million.  We have heard rumors that a full inquiry may be the next step in this saga.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Toronto, ON, December 16, 2011) – Enbridge Gas Distribution Inc. pled guilty to a charge under the Technical Standards and Safety Act, 2000 (the Act) for its role in a natural gas explosion on April 24, 2003 at 3887 Bloor St. West in Toronto that killed seven people, seriously injured four others, destroyed a two-story commercial and residential building, and caused extensive damage to adjacent properties.

The Ontario Provincial Offences Court imposed a fine of $350,000 plus a 25% victim surcharge of $87,500 for a total fine of $437,500 against Enbridge for failing to provide as accurate information as possible regarding the location of underground natural gas pipelines as required under the Act.

To read the full news release, please click here

From the incident files, we have provided some samples:

Key Watermain Ruptured by Drilling – “he bore where he shouldn’t have”

Should have marked the lines with paint

It is not likely that people remember the news specifically from July 24, 2007, but anyone involved in drilling work surely had shivers going down their spine watching the news clips of the Burnaby neighbourhood covered in a thick layer of 234,000 litres of crude oil as the result of a pipeline strike.  Truly a case of a picture being worth a thousand words; if you google “Burnaby oil spill photo” you will see some startling photos.  Anyone who sees those photos would certainly not attempt a drilling project without getting proper locates.

The Transportation Safety Board issued their report in March 2009 which discusses the facts about the incident and some conclusions of the reasons for its occurrence.  In the “Findings as to Causes and Contributing Factors”, the second of the 6 points particularly caught our attention:

“2. Since the location of the Westridge Pipeline was not verified along Inlet Drive, as required under the crossing agreement and the National Energy Board Pipeline Crossing Regulations, Part I, the discrepancy between its location, as shown on the design drawings, and its actual field location was not discovered before the start of construction.”

In other words, they did not have proper locates !  In other areas of the text it refers to personnel relying on drawings instead of locates and the drawings being incorrect.  Kodiak has been requested many times to drill on the basis of design or as-built drawings instead of proper locates.  We wouldn’t do it then, and we sure wouldn’t do it now, after this incident.  Some resources on this topic are provided below:

click on this link, if you would like to see first hand, what can happen if your locates are not complete.  Some other interesting links are below:

Transportation Safety Board report

Dianne Saxe blog posts on the topic

CBC report on the incident

For this post in the utility locate section, we thought we would summarize a few locate issues that we have faced which prevented us from undertaking the planned drilling.

1.  The day before the drilling date, the consultant checked with the site contractor, who he assumed had done the locates, to find that the locates had not even been called in yet.

2.  An intermittent drilling project was undertaken off and on over several weeks.  Upon returning to the site a few weeks after starting the project, drilling could not be undertaken because the locates had not been renewed after the initial locate request.

3.  We arrived at a drilling site; upon checking the locates, we found them to be out of date and therefore drilling could not be undertaken that day.  Another drilling company reportedly did the work later because they did not care that the locates were out of date.

4.  A drilling project was continuously delayed by the consultant because they were so busy they could not schedule any field staff.  They finally found a day the field technician could do it; but they had delayed it so long that when we arrived at the site the locates had expired and nobody had renewed them.  It then took another 2 weeks to get the locates renewed and re-schedule the field technician.

5.  We received a call from a consultant who was in a panic to have drilling completed ASAP in order to facilitate a real estate transaction.  When we discussed locates, he indicated he did not need them as the area was excavated a few years ago.  The legal aspects of locates were explained to him; he subsequently booked a different driller who would drill without the locates because his client “couldn’t wait”.

6.  Drilling was delayed for two hours at a recent job site, because the field technician didn’t bring the locates with him and had to drive back to the office.

7.  Drilling could not be undertaken at a recent project site because the consultant failed to contact the local hydro utility company to get a hydro locate.  The driller was issued an ultimatum by the field technician that if he did not drill then they would never hire Kodiak again.  Although the customer is king, and we tried our hardest to get the utility company out that day to do a locate, we will never ever put the schedule of a project ahead of the safety of consulting, drilling or site personnel.  The potential safety and legal liability to the site owner, the consultant and Kodiak are not at the whim of a field technician lacking the knowledge of what is means to have proper locates.  In the end, the client hired another driller who didn’t care that the locates were not complete.

8.  An indoor drilling job was booked with us and the client advised they would get all the locates.  Upon arriving at the site, there was no 1-Call locates.  The client advised that 1-Call refused their request and therefore they interpreted that to mean that locates were not “required”.  In reality what had happened is that the client requested 1-Call to clear specific drilling locations inside the building, which they will not do.  Although 1-Call will not undertake locates inside the building, they must be requested to locate their utilities on the outside perimeter of the building, so that it can be demonstrated that their utilities do not extend to areas under the building.

This is a good one – We hear this one a lot – “we don’t need locates, the owner has been here a long time and knows where all the utilities are located”

A local gas station was closed after the property owner cut a 2-inch gas line while digging.  Fire officials said the property owner was using a backhoe to dig into the hillside next to his business when he ruptured the line.  A fire official said there was no immediate danger outside the gas station area and the gas was turned off at the station.  The property owner said he has owned the land for more than 30 years and was not aware of the line’s location.   Read the story here

We have a saying that goes something like…. they were drillin’ where they shouldn’t be drillin’.  We use that saying around our shop when we hear stories of drillers drilling without locates, or when we hear of some of the unfortunate incidents of utility strikes.  We have been made aware of an incident where this saying has never been more applicable.

It will take about 5 minutes for you to watch the YouTube video, but it is absolutely the best example we have ever encountered where someone was “drilling where they shouldn’t be”.  There is also more information on the Wikipedia by clicking here.  We don’t think anyone would ever expect us to drill again in an area where the locates are not 100% complete, if they had watched this video.

A big thanks to our friends at Haddad Geotechnical for passing this one along to us.

The TSSA has released a pamphlet titled “How To Read A Locate Sheet”.  This document is an example locate sheet which has been annotated to assist in interpretation of the information.  It is important that all personnel who are dealing with locates be fully versed in interpreting the information, to make sure that all locates are completed properly for the drilling locations.  We would suggest that TSSA or Ontario 1-Call produce a similar document to clarify how to read the locate confirmation sheet that they fax when you call in for locates; this sheet is not very user friendly.  You would think that with software advances, they could update this system to be more clear.

You can see the document by clicking here

An Ontario firm was convicted in December and fined $5,000 (plus 25% victim surcharge) for failing to obtain proper locates prior to undertaking their work, which resulted in hitting a gas line.  You can view the TSSA press release with more information by clicking here