Henry Brophy (Damage Prevention Solutions): "Nick, thank you for coming to the Damage Prevention booth. How's the show been going for you so far?"
Nick Bonstell (MISS DIG 811): "It's been going great. What a great week of, you know, seeing familiar faces and talking to everyone in the space."
Henry: "Awesome. Well, the theme of our booth this year is 'Preventing Damages by Design', and I’m just curious from the one call center in Michigan, what does that theme kind of mean to you in your practice?"
Nick: "Yeah, I love this because I think it's really the source of where a lot of the future could go. Collaboration really in a design space, everything that you look at when you look at collaboration, you can look at all the technology out there. You can look at all the systems. It really comes back to number one trust, but then number two, mapping of the infrastructure in a way that it can be shared."
Henry: "Okay."
Nick: "I think those two things are really just the critical points that we need to continue as an industry and as, as an 811 center."
Henry: "And so like when it comes to that, like collaboration, where do you see in Michigan or you see in your talks with other 811’s of that collaboration between damage prevention and engineering? Like how are they talking? Are they talking at all? It's kind of a good question that I kind of want to explore a little bit."
Nick: "Yeah. So, you know, utility coordination has been a hot topic this year. It will in the next couple of years because of the historic amount of infrastructure spending that's been going on out there. In Michigan, we've had $1.4 billion BEAD grant funding, $1 billion in clean water energy, energy infrastructure that's continuing to increase. So how do you make sure that when you're digging up a road or you're putting in that infrastructure, you're collaborating all together? And that does start in engineering, and we have a design ticket. So we've had a design ticket for 20 years in Michigan, but that design ticket is actually increasing in use."
Henry: "Okay."
Nick: "And what's happening is people are placing that design ticket. Engineering firms are using that to collect the mapping infrastructure of the area, to plan the routes and the placement of the utilities that are there. So really the first part in the damage prevention area has to be the understanding of where those assets currently are."
Henry: "Right."
Nick: "So, the design ticket and I think future digital mapping is going to be a key part of that."
Henry: "Gotcha. And kind of closing off it a little bit is if you could give that one piece of advice for, you know, you touched on the design ticketing a little bit, but like one piece of advice for kind of that better collaboration or better understanding of the risk to infrastructure that engineers and damage prevention teams could have, like, what would you wave the magic wand and kind of advise them on to have that better collaboration?"
Nick: "Be at the table."
Henry: "Okay."
Nick: "Be at the table. There's you know, there's if you look around, you can walk the floor here. You can see all different technologies that are out there. The ability to collaborate and build trust has to come before any of that. So being at the table, being a part of that solution, being open to maybe sharing things that you weren't maybe open to sharing before to prevent future infrastructure emergencies. Is where we need to be for sure."
Henry: "Awesome. Well, Nick I want to give you the final word. Do you have anything to plug? Any shows? What's next for MISS Dig?"
Nick: "Yeah. Well, I would say definitely, if you're gonna give me the opportunity."
Henry: "Yeah. Of course, go for it."
Nick: "February 2027. We have the Great Lakes Damage Prevention Conference and Expo, and we would love to see everyone."
Henry: "Awesome, well thank you for stopping by."
