The City of Woodstock, Ontario, processes roughly 13,000 One Call tickets a year with a team of eight, including one full-time locator, and that volume has been climbing 10-15% annually. Most municipalities answer that kind of growth with a request for more staff, but Woodstock took a different approach: instead of adding headcount, they removed the manual bottleneck that was capping their team's output and ended up doubling their daily locate capacity in the process.

The Challenge: A Manual Process That Couldn't Keep Up

Before implementing KorTerra, Woodstock's locate technicians were losing up to 3-4 hours a day to manual sketching, hand-drawing utility locates for every ticket that came through before a single one could be marked in the field.

That time-loss capped the team's daily throughput at 10-15 locates a day. On top of that, the city was dealing with inaccurate GIS mapping and inefficient workflows, problems that became especially difficult to manage during after-hours emergencies. Growing ticket volume, up 10-15% annually, made all of it harder to sustain.

Partnering with KorTerra: Replacing Manual Work with a Modern Ticket Management System

Woodstock's shift away from manual sketching centered on a few connected changes to how the team manages locate tickets.

• GIS Mapping Integration: KorTerra replaced hand sketching with integrated GIS mapping, letting the city quickly and accurately update records instead of hand-drawing them. KorTerra's photo-taking and map annotation tools made that update process efficient and technologically modernized.
  
  
• Emergency Notifications: After-hours notifications and call-back services helped Woodstock respond more effectively to emergencies, ensuring timely communication with all stakeholders.
  
  
• Reporting and Route Planning: Improved ticket management reporting, combined with the ability to see tickets visually on a map, let the team efficiently plan routes and ensure timely locates for both city and county infrastructure.
  

The Results: Doubled Output, Real Savings

As Brandon Davis, Utility Locate Technician for the City of Woodstock, put it:

"Using KorTerra's system and GIS mapping significantly reduced the time we spent on sketching. With GPS integration being a natural next step for the industry, the software is clearly developed with future needs in mind."

What This Means for Municipal Locate Operations Budgets

Woodstock's ticket volume didn't slow down after implementation. It kept climbing at the same rate it always had. What changed is that the team finally had the capacity to absorb that growth instead of falling further behind it every year.

That's the real distinction worth bringing into any budget conversation about locate operations. Rising ticket volume doesn't have to mean a recurring ask for more staff, because fixing the process that's capping your team's output is a fix that scales alongside volume instead of losing ground to it. And unlike a headcount request, it's an investment you make once rather than defend every single cycle.

About KorTerra, Inc.

KorTerra is the leading provider of damage prevention software, protecting billions of dollars in underground infrastructure. For over 30 years, the leading stakeholders in gas distribution, pipeline operation, telecommunications, electric distribution, contract locating, and city, county, and state governments have trusted KorTerra as their damage prevention solution. KorTerra helps mitigate risk and ensure the safety of field personnel by providing secure software platforms for processing 811 locate tickets, tracking and reporting asset damages, meeting regulatory compliance, and more. Explore additional solutions at korterra.com and follow KorTerra on LinkedIn.

Media Contact:
Paige Nygaard – KorTerra, Inc.
952.368.1911
marketing@korterra.com