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Tennessee Excavation Guide
How do I know if my project requires a call to Tennessee 811?
If you are excavating in Tennessee, you are required to contact 811 before your work begins.
What counts as excavation?
Movement, placement, or removal of earth, rock, or other materials in or on the ground by use of mechanized equipment, discharge of explosives, or by hand digging, and includes augering, backfilling, blasting, boring, digging, ditching, drilling, grading, pile-driving, plowing-in, pulling-in, ripping, scraping, sub-soiling, trenching, or tunneling.
A utility operator or someone working on behalf of a utility operator is not considered to be excavating if they are using non-mechanized tools at a depth of 12 inches or less to locate, repair, connect, protect, or otherwise perform routine maintenance on existing underground facilities.
A property owner utilizing non-mechanized tools on their own property does not count as excavation.
We suggest you contact 811 any time you dig – just to be safe – but you can learn more about what does and doesn’t count as excavation in the Underground Utility Damage Prevention Act (TCA 65-31-101 et seq.).
Who should make the call to 811?
State law requires each person responsible for excavation to have a locate request. In a legal sense, a person is any legal entity, like a business. So, each company excavating on a project needs to have their own locate request, but individual employees of a company do not need separate locate requests.
How much notice do I need to give?
A normal locate request requires three to ten (3-10) working days’ notice. That’s at least 72 hours, excluding weekends and holidays.
Why did I get an expiration date when I called in a ticket?
Your ticket is valid for 15 calendar days from the start date and time that you were given. If you can’t complete the work in that time frame, call us back to update the locate request.
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2024, Issue 2