Private utility locating
The free 811 call marks the utility company’s lines up to the meter. Past that point (across the parking lot, under the campus, out to the pump house) nothing is marked, and nothing is coming to mark it. Those lines belong to the property owner, which makes them the excavator’s problem.
Where 811 stops
811 is a good system doing exactly what it was built to do: protect the public distribution network. Call it. It is free and it is the law.
But it ends at the point of service. The site lighting loop, the gas run to the kitchen, the fibre between two buildings, the irrigation main, the electric feed out to a sign. All of it private, all of it invisible to that call, and often installed by someone who is no longer around and left no drawing.
The full comparison, including who carries the liability, is on private locating vs 811.
What we locate, and how
Traces energised and conductive lines (power, telecom, metallic gas and water) by putting a signal on the line and following it from the surface.
Finds what a signal cannot be put on: PVC, clay, concrete duct banks, tanks, vaults and voids. Also the honest answer to “we do not know what is down there”.
Rebar, post-tension cable and conduit inside the slab, located before the saw goes in. Cutting a post-tension cable is a life-safety event, not a delay.
Depth, and being straight about it
We mark position on the surface and give an estimated depth. Depth is an estimate. Soil conditions, line material and congestion all affect it, and any locator claiming exact depth from the surface is overselling.
What the marks are for is telling you where to dig carefully, and where you can get on with it.
Before the excavator arrives
Tell us the site and what is going in. Locating costs a fraction of a strike, and a fraction of the delay a strike causes.