Holding Back Disaster: Protecting Lives and Infrastructure Through Excavation Damage Prevention

Holding Back Disaster: Protecting Lives and Infrastructure Through Excavation Damage Prevention presents a rare system-level account of excavation damage prevention as a form of critical infrastructure, bringing together the people, systems, and practices that protect people and essential infrastructure every day.

Excavation damage to buried infrastructure is one of the most persistent, costly, and under-examined safety problems in the built environment. Each year in the United States alone, millions of excavation activities place buried gas, electric, water, sewer, and telecommunications assets at risk, resulting in fatalities, injuries, service outages, environmental harm, and billions of dollars in economic losses. The book traces the evolution of undergrounding and coordination practices from early utility cooperation through the emergence of One-Call/811 systems, modern locating technologies, and data-driven risk management. Rather than treating utility strikes as a series of isolated failures, the book demonstrates how outcomes are shaped by institutional design, incentives, workforce dynamics, data quality, and regulatory fragmentation. It presents narratives and case studies, supported by real-world incidents, quantitative estimates, and expert perspectives.

This book is essential reading for infrastructure and construction practitioners and leaders who work across excavation, utilities, locating, safety management, and risk.

Scott Landes is an entrepreneur, inventor, publisher, and global conference founder with more than 40 years of leadership in underground infrastructure safety and damage prevention. He is the holder of 10 patents related to damage-prevention products and systems and is the former co-chair of the Common Ground Alliance Education Committee and recipient of the CGA Jim Barron Award.

Benjamin R. Dierker, JD, MPA is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure (Aii), a nonprofit think tank focused on infrastructure systems, safety, resilience, and public policy. He is the author of more than 75 policy reports and a widely cited expert on infrastructure governance and risk.