FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 9, 2026

The 30-year damage prevention software veteran urges the industry to close the gap between knowing the rules and following them.

Chanhassen, MN — April is National Safe Digging Month, and for KorTerra, the month serves as an annual reminder that the damage prevention industry still has work to do.

The damage prevention industry has made real progress. Awareness of the 811 process is higher than it has ever been, locate technology has improved significantly, and the community of professionals dedicated to protecting underground infrastructure continues to grow. According to the Common Ground Alliance’s most recent DIRT Report, however, the majority of damage to underground utilities are still preventable. The knowledge is there. The commitment is there. The opportunity is in closing the gap between the two.

The gap between knowing the rules and following them comes down to execution, and execution requires better tools, better data, and a sustained commitment from every part of the industry.

Thirty Years In. Still Showing Up.

KorTerra has been building damage prevention and 811 ticket management software for more than 30 years. In that time, the company has remained deeply embedded in the industry, from CGA conference floors to field ride-alongs with locate crews, supporting call centers and operators across North America.

"KorTerra exists because the work that happens underground matters," said Mitch Stendal, President of KorTerra. "We have been in this industry for over three decades, and our commitment has never been about software features. It is about the locators in the field, the call center staff managing ticket volume, and the communities that depend on the infrastructure running beneath their streets. National Safe Digging Month is an important reminder of why this work matters, but our job is to make sure we are supporting safe digging practices every other month of the year, too."

KorTerra's continuous partnerships with CGA and call centers across North America are operational relationships built on shared workflow, shared data, and a shared commitment to reducing damages. KorTerra's platform is built around those workflows: ticket intake, locate management, field documentation, and the data that connects all three.

The Problem with Counting Tickets

One of the persistent challenges in damage prevention is that the industry has long measured performance using the wrong metric: ticket volume. A ticket count reflects how busy a team is, with no indication of how prepared they are for what they are walking into.

Not all tickets carry equal risk. A homeowner marking a backyard is not the same as a contractor excavating across a multi-mile fiber corridor with dense facility overlap. When organizations treat those two tickets as equivalent units of work, they systematically misallocate resources, underestimate risk, and set field crews up to fail.

The industry needs a better denominator. Measuring dig site scope, which accounts for dig site size, facility overlap, and proximity to underground infrastructure, gives every stakeholder a clearer picture of what a ticket actually represents before a locator ever takes the field. A ticket with a small dig area and distant facilities carries a fundamentally different risk profile than one with thousands of feet of facility overlap inside a dense urban corridor. The metric was never designed to carry that weight, and the industry has outgrown it.

When scope becomes the standard, the industry gains something ticket counts have never provided: the ability to match resources to actual risk, measure locator performance against the complexity of the work they handled and identify where damage exposure is building before it results in a strike. Scope-based thinking is not a feature upgrade. It is a fundamental shift in how the damage prevention industry understands workload, risk, and readiness.

A Call to the Industry

National Safe Digging Month creates an annual moment of visibility for an issue that deserves year-round attention. KorTerra is using that moment to issue a straightforward challenge to the industry: do not let awareness stop in April.

Call centers, operators, municipalities, utilities, and locating companies all have a role in reducing damages. The technology, the data, and the operational frameworks exist. What the industry needs is collective commitment to use them, consistently, on every ticket, every month.

Safe digging is an operational standard, and KorTerra is committed to helping the industry hold it year-round.