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Remember when we used to eyeball the swing radius on a 10-inch cutterhead?
I keep seeing new guys on the job just guess at it, and it drives me nuts. Back on the Lake Erie project in 2015, we had to map every swing to the foot because of a buried gas line. Guess wrong and you're looking at a shutdown and a huge fine. Now I watch guys just go by feel and hope for the best. How do you get your crew to actually measure before they dig in?
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finley_clark207mo ago
Read a story about a crew that hit a fiber line last month. Cost them a week of downtime. Makes you wonder why measuring feels optional now, right?
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beth_martinez526mo ago
Yep, we made the guy who messed up do all the locate calls.
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thomas.sandra7mo ago
On my last big site job, I made it a rule that the first guy who guessed a swing radius bought lunch for the whole crew for a week. It only took one time. The key is to make the consequence of not measuring immediate and personal, not just some far-off company fine. Tie it directly to their pocketbook or their time, like making them handle all the paperwork for a utility locate ticket if they skip steps. People learn fast when it costs them something real.
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