u/Ok-Delivery8086

My background is in combat engineering, where one thing gets drilled into you early: readiness isn’t something you create in the moment. It’s something you build beforehand.

When the mission shows up, you’re not getting ready—you are ready.

I’ve been wondering why we don’t think about utility locating the same way.

A one-mile gas main ticket doesn’t become hard when it lands in your bucket. The difficulty was determined weeks or months before by your conditioning, your habits, and how you’ve been taking care of yourself.

If carrying your gear for a mile, dropping into dozens of service locates, and getting back up repeatedly wrecks you… that’s not the ticket talking. That’s your current readiness.

I’m working on an Operation Difficulty Assessment (ODA) that’s less about “fitness” and more about operational capacity. The idea is to establish a monthly baseline using a simple field assessment, then compare daily workload against that baseline through an Operational Difficulty Index.

Not because everyone needs to be an athlete.

Because when that one-mile ticket shows up, you don’t rise to the occasion—you fall back on your level of preparation.

Curious what the rest of you think.

If your company measured operator readiness instead of just production numbers, would it actually improve performance, or is this overthinking a trade that’s already hard enough?

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For a little context, this idea came out of necessity—not theory.

Earlier this year I was rear-ended in a company vehicle. What followed was months of complications that put me behind a desk instead of in the field. After spending that much time sitting, I realized how quickly your operational capacity disappears if you don’t deliberately maintain it.

Coming back wasn’t about getting “gym fit.” It was about becoming capable of doing the job again—walking miles, carrying equipment, getting down on services, getting back up, and still being able to do it tomorrow.

That’s what led me to build the Op Difficulty Assessment and Op Difficulty Iindex.

It’s less about fitness and more about having an honest way to answer, “Am I actually ready for the work my tickets are going to demand today?”

I’d genuinely like to hear where you guys think this misses the mark, because the people doing the work are the ones who’ll know first.

Who’s working mandatory Saturdays right now because planning got smoked by dig season and large-ticket overload?

Not because of storms.
Not because of emergencies.
Not because the work couldn’t be predicted.

Because every year dig season shows up exactly when it’s supposed to, large projects hit the board, and somehow the solution becomes:
“Everybody work Saturday.”

I’m curious how widespread this is across the locate industry.

Are you currently on mandatory Saturdays?

How many weeks has it been going on?

Is it mostly large transmission/project tickets driving it?
Are your crews staffed for normal tickets but getting crushed by mile-long monsters?

Does management have a real plan, or is overtime the plan?

The thing that never gets talked about is capacity planning.

A locator can close a pile of small residential tickets in a day. One massive project ticket can consume that same amount of time by itself. Yet many companies still measure production like every ticket weighs the same.

At some point, this stops being a locator problem and becomes a planning problem.

Who’s seeing it in their area?
State, company (if you’re willing), and how many Saturdays you’ve been voluntold to work. 👇

Question for locators:

What does your supervisor’s daily or weekly rally email actually focus on?

Ticket counts?
LPH?
Safety?
Quality?
Audits?
Damages?
Documentation?
Customer service?

If you’re willing, post or DM a redacted screenshot.

I’m trying to figure out what the industry actually rewards versus what it says it rewards.

No company names needed. No witch hunts.

Just curious what gets pushed from the top down and whether there are common patterns across teams.

Mines in the comments.

I just trained ChatGPT / Codex , an AI agent, to audit closed tickets for completion and fill out the resulting audit forms.

The game is changing, ya'll.

How are you changing it?

MILES OFF THE CLOCK
Tribal Use Only — Not HR Approved

Everybody talks about overtime.
Nobody talks about positioning.
Nobody talks about the fact that some operators are burning 1–2 hours and 50–100 miles before the first locate even starts.

That’s not just wear and tear. That’s operational friction.

And if you’re not tracking it, command sure as hell isn’t going to track it for you.

Here’s the challenge:
For the next 30 days:
Log the time you start the truck
Log the mileage at startup
Log your clock-in time
Log the mileage when you hit your AOR
Log your clock-out time
Log your final mileage and arrival home

Then compare it against:
Tickets closed
LPH
OT
Fuel
Fatigue
Steps
Route positioning

You’ll start seeing patterns fast.

Some operators are unknowingly giving away hundreds of dollars a week in positioning inefficiency alone.

Others are sitting on gold mines because they positioned themselves close to the fight.

This matters because the industry is changing.

Automation is coming.

AI-assisted routing is coming.

Robot dogs are already being tested for infrastructure inspection, mapping, and hazardous environment operations.

That’s not science fiction. That’s the direction of the battlefield.

The operators who survive won’t just be the guys who can hold a wand.

It’ll be the men who:
understand terrain
optimize movement
reduce friction
document performance
think ahead of the problem
operate like reconnaissance assets instead of ticket clerks

The underground world is becoming data-driven whether we like it or not.

So either:
track your own operational reality
or let somebody else define your value for you.

The smartest operators in this industry are going to realize something early:

Your route is part of your paycheck.
Your positioning is part of your performance.
And your data is leverage.
22 million miles of buried infrastructure in the U.S. alone. The battlefield isn’t shrinking. The standards are rising.

Challenge:
Track your “Miles Off The Clock” for 30 days.
No excuses. No BS.
Then post what you learned.

https://preview.redd.it/td78v5310q0h1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=345717edf8e419edb5c55536b4504979afa923bd