Category: Pauls Corner

#SubsurfaceUtilityEngineering

Post-11

After meeting with So-Deep, Jerry Poston, Jim Overton, and I returned to the office. It was all very overwhelming. Jerry Poston said he felt like a small dog in tall grass (a favorite expression of his). Most of what the So-Deep people told us was way over my head. I kind of got the designating and locating part but there was so much more that they were doing. I did get, however, that they had found a way to locate subsurface utilities from above the ground before the backhoe found them.

In our early FHWA days, we had all experienced the trauma caused by delays when unknown utilities were damaged, and projects were delayed. We believed that So-Deep had something that the State DOTs needed to be using on all projects, especially Federal-aid projects.

I hope you are beginning to see that Jerry Poston is an unsung hero of Subsurface Utility Engineering. He was the one that convinced everyone at FHWA that Subsurface Utility Engineering needed to be considered for use on every federally funded project involving excavation. But that is not all. Firstly, as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserves in the 1980s, Jerry headed a team that developed a plan of attack that General Norman Schwarzkopf followed early in 1991 to secure one of the most lopsided victories in modern warfare driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Secondly, shortly after arriving in Washington, Jerry was assigned to a multi-office team that developed the FHWA’s version of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA, pronounced “Iced Tea”). This legislation was hailed as a turning point in the history of surface transportation in America. Instead of focusing on just highway transportation, ISTEA emphasized intermodalism – the linking of highway, rail, air, and marine transportation. It also created the National Highway System, replacing the outdated Interstate, Primary, and Secondary systems. And thirdly, only a few years after taking the Branch Chief position Jerry was promoted and became Chief of the Federal-aid and Design Division.

So, we came back from our visit with So-Deep and began brainstorming. There was no doubt in our minds that there was a whole world of utilities underground (see picture). If utility facilities had been located aboveground, they would have been surveyed, placed on preliminary design plans, and considered when designing new facilities. We were also aware that utility as-built information was typically not very good and highway designers were reluctant to use it.

So, we started talking about what we could do. Jerry started by telling us that Subsurface Utility Engineering would “revolutionize the way utilities were handled on highway projects” and that we had to start getting the word out.

I’m out of room for this week. Next week we will take an in-depth look at the FHWA plan we came up with.

#SubsurfaceUtilityEngineering

Post-10

While we were sleeping at FHWA during the 1980s, so to speak, at least relative to Subsurface Utility Engineering, lots of things were going on with SUE. I have tried to capture the major things and the people making them happen, but I have missed some and we will go back and look at them in future posts.

But for now, it’s 1991 in my history of SUE. Jerry Poston (Chief of the Railroads, Utilities, and Programs Branch) and Jim Overton (Deputy Chief) have approached me at my desk, and they told me there was something going on at the Virginia DOT that was supposedly reducing damage to underground utilities on construction projects and that they wanted me to help them look into it.

Jim Overton had handled utility matters at FHWA throughout most of the 1980s and even though he had moved up in the ranks in 1991, he still had a keen interest in utilities. He actually was the author of the Federal Regulations for utilities and for the FHWA Program Guide. The Regulations he prepared in 1988 are still in use, except so far as I know for three minor changes that I made in accordance with the Federal Register process to accommodate FHWA Division Office and/or State DOT requests. I believe the 2003 version of the Program Guide is also still in use. I first published it in 1992 in booklet form, with author Jim Overton’s permission, and distributed it to FHWA Division offices. I later updated it several times, the last being in 2003, and distributed it to FHWA field offices and at some point to State DOTs per their requests.

But back to SUE, Jim Overton was aware that a company in nearby Manassas Park, Virginia, was doing VDOT’s SUE work and Jerry Poston had made arrangements for us to visit them to find out what they were doing. The three of us drove to the So-Deep office and met with So-Deep leaders Bob Humphreys, Bob Stevens, Bucky Methfessel, Mike Fisher, Jack Ferguson, and Jim Anspach. They gave us a comprehensive update (a) on exactly what SUE was (designating, locating, and data management); (b) on how SUE had evolved throughout the 1980s; and (c) on what they envisioned for the future.

We didn’t understand much of what they told us, at least I didn’t, but we understood enough to know, as Jerry told us, that “SUE was going to revolutionize the way utilities were handled on highway projects.” He was so right. But there was lots of work that needed to be done before SUE evolved to that point.

More next week about FHWA’s plan for promoting Subsurface Utility Engineering in the early 1990s and our first efforts to implement our plan.

#SubsurfaceUtilityEngineering

Post-09

My history of the first years of Subsurface Utility Engineering continues:

Last week we looked at events leading up to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) endorsing Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE). Hurricane Hugo had slammed into the Carolinas in September 1989 and the FHWA Office of Engineering’s emergency relief position was vacant. Thus, it fell to Jim Overton, the Acting Chief for the Railroads, Utilities, and Programs Branch, to (a) respond to numerous inquiries; (b) review requests for ER funding; (c) prepare letters approving or denying the requests; and (d) much more. I helped Jim as best I could, but my greatest value to him was filling in for the secretary. I was the only one in the office that knew how to type and use the new typewriter with word processing capabilities and there were lots of memorandums and letters that needed to go out.

We were getting overwhelmed. Fortunately, help arrived. Jerry Poston arrived to take over as Branch Chief. He immediately jumped in to help Jim and to direct our team. Consequently, we got the job done in a timely manner and Jerry recommended Jim and me for an award.

I wish I had a picture of Jerry but so far have been unable to find one. He was always very quiet and unassuming with a ready smile and a twinkle in his eye, and he had more than his fair share of what the Army called “command presence.” He would sit in his office most of the day smoking cigarettes and working on various things, but his office door was always open if any of us worker bees with cubbyholes in the big outer room needed help. He would always stop what he was doing, turn away from his work, and give us his full attention. Jim Overton was like that too.
Jerry soon filled the vacant positions and hired a cracker-jack secretary named Cleo Dorsey to replace me. Cleo told me with a mischievous smile that I was never to touch her typewriter again, so I reluctantly went back to my old job. It sure gave me a greater appreciation for the work that Cleo and other secretaries have to do.

Jerry Poston, Jim Overton, and I had become a pretty close team while working on the emergency relief. About a year later Jerry came to my cubbyhole one day and told me he had decided to split the railroad and utilities job into two full-time positions and wanted Bob Winans to keep the railroad position and me to take the utilities position. I hesitated to do so but Jerry convinced me that it was a great opportunity. Not long after that, early in 1991, Jerry and Jim came to me and told me they had something they wanted me to do concerning a new practice being used by the Virginia DOT called Subsurface Utility Engineering.

We will talk about that more in my post next week.

#SubsurfaceUtilityEngineering

Post-08

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) began endorsing Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE) in 1991. It all began, however, in 1989 at about the same time as SUE was getting its name. The story begins with a hurricane.

Hurricane Hugo slammed into the United States near Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina at about midnight on September 22, 1989. It was one of the strongest hurricanes in South Carolina’s history, and at the time the costliest hurricane ever in the Atlantic Ocean. Hugo’s destruction wasn’t limited to just South Carolina; it also devastated Guadeloupe, St. Croix, and Puerto Rico, and produced hurricane force winds across portions of North Carolina. The Ben Sawyer Bridge (see picture) connecting Mount Pleasant and Sullivan’s Island, which normally turned from side-to-side to allow the passing of ships, broke from its cables. There was a massive amount of other bridge and roadway damage.

At the time of this event, I was working in the FHWA’s Office of Engineering in its Railroads, Utilities, and Programs Branch. Jim Carney, a much beloved gentleman who used to walk around the office in his sock feet, had just retired and his assistant, Jim Overton, was in charge of the office. Three other positions in the office were vacant due to laterals or promotions – the secretary, the emergency relief engineer, and the special programs engineer (the special programs were pork barrel projects, many of which were ignored by the DOTs depending on politics in the state). That left Jim Overton in charge, Bob Winans to handle railroads and utilities, and me. My job at the time was to keep up with Federal-aid regulations, policies, and eligibility pertaining to the more than 100 Federal-aid funding programs in effect.

Thus, when the hurricane hit, our office had no one in place to handle emergency relief, which became even more of a problem when the Master of Disaster (i.e., the Secretary of Transportation) went to the Carolinas and promised them everything, whether in compliance with Federal laws and regulations or not. He got lots of great publicity and actually did a very good job, but it fell to our emergency relief office to find ways to make it all happen. But, as I said, the emergency relief office was vacant. So, guess who ended up responsible for making all this happen? That’s right, Jim, Bob, and me! Bob handled damage to railroad warning devices and above ground utilities. Jim and I had damage to roads and bridges.

BUT HELP WAS ON THE WAY! More about that next week as Jerry Poston arrives to save the day! And what does this have to do with SUE. Stay tuned; we will get to that next week.

#SubsurfaceUtilityEngineering

Post-05

Several important events took place during the early 1980s that became basic components of Subsurface Utility Engineering.

IMPORTANT EARLY CONTRACTS.  In 1982, the County of Fairfax, Virginia, entered into a contract with So-Deep for locating (test holes). This was the first instance of a governmental body entering into a task-order basis contract for locating utilities. The County of Arlington, Virginia, soon followed. In 1983, as discussed in last week’s post, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) entered into a contract for designating (geophysical methods) and locating (test holes) utilities on a highway project, and in 1985, VDOT initiated a statewide contract with So-Deep for designating and locating work, the first such contract in the nation. 

It was found early on that the utility companies had very poor records on the locations of their subsurface facilities and consequently the one-call markings were often inaccurate or missing.  Jim Anspach was quoted at the time as saying:

We were determined to get good utility information in spite of not having utility records that were accurate and reliable; we repurposed geophysical technology, searched the world for new equipment, and replaced ‘pipe witching’ with science and limited utility exposure.

DESIGNATING AND LOCATING. At some point, questions arose regarding what to call the services that So-Deep was providing. Jim Anspach and Jeff Oakley, a Penn State physics graduate, did some brainstorming and developed the terms “designating” and “locating” to more accurately differentiate these functions. They rationalized that a utility was not located until it was exposed; until then, their existence and approximate location were designated by interpreting an energy field of some kind. 

IN-HOUSE SURVEY. At the request of VDOT, So-Deep hired an experienced land surveyor to develop its own survey capability and to manage the first VDOT contract.  Whereas many future providers subcontracted the survey work to local companies, having its own in-house survey unit provided So-Deep with better control over the quality of the work and was a differentiator in later years when competing with other providers.   

SEALED BY REGISTERED PROFESSIONAL. Maryland’s Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) entered into a contract with So-Deep in the mid-1980s to provide designating and locating services. Maryland statutes dictated that any information depicted on plans through survey work associated with these services, when used by a public agency, must be “sealed” by a registered professional. This was the first time any portion of the designating and/or locating work was required to be endorsed by a registered professional. This requirement set the stage for future development of SUE as a professional service rather than a contractor service.

These were important contributions to what would soon become Subsurface Utility Engineering and were differentiators during the 1990s when clients were trying to determine if what providers were claiming to be SUE really was SUE or not.  More about that later and more contributions in the late 1980s.

#subsurface utility engineering

POST 04

Wow, what a Surprise! The response to my recent posts on the early days of Subsurface UtilityEnginering (SUE) has been phenomanel. Nick Zembillas called me from Greece and said, “Paul, I have been sharing your LinkedIn posts with my global network of SUE friends and hundreds of them have liked it. Some of them have been responding and adding to the story, which is adding to the history.”

I want to thank everyone and if you have something to add to my story that is factual and accurate, please do and share your story. So that is what I am doing today, thanking you very much for reading and liking the posts. Please keep the responses coming in. 

So, moving along with the history of SUE. In the early days much of the promoting of SUE was centered around case studies.  Jim Anspach documented a case study in his history of SUE that was probably the first BIG case study showing the value of SUE. It goes like this: 

Garon Stutzman approached the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) in late 1983 with the concept of designating all the utilities on a highway project in the design stage so that designers could avoid them on paper when possible. VDOT saw the potential and allocated $10,000 for a trial project. The selected project was a massive road reconstruction in Crystal City (VA) traversing the Pentagon and National Airport areas. Construction plans were already drawn, with utilities plotted from owner records and supposedly “certified” as correct by the utility companies. So-Deep designated the utilities (see picture) and a VDOT crew surveyed the designations and plotted them on the plans. There were vast differences. So-Deep then performed approximately 100 test holes to prove their designations were accurate and to further identify the potential conflicts. On the record, VDOT stated to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) that over $1 million dollars in savings to the tax payer were realized. Off the record, the figure was $7 million or more.

Next week we will begin looking at early contributions to SUE that made it what it is today. Before leaving, though, I want to thank Mark Warden for sending me nine names of early SUE pioneers, primarily from So-Deep and neighboring state DOTs. Mark is a highly respected friend who began his career with So-Deep in 1984 and has successfully sold SUE and served clients for 35+ years. I will be inserting those names at appropriate places in posts to follow.

#SubsurfaceUtilityEngineering

Post-02.  My remembrances of the early days of Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE) continue:

Henry “Garon” Stutzman was the “inventor” and prime force behind the ideas and concepts that turned into Subsurface Utility Engineering.  Garon was working as relocation engineer for Washington Gas Light (WGL) in the metropolitan Washington D.C. area in the 1970s. He became convinced that the traditional methods of dealing with utilities were wasting the money of the ratepayer and taxpayer. He was aware of the advantages of air/vacuum systems for safe excavation and the exposure of gas systems for anode emplacement. The spark of the idea that this safe excavation method could be used to gather data on the exact location of a utility during the design stage, coupled with his great energy, caused him to leave WGL in 1981 and form So-Deep, Inc. 

I didn’t meet Garon until the 1991 and never got to know him well. He was an accomplished award-winning entrepreneur and businessman by that time and he was always very nice to me. Once after meeting him, he invited me to bring my family to his farm in The Plains on the coming Saturday to watch some mule races. He raised and raced mules for a hobby. He had invited other people as well, neighbors, co-workers, and friends, and it turned out to be a fabulous afternoon. There were two things I really liked about Garon: 1) He surrounded himself with very good people and allowed them to do their work without interference, and 2) he demanded excellence from all who worked for him regardless of the cost. 

In my next post I will mention some of the things from the 1980’s I know about SUE, but most of what I post after that will be things I actually witnessed in the 1990’s while at the Federal Highway Administration.