[What does damage prevention mean to you?] Damage prevention means everybody goes home safely at the end of the day, and when they get there, all their vital utility services are working.
[How do you collaborate with others to prevent damages?] Herein Florida, we’ve started damage prevention councils, which are just open meetings for all stakeholders, and we get together, talk about problems, try to work out solutions, solution focus, try to be friendly, but the biggest thing is to learn each other’s perspectives, so we understand what the locators are, how the locators are impacting excavators, how the excavators are impacting locators, and try to get everybody working together.
[How have you seen the industry come together to improve damage prevention?] Communication is absolutely vital. So, if you have an issue with any other stakeholder, talk to that stakeholder. There’s solutions out there; you just need to talk to each other and work those out.
[Complete this sentence: “Damage prevention is …”] It’s life! It’s going home at the end of the day, and it’s everybody’s responsibility I do presentations and I tell the guys, I say, putting the shovel in the ground, they need to focus on themselves, and they need to make sure that they’re doing what’s right and then that way they go home.
I am damage prevention.
