In support of April as National Safe Digging Month, the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities joins the Iowa Utilities Board, Common Ground Iowa, and Iowa One Call, in reminding Iowa communities to be safe, help protect underground utility lines, and always call 811 before any digging projects.

Gov. Kim Reynolds has also signed a proclamation inn support of safe digging practices in Iowa and proclaiming April as National Safe Digging Month.

Calling 811 is toll-free. Locating lines can save lives, prevent accidents to underground utility infrastructure, and avoid injuries, costly repairs, and fines.

Iowa law, Iowa Code chapter 480, Underground Facilities Information, requires that a resident or professional excavator contact Iowa One Call at 811 or 1-800-292-8989 at least two days before digging begins to mark the location of all utility lines. Iowa’s One Call center is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The following will occur once Iowa One Call is contacted:

• Operators with underground utility facilities in the area where the excavation is planned are notified. This includes natural gas and electric power utilities, communications companies, water lines, and cities and towns.
•  Within 48 hours after being contacted, utilities either mark their underground facilities with color-coded paint marks or flags, or tell the excavator they have no lines in the area.

If a contractor is performing the excavation work, a person should make sure the contractor calls Iowa One Call two days before excavating starts.

Iowa One Call (IOC) has just updated it's ITIC NextGen ticketing system.  This new system will ease the burden of multiple locates, white lining and mapping.  Online ticketing systems have required users to spend their time entering text information before allowing them to do the all-important work of finding their dig site on a map. As the IOC considered ways to improve the online ticketing process, they became convinced that if users identified their dig site on the map first, nearly all text entry could be automated. As research in modernizing on-line ticketing continued, the IOC found other ways to save their users time and effort by building the notification center’s business rules into the system.

One of the biggest differences you will notice from the very first time you use NextGen is that identifying your dig site starts, not ends, with an aerial photo of your work area. After minimal text entry, easy-to-use tools allow you to specify each individual dig location within your work area. Once you have specified all the work areas, NextGen automatically divides or combines them into the appropriate number of tickets, each one complete with text-based location information. That’s right - NextGen presents you with completed tickets for your review.

IOC believes NextGen will change the way people think about damage prevention. For the very first time an online ticketing application:

• Starts the process with an aerial photo.
• Use the width of streets, the location of buildings, and the location of other geographic features to help identify where you are digging in relation to the actual conditions at your work site.
• Uses the information contained in the notification center’s base map. NextGen helps you complete your ticket, allowing you to fully concentrate on identifying the precise location where you will dig instead of entering text.
• Gives you the means to precisely define the area in which your work will take place. They have eliminated the need to “go broad” or “over-cover” your work site. Each individual excavation site you define will be compared with the notification center’s database so affected operators are notified.

Get started on the new NextGen ticketing system by logging into the system at IOC’s website www.iowaonecall.com.  Links to training materials and videos are also provided.