Public Utility Owner and Operators: Partnering with Colorado 811 to Protect Vital Underground Infrastructure

Colorado State Law, Colorado Revised Statutes 2022, Title 9-Safety-Industrial and Commercial, Article 1.5 Excavation Requirements requires all underground facility owners/operators in Colorado to be a member of Colorado 811.

There are two types of membership offered at Colorado 811, Owner/Operator and Excavator Membership.

Contact Member Relations at member-services@co811.org

• Owner/Operator membership receives direct notification from Colorado 811 regarding excavations in or around the registered members defined notification area.

• Excavator membership is a yearly $100 fee that allows the excavating company registering to vote and/or run for a seat on the Colorado 811 Board of Directors as well as access to the Expedite website.

Colorado 811 classifies members into the following group. Each classification has a board member representative.

• Cable Television

• Liquid Pipeline

• Electric Cooperative

• Government

• Electric Distribution

• Communications

• Gas Distribution

• Water/Sewer

• Gas Transmission/Gathering

• Excavator

Board members are voted into their position by the utilities in the same category as their facility classification. Directors hold positions for a two-year term. See the current Board of Directors here.

Only Facility owner/operator members are required to post Positive Response through the Colorado 811 Positive Response system

It is the responsibility of the facility owner to identify and/or locate their underground facilities. CO811 is a communications link only and does not perform any type of locating services.

An Automatic Positive Response Re-notification occurs when no positive response is posted by the Owner/Operator Member by the locate by date on the locate request. Colorado 811 will continue to send out re-notifications daily until a response is received by Colorado 811 or for 30 days from the locate by date, whichever comes first. Emergency and damage tickets will be excluded from these re-notifications at this time.

Yes. Please see ticket fees for transmission cost.

Two (2) End Of Day audits (summaries) will be sent at the end of each day (midnight) to recap the amount of tickets received and their ticket numbers for that day.

If no tickets were received the EOD will have zeros next to Total.

There will be two End Of Day audits, to reflect the A and B ticket numbers. You will see UNCCa or UNCCb next to the EOD at the top left hand corner.

Owner/Operator memberships are a one-time fee of $25.00

Excavator membership is a yearly $100 application fee

The Owner/Operator application fee is a one-time fee.

Colorado 811 charges on a per-transmission basis. Please see ticket fee for transmission cost. You will not be charged for messages, End-Of-Day audits, or canceled ticket notifications.

No. Invoices are sent via email to a pre-established billing contact. Payment methods include paper check, ACH, eCheck, or EFT methods.

No. All payments must be made payable to Utility Notification Center of Colorado.

Invoices are due in full upon receipt. Any overpayment will be credited to the account and applied to the next billing cycle.

For billing and accounting questions and inquiries please contact us at (303) 232-1991 or submit an email inquiry to accounting@uncc.org.

Each member defines an area of notification either by Township, Range, Section, and Quarter Section or by submitting digital file for polygonal coverage.

The area in which your company will get notified of anyone that gives notice to 811 before excavating.

Updating Member owned/operated facilities to the CO811 notification area database is the responsibility of the facility owner. All changes to the notification area database must be submitted in writing, to include mail, fax, or e-mail to notify CO811 Member Relations of the requested change. All change requests will be processed in the order they were submitted, by date.

To better serve member needs, the following timeline is recommended:

• Tabular data (Township, Range, Section, Quarter section) should be submitted at least ten (10) business days prior to the date that member facilities require notification of proposed excavation for the geographic location. The member facility owner will be informed by e-mail when the update is complete. Upon request, a revised ¼ section grid report can be obtained from Member Relations.

• Digital data, to include GIS shapefiles, should be submitted at least ten (10) business days prior to the date that member facilities require notification of proposed excavation for the geographic location. From the date CO811 receives the database update request, a total of five (5) business days are needed to complete the entry into the existing database. The member will be informed via e-mail when the update is complete. It is the members’ responsibility to review and approve the notification area database. Contact Member Relations personnel for more information.

• Requests for a GIS shape file of the existing coverage in the notification area database will require an e-mail sent to the Member Relations Department.

• Requests for notification area database updates, due to an emergency, will be accommodated in a timely manner with the resources and personnel available at the time of the request.

• A Database Validation Form must be signed and returned to confirm the accuracy and location of the digital data transferred from the GIS shape file into the CO811 system.

• All requests will be processed in the order they were received unless otherwise communicated by the member facility owner or operator.

In the Colorado One Call law it states that if you own or operate any underground facilities on or near a public right-of-way or easement you should be registered with Colorado 811.

This describes the required format of Shapefiles that can be imported into the Colorado 811 notification database.

The Shapefile types supported are POINT, LINE and POLYGON. For POINT and LINE shapefiles, you must specify a buffer distance to apply to the file to create a polygon shapefile. A buffer is a radius of a point and/or a line. Minimum buffer that can be applied to linear and radian polygons is 30ft and the maximum is 1000ft.

Each Shapefile submission should be packaged in a ZIP file, with the following four (4) files at a minimum and sent in an email:

• ESRI Shapefile (.SHP)

• ESRI Shape (.SHX) Index File

• ESRI Shape (.DBF) Attributes File

• ESRI Shape (.PRJ) Coordinate System File

**Shapefiles submitted must be in the coordinate system of NAD 83 LAT/LONG decimal degrees.

 Along with the data please include the following information about the data.

• Sender Information – Who is supplying the shapefile(s):

• Name and contact information.

• Member Code – The member code for which the notification areas will be applied to.

• Addition, Partial Replacement or Complete Replacement – The person sending the shapefile update must specify if the files submitted are an addition, a partial replacement, or a complete replacement of the existing notification area.

NOTE: For a partial replacement, the files submitted must contain the data for the entire county. If multiple counties are being replaced a complete replacement of the database is highly recommended.

Effective Date – The date at which the notification areas will become “effective”. You may specify that the notification areas be effective immediately or at some date in the future.

Expiration Date – The date at which the notification areas will expire. You may specify that the notification areas expire NEVER or at some specific date in the future.

Counties Covered – Which counties are covered by the submitted shapefile. This can be a list of one or more counties, or you can specify the entire state (i.e., any counties the shapes fall into.)

Buffer Distance (in FEET) – If the shapefile being submitted contains point or line features, they will be buffered and converted into polygons. You must specify the buffer distance in feet for these types of shapefiles. Shapefiles containing polygons are assumed to already include the necessary buffers.

Email shapefiles to the Member Relations Department at member-services@co811.org

IMPORTANT NOTES AND LIMITATIONS:

• When shapefiles are imported into the mapping database, they are automatically clipped to the county or counties they intersect.

• Polygons are limited to 4 square miles in area. Polygons that are larger than 4 square miles will be partitioned into smaller polygons that cover the same area.

• Polygons which are made up of more than 9 points will be simplified.

• There is a maximum density limit of 16 polygons per quarter minute grid.

• In processing the importation of data, small gaps/holes less than 300ft in extent (width or height) will automatically be filled in due to the minimum buffer of 150ft of the dig site to limit complexity of the output.