Averting Excavation Disaster

Details

• Personal Author:
  Bernold LE ; Carver C ; Lorenc SJ
• Description:
  Accidents do not have to cause loss of life or limb to make headlines or limb to put a company out of business. Damage done to underground utilities is a case in point. In one such incident, a North Carolina gas pipeline was cut accidentally and was out of service for six hours. A local newspaper reported the cost of repair a $15,000, but when the actual cost was analyzed by the Construction Automation and Robotics laboratory (CARL) at North Carolina State University, the total amounted to over $300,000, or more than $50,000 per hour of repair time, not including legal fees resulting from the incident. CARL has focused its attention since 1990 on developing a tool to detect underground utilities before accidents happen. A device, Buried Utility Detection System (BUDS), which is capable of scanning a work site for utilities, has been developed. BUDS can be attached directly to digging equipment and acts as a second-tier system that can be deployed after local utility company personnel have marked all known underground lines. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Automation Construction Industry Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Construction-equipment Construction-industry Excavation-equipment
• ISSN:
  0742-597X
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  North Carolina ; OSHA Region 4
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  29-30
• Volume:
  14
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20000085
• Citation:
  J Manage Eng 1998 Jan; 14(1):29-30
• Contact Point Address:
  Department of Civil Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-7908
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1998
• NORA Priority Area:
  Research Tools and Approaches: Control Technology and Personal Protective Equipment
• Performing Organization:
  North Carolina State University, College of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  19960930
• Source Full Name:
  Journal of Management in Engineering
• End Date:
  19990929
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:35c6545f542c4aa725bf43b64a0c5a7d87ada5553398c74a0bf3b888ec2714d5fe296c303bea324194f79aafd5755502cd37e88a6737c04e3615b8156387bc19
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/198147/cdc_198147_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 464.62 KB ]