Now that you know about estimating and what you can do to better ensure top-notch locating before Blood Hound even gets to your job site, we wanted to let you know what to expect when our locating professionals show up. The example below walks through a full-service work order, which includes a variety of methods to make sure we’ve done everything possible to find everything on your site.
 
By the time your Blood Hound locator arrives, they will have received digital copies of everything you’ve provided to help us on the job, such as any prints, drawings, images outlining scope—everything you provided, they have access to as well. So, by the time they get to your site, they know what they’re looking for, and they know what’s expected of them.
 
The Blood Hound Way
Our professional locators undergo months of training in our locating process, with refresher courses every year to train in new processes and technology. Here’s a quick rundown of how our locators make sure that whatever’s down there, we’ll find it—something we like to call The Blood Hound Way.
 
1) The Site Survey
The first thing our locating professionals do is walk the job site to complete a visual inspection of the area. This can be with or without the client, depending on the request. During the site survery, we walk the job site and look for any signs of facilities that we might be able to locate.
 
2) EM Locating – Finding the Knowns
After the site survery, our locating professional takes a first pass with our electro-magnetic (EM) locating equipment to find and mark all of the known utilities—utilities like gas and electric that have plain-as-day access and hook-up points.
 
3) GPR Locating – Finding the Unknowns
Next, our locator performs a ground penetrating radar survey to look for the unknowns, the anomalies, so to speak. GPR technology enables our locating professionals to find utilities that give no indication of being in the area, as well as find lines that are what we call “untoneable” by electromagnetic means, such as a plastic water or gas line with no tracer wire, or perhaps a PVC or ceramic sewer line.
 
4) EM Induction – Finding the Rest
The next step in the process is an EM induction scan, where our locator uses induction equipment to broadcast a signal, looking for any additional lines that might have any type of metallic feature that would carry a signal.
 
It's when Blood Hound combines all of these technologies together that we know we’re providing you with the absolute best service possible, and everything is being done to avoid damages.
 
5) Site Photos
Once these portions of the job are completed, the locator takes various site photos of the job so you can better see what locating was performed. The photos also give you a better visual of the utilities you are working with, and they can be particularly handy in the event you run into some bad weather.
 
6) Uploading and Processing Findings & Providing Them to You
Once these portions of the job are completed, the locator uploads site photos, site sketches documenting the approximate locations of the various utilities, and GPR data to our system, and attaches it to the client’s specific project. Uploading the data provides a back-up to show what GPR was able to find, and our state of the art computer technology checks to see if the naked eye may have missed something that was able to register, even slightly.
 
Finally, the locator closes out the job in our system. As soon as this happens, you will receive an email to let you know that everything is finished. The email also includes a link to your job where you can easily and immediately download all of your deliverables that were uploaded by the locator.
 
At Blood Hound, our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to keep your crew and your job site safe from damaged utilities. We’ve trained all of our locating professionals in The Blood Hound Way, so you can trust that when you’ve had Blood Hound out to your site, you can be safe and assured that your backhoe won’t find something we didn’t.
 
Contact us today to learn more about our full-service locating and the locating needs on your job.