Ontario One Call receives excavator locate requests by web request, or telephone.
All requests submitted to Ontario One Call must meet minimum requirements or will be refused. Those requirements are contact name and number, city of dig site, dig street, 2 nearest minor intersecting streets and type of work. However, excavators are strongly encouraged to provide as much information as possible to create a high-quality locate request, including information such as a secondary intersecting street, marking instructions, hand digging/machine digging clarification, etc. This assists the member and locate service provider in identifying the dig site and ensuring an accurate locate is completed.
A separate excavator locate request is prepared for each street, road etc. where an excavation is planned. Multiple excavation sites on the same street will be included on the same Excavator Locate Request when the submitted addresses are sequential and in ascending or descending order so that they constitute a reasonable geographic entity. When these conditions are met, the limits of the request field lengths determine the maximum number of excavation sites that can be included on an excavator locate request.
Requests of five or more separate dig streets in a given Municipality are considered “Project Work” by Ontario One Call and will be processed as such. The difference between project work requests and single requests is the assignment of a Project Work Number. The project work number “batches” the project work requests together.
In support of the ORCGA’s “White Lining” best practice, pre-marking by the excavator is encouraged by Ontario One Call and is a scripted question in telephone requests. This practice is a part of “Outline Mark and Fax (OMF)”.