Page 12 - March-April2021 Vol 38 No 7

Underground Asset Mgmt.
from page 11
in a pull box. The tracer wire allows the
field technician to follow the underground
utility line while painting the ground. At a
site without a tracer wire, SSR notifies the
excavator that they are unable to locate the
line.
Another issue occurs when the field
technician follows tracer wire for another
utility. For example, field technicians
have followed fiber optic tracer wire to
a telephone pull box instead of a traffic
signal. Gaining access to the pull box is
not always easy. Sometimes pull boxes are
buried or sodded over; sometimes they’re
frozen shut; they have also been found with
concrete over the bolt heads.
In the past, field technicians have had to
use the field app in order to find the pull
box. Shovels are a tool that is sometimes
Figures 3 & 4: top from left to
right: The field app showing pull
boxes, fiber optic lines, and
emergency locates on a street
basemap; the field app with an
aerial basemap; and the field app
showing a previous emergency
ticket and where it was located
with the attached photos for
documentation (bottom right).
12 TPW March/April 2021
necessary to locate buried pull boxes.
Some tickets that come through TN811
do not have the correct address on the
ticket. In these cases, SSR field technicians
have used the latitude/longitude to
determine the location of the emergency
locate. Sometimes tickets describe certain
buildings, but those buildings cannot be
found. In these instances, Google Maps
has been used to find the nearest building
matching the ticket description and
determine if that is the area described by
the excavator on the ticket.
Other tickets will say, “Locate at the
white paint,” but there is not real-time
imagery to see where the white paint is.
This can make it very difficult to determine
if an area is in conflict. In these situations, of information. This information allows
it is necessary to drive to these sites to view construction activities to occur within
them in person.
Sometimes an emergency will be at a
specific property, but it does not say where
the emergency is. There can be fiber optic
at that property, but if the emergency is on
the other side, the field technician will not
know until they arrive on site to view it.
Conclusion
Maintaining over 120 miles of traffic
signal fiber optic infrastructure for The
City of Memphis requires constant care,
monitoring, updates, and staffing. SSR
provides a solid platform and maintains an
on-call staff 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
to ensure that the fiber optic line is marked
in a timely fashion when emergencies arise.
SSR also maintains a GIS database
and sends infrastructure network edits
and updates to TN811 and KorTerra,
providing a consistently updated system
Memphis without causing damage to the
fiber optic cable system used to operate a
complex system of traffic signals.