Goals

Goals

  • 50% reduction over 2015 levels in the frequency of damages in North America on professional excavation sites by the end of 2025
  • More than half of North American municipalities rely on GSS metrics when hiring, establishing or renewing franchise rights and offering permits by the end of 2025
  • More than 100 Gold Shovel Standard Communities have been established throughout North America by the end of 2025
  • More than 75% of insurance companies consider GSS supported metrics on policies for excavators or locators by the end of 2025

Principles

In an era of booming construction, and enormous infrastructure revitalization or replacement, GSS expands the opportunities for stakeholders to grow and perfect their operations, while simultaneously increasing the safety of workforces and the public alike.

GSS endeavors to:

  • Use non-punitive damage reporting to derive metrics
  • Avoid judgment, ratings or policing activities
  • Use data to drive transparency
  • Avoid bureaucracy and ineffective activities
  • Make contractors more successful
  • Be transparent and fair

GSS seeks to raise the performance bar by providing tools and measurements that drive superior performance of all stakeholders.

Platform

  • The complex one-call process relies on all participants – one-call centers, Owner/Operators, locators and excavators – to perform effectively. There is wide variability within peer groups in their effective performance of this complex process, but little transparency about that variability.
  • Transparency has been used effectively in industries as disparate as law enforcement, automobiles and healthcare, to deliver marked improvements and transparency can work in damage prevention.
  • The damage prevention industry does not currently have established standardized measurement schemes. Standardized metrics for damage prevention are essential to creating a level playing field and driving a reduction in damages to buried infrastructure.
  • The absence of standardized metrics to measure the performance of individual stakeholders in damage prevention is a challenge to our ability to continuously improve.
  • GSS believes that non-punitive reporting and judgment-free presentation of factual data is the best way to establish standardized metrics.
  • Fairly measuring damage prevention performance is difficult, given the complexity of the damage prevention process but standardized measurements must be established and implemented, regardless of how difficult a task it may be.
  • GSS is driving the creation and broad deployment of damage prevention metrics (for Owner/Operators, locators, and excavators) as a key ingredient to a dramatic increase in public safety.
  • Continuous improvement to increase safety and the protection of buried assets is the shared responsibility of Owner/Operators, locators and excavators.
  • Reducing damages will require a paradigm shift from viewing the problem of line strikes as belonging to the owner of a damaged line to a shared problem belonging to all who live, work and frequent anywhere lines are buried.
  • Gold Shovel Standard Communities are an innovative way for asset owners to partner and share the responsibility for improving beyond the status quo.
  • Obtaining a dramatic reduction in damages will require new and innovative technology and use of safety management systems specific to damage prevention.
  • GSS is working to deliver technology to support the program goals and will continue to make those tools broadly available for adoption.
  • GSS believes that all stakeholders participating in the complex one-call process must rely upon a robust safety management system, which incorporates damage prevention to increase public and workforce safety.

The Need For Standardized Metrics

The Need For Standardized Metrics

Dramatic reductions in the frequency of line strikes will remain elusive unless all parties continuously improve and measurements underpin continuous improvement. Standardizing the measurement process is an overdue first step to drive performance improvement and increase public and workforce safety. To achieve this ambitious plan, Gold Shovel Standard is working with balanced teams of damage prevention experts to draft, refine and broadly deploy damage prevention metrics for all stakeholders.

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Third-Party Damage Reductions and Communities

Third-Party Damage Reductions and Communities

“Everybody’s third-party is somebody’s second-party.” Reducing line strikes associated with small excavators and third-parties persists as the top priority for all stakeholders in damage prevention. These are difficult reductions to influence, and yet they represent the single biggest risk to safety associated with excavation damage. Gold Shovel Standard Communities are novel and ambitious partnerships to attack this persistent and difficult challenge.

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ShovelSafe™

ShovelSafe™

Increasing safety is impossible without the right tools. Gold Shovel Standard provides world-class technology to drive continuous improvement that reduces damages and increases public and workforce safety. ShovelSafe from Oropala puts damages prevention at the fingertips of business leaders, giving them the tools to drive continuous performance improvement. ShovelSafe is world-class technology for analyzing and tracking damage prevention performance.

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Safety Management Systems (SMS)

Safety Management Systems (SMS)

Pursuing the industry-wide goal of zero incidents requires comprehensive, systematic use of Safety Management Systems. Pipeline and other energy companies, and along with the regulatory community have recognized the critical importance of SMS. Broad adoption of Damage Prevention-Safety Management Systems (DP-SMS), which are safety management systems specifically tailored for damage prevention is a necessary ingredient to achieve that industry-wide goal of zero incidents.

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