Page 3 - Tennessee

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Bill Turner
Welcome to 2024. I hope you enjoyed some quality time with your family over the holidays, and I hope you were able to take some time to rest and recharge. We’re preparing for the busy season and looking forward to partnering with you to tackle new challenges and opportunities in the new year.
Let’s kick things off by looking backward. We talk a lot about ticket volume – the number of locate requests that we take in over a given period of time. From 2011 to 2022, the annual ticket volume increased every year, averaging a 6.7% increase per year. In 2023, ticket volume leveled out and then dropped a bit.
Here’s how things played out, from a statewide perspective:
• January of 2023 was up 2% over January of 2022.
• February trended the other way, and that trend stuck through September (average decrease of 4.2%).
October, November, and December trended back up (average increase of 6%).
In total, TN811 processed 1,048,792 incoming locate requests (down 1.6% from 2022).
51% of tickets were called in, 41% were submitted via RTE, and the remaining 8% came in as E-Tickets. For every incoming ticket, we averaged 5.13 outgoing transmissions (notified utilities).
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While ticket volume is one of the key metrics we track, it’s not necessarily an indicator of success or failure. An overall trend up in ticket count can mean more safe excavations, but we also have to recognize that inefficiencies in the broader 811 process can be hidden in that number. For example, our ticket count includes second notices, which are tickets called in because the excavator did not receive a timely response from utilities or because there was clear evidence of an unmarked line at the dig site.
Unnecessary updates and tickets that are called in well before excavation begins are also nested in those ticket counts, and both of those are problematic occurrences that our industry is struggling to address. That’s why, at the end of the day (or year in this case), our focus is less on ticket totals and more on the quality of our service and the support we provide to our state’s excavators, locators, and utilities.
Here’s one metric from 2023 that we’re incredibly proud of: our average Speed of Answer (SOA) for incoming calls was 21.5 seconds. That SOA meets and exceeds our board’s expectation of 30 seconds and our internal goal of 25 seconds. It’s one very important indicator that helps us evaluate customer experience.
As we meet 2024 head on, we invite you to partner with us as we explore and implement process improvements, technology enhancements, and legislative updates to address the hiccups that work against the goal of the 811 system. Your feedback and support are critical to our mission.
To provide the best Communication, Education, and Notification Service to advocate for and to facilitate damage prevention to underground utilities.
As always, I extend my thanks to the employees of Tennessee 811, our member utilities, and our Safe Digging Partners for everything you do to make Tennessee safer.
Wishing you a Happy New Year,
Respectfully,
William “Bill” Turner President Tennessee811
Mission Statement
To Provide the
Best Communication, Education and Notification Service to Facilitate Damage Prevention to Underground Utilities.
2024, Issue 1 Tennessee811 • 1