Challenges Associated with Utility

Coordination

As any utility conducting work on buried infrastructure has the potential to come into contact with LSLs, challenges arise with coordination of utilities. The table below summarizes the essential needs for successful utility coordination, typical practices, and the challenges involved.

Need	Typical Practice	Challenge
​Identification of existing utilities prior to construction	One-call / Miss Utility	​Service does not identify privately owned underground work (e.g., privately owned service line, irrigation systems, etc.)
​Adherence of other utilities to drinking water utility protocols	Formal distribution of protocols to senior utility managers and water utility undertakes water infrastructure work associated with other utility construction.	The task of overseeing the actual practice of field crews of other utilities can be quite significant
Coordination with street paving	​Strong emphasis on minimizing disturbance of freshly laid road services, permit process in some locales, existing point of coordination among multiple utilities servicing a community (w/r/t large projects), and penalties may be assessed in some locales	Addition of customer / plumber interaction into coordination of multi-utility coordination effort, assessment of permit or penalties to individual customers / water utility for poorly timed road cuts due to customer initiated replacement, prioritizing service line replacement may be at odds with prioritized schedule which all other utilities are working toward, local paving plans / budgets may not be readily known or available during water pipeline project planning, and paving schedules may change and increase the cost of the project