Underground Construction - July 2020 - 19

2020 HDD Roundtable
Moderator: From a contractor's
perspective, how big of a role do
owner-operator clients play in
your success, and what could they
be doing to help you be more
successful with their projects?
Bosch: We are all in the business of continually educating our clients, the owners,
working with the engineers. I think that the
sooner you can get involved in the process,
usually the more successful the project's going to be. I've seen us get drawings that are
literally a KMZ file and they say: 'This is your
cross, give us a price on it, and you can get it
by tomorrow?' They give you no geotech.
We work with large gas companies - distribution, transmission - and I would say
it's across the board. Even within the same
organization, you'll have one group that
will do all the proper things for the crossing, and you'll have the other group that
won't. The biggest thing is understanding
expectations. Can we work linearly? Yes,
we can. Is it efficient? No, it's not.

Brasher: The owners' lack of understanding can be the source for many of
these issues. But we've been seeing a lot
of engineering companies that are not
familiar with HDD act as if they know what
they're talking about when they put out
a proposal to these owners. Then you go
in to bid and try to qualify a few things.
Sometimes you'll get tossed out, you know,
trying to explain to them what the true
cost is and what the true schedule is.
And a lot of the times you're finding out
at the end that there's a lot of problems
that were not foreseen at the front, or
where you tried to qualify. Then you're
fighting with the owners because they
don't understand why you're chasing money and you're chasing time on schedule.
Audience: We just went out and pursued
the owners ourselves, to work directly with
them at the beginning to make sure there's a
constructible job at the end. We don't charge
for this service. Sometimes we get the job,
sometimes we don't. But you go in there and
do it just to make the industry better. All of

us here are stewards of HDD. We need for
HDD to be the preferred method, and any
failure in HDD is a failure for all of us.

Moderator: One of the perennial
issues that come sup is locates.
Is this getting any better?
Brasher: This is still a big problem. I don't
think that I'm saying anything that anyone
here is going to dispute, but as-builts are
absolutely critical. Too often, it's relying on
those of us in this room to make sure we've
got accurate information, once whatever it
is is installed, for the next folks who come
along, or even for ourselves. But there are
so many instances when we are still finding
very poor as-built information.
One more point I want to make
regarding as-builts: If there's any tool
that's left in the hole, don't be shy and
want to leave it off just because you don't
want to recognize that you lost it. Just put
it on the drawings so that somebody
knows there's something there the next
time they come through. *

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UConOnline.com | JULY 2020

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Underground Construction - July 2020

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