Regional health system — multi-site capital work
Hospital campus private utility locating — a multi-site capital-work program
Regional health system running multi-site capital work where the 811 ticket covered public mains only. SureTrace ran a multi-method sweep and cleared the missing private-side picture before excavation started.
Published July 25, 2026
What the capital team was walking into
A regional health system was moving into a two-year capital-work window across its main hospital campus — a new loading-dock expansion, a helipad relocation, two chiller replacements, and a planned data-center conduit run to an off-site facility. The capital team had an active 811 ticket for the public-side mains adjacent to the campus but had no current records for the private-side assets: the sanitary laterals serving the older wings, the fire-service branch lines feeding the sprinkler risers, the communication conduits bridging the off-site data center, and the irrigation laterals ringing the proposed helipad pad.
The work was sized for a Standard engagement footprint per the framework, but the multi-site sequencing (chiller work first, then loading-dock gas service, then helipad irrigation, then the data-center conduit run) called for a program retainer cadence — a named senior locator on each mobilization, with knowledge carried forward between visits so the program did not re-pay the pre-field-intelligence cost on every sweep.
Who the work was for
Regional health system — multi-site capital work
Engagement shape: Program retainer. The SureTrace team scoped this study against the site footprint, the geophysical complexity, and the access constraints of the campus before mobilization, and ran it on a program retainer cadence so the pre-field intelligence cost was paid once across the capital-work window.
What made this engagement non-trivial
Roughly 60% of all utility lines are private — beyond the reach of an 811 ticket — and the campus was textbook for that split: public mains ran along the perimeter while every meaningful interior asset was privately owned, undocumented, and crossing the planned excavation corridors. The as-built drawings on file predated two of the three most recent capital projects and made no mention of either the off-site data-center conduit or the helipad irrigation laterals.
The team had two specific worries. First, the reinforced concrete decks over the loading-dock expansion would shadow a GPR signal in exactly the zone where the gas service ran, so a single-method sweep could not have answered the question. Second, a planned remediation under the south wing was being scoped off the as-builts alone — if the fire-service lateral documented there had been replaced or rerouted in the most recent capital project, the remediation would hit it. Either of those would have produced a regulatory notification and a six-figure OSHA-exposure corridor for the program.
What SureTrace did — three phases, one coherent sweep
The same three phases that define the broader SureTrace framework, applied to this site. Each phase has a defined outcome you can hold the engagement to.
- Review existing as-built records, prior locating reports, and any private utility documentation already on file for the campus.
- Interview site contacts, facility managers, and contractors from the prior capital projects about known and unknown private assets.
- Identify high-risk zones: building entries, utility corridors, recent excavations, and historically missed segments.
- Establish 811 vs private demarcation so the field team knows exactly where the public ticket stops on each mobilization.
- Deploy complementary geophysical methods (GPR, EML, RF/EM induction, sonde tracing) wherever signal conditions allow.
- Mark findings using APWA color code with private-line indicators so the marks are unambiguous on plan and in field.
- Survey mark-outs to the project coordinate datum with handheld GPS, escalating to RTK where accuracy matters.
- Record depth estimates, signal confidence notes, and assumptions for every point, especially where conditions shadowed the signal.
- Cross-check field findings against mark-out tickets, prior reports, and known utility owner records carried forward between mobilizations.
- Pothole or vacuum-excavate conflict points where horizontal accuracy is critical — including the planned south-wing remediation corridor.
- Document assumptions, signal-strength notes, and limitations transparently in the closeout materials.
- Hand off findings as GeoJSON / KMZ / shapefile and walk the program team through the closeout briefing before each mobilization window.
What the client walked away with
Across the two-year capital-work window the program recorded zero utility strikes tied to private-side assets. The 197K damage incidents reported industry-wide in 2024 alone is the baseline this program was measured against; the multi-method sweep and the carried-forward records put this campus on the other side of that line. Avoiding even a single strike on this footprint would have paid for the retainer many times over in mobilization, citation exposure, and schedule slip.
The closeout briefing surfaced two abandoned sanitary laterals the campus had no record of — the suspected remnant of a service to a wing decommissioned during the last capital project. Both were potholed, confirmed abandoned-in-place, and added to the as-built record carried forward. The remediation under the south wing that had worried the program team was re-scoped against the EML findings: the fire-service lateral had been rerouted during the prior capital project, and the new alignment sat outside the planned excavation corridor. Had the work gone ahead off the as-builts alone, that lateral would have been hit.
The deeper outcome was institutional. A program retainer cadence lets a campus carry a current private-utility as-built forward from mobilization to mobilization — the pre-field-intelligence cost is paid once instead of every visit, and the field team opens each season with a defensible map of the private side, not a guess.
What the engagement generalises to
Each note below is a takeaway a SureTrace team would apply on the next engagement of this shape — not a one-off observation about a single campus.
On hospital campuses the 811 ticket is the start of the locating process, not the answer. Roughly 60% of utility lines are private, and the assets that matter inside the building line — sanitary laterals, fire-service branches, communication conduits, irrigation — are almost always privately owned and undocumented.
Single-method GPR was not enough where the reinforced concrete decks shadowed the signal. The EML pass carried the day in those zones, and pairing GPR with EML on the multi-method sweep was the difference between confidence and guesswork in the loading-dock expansion corridor.
The closeout briefing caught a planned remediation that would have hit a rerouted fire-service lateral the as-builts did not reflect. The pre-field intelligence step — interviewing site contacts and reviewing prior capital-project records — is what surfaced that finding before mobilization, not after a strike.
A program retainer cadence pays for itself on multi-site capital work: the pre-field-intelligence cost is paid once, the as-built record is carried forward between mobilizations, and each subsequent sweep opens with a defensible picture of the campus instead of a fresh investigation.
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