What happens when we don’t “SUE” what’s needed? Feat. Albert Taylor

Subsurface Utility Engineering is not easy walk in the park, but the advantages are valuable to alls stakeholders on any infrastructure project, big or small. Have you ever wondered why SUE isn’t being implemented more religiously into projects? Our guest, Albert Taylor breaks shares his insight into the challenges surrounding SUE.

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On this week’s episode of the Utility Strategy Podcast, Albert Taylor, who has over two decades of experience in design and construction shares his experiences which have helped him establish relationships with utility owners, produce the best best results for his customers and navigate the world of SUE while working as project manager at SGC Engineering LLC,

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Before becoming a project manager in the realm of SUE, Albert dedicated ten years of his professional career assisting on construction projects, providing him with extensive knowledge and challenges from the point of view of multiple stakeholders.

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Key Takeaways

We wish identifying the utility owner took two minutes

We understand that we may not get utility records from anyone, or we may get sparse utility records. We may not get any response, but part of the experience in the industry, I believe, is keeping a relationship with a lot of the utilities in order to at least know who to contact. That's the biggest hurdle that I found is the contact information that may be listed out there is a decade old.

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The problem around retiring utility owners.

From a utility owner's perspective, if you do have somebody that retires that has been in a certain seat for a long time snd they have all the utility knowledge. Knowing what that succession plan is for the outside world or who to contact isn't necessarily an easy and simple solution.

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Who get’s blamed for utility strikes?

The responsibilities on everyone that that's involved, everybody plays a part. You can't communicate, coordinate, or cooperate, enough on a project. That's why utility coordinators and SUE professionals in general play such an important part in any infrastructure project because they create transparency between the stakeholders.

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Working with 811

We work with 811 on a daily basis, and quite frankly I couldn't imagine operating without them because they provide a valuable service. Unfortunately, there's a lot of abandoned facilities that are still in the right of way that don’t have any records and not a lot of historical knowledge.

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