Anyone digging must contact OKIE811 to have facility operators locate and mark their underground lines.
Operator markings of facilities include the following:
- The appropriate color for the facility type.
- When other companies use the same color, the marker will have a company identifier (name, initials or abbreviation).
- The total number of facilities and the width of each facility.
- A description of the facility.
Use paint, flags, stakes, whiskers or a combination to identify the operator’s facility(s) at or near the excavation site.
Marks in the appropriate color are approximately 12 to 18 inches long and one inch wide, spaced approximately four to five feet apart. When marking facilities, the operator considers the location, the land’s terrain, the type of excavation being done, and the method required to adequately mark the facility for the excavator.
Uniform Color Code
The American Public Works Association (APWA) developed a color code for temporarily marking underground facilities before excavation. The color code encourages all excavators, surveyors and engineers to use these colors to promote and eliminate damages to workers and the general public as well as prevent service interruptions to vital underground utilities.
Marking underground utilities with paint, flags, surface markers and underground marking tapes allows all excavators to understand the types of facilities and the approximate locations and routes of buried lines.
Types of utility markers that are flagged:
White
Proposed Excavation
Pink
Temporary Survey Markings
Red
Electric Power Lines, Cables Conduit, Lightning Cables
Yellow
Gas, Oil, Steam
Orange
Communication, Alarm, Conduit
Blue
Potable Water
Purple
Reclaimed Water, Irrigation, Slurry Lines
Green
Sewer and Drain Lines
The following marking examples illustrate how an operator may choose to mark their subsurface installations:
Single Marking Facility
Two Phase Primary
Three Phase Primary
Fiber
High-Pressure Gas Main
Gas Main with Service T
Changes in direction and lateral connections are clearly indicated at the point where the change in direction or connection occurs; an arrow typically indicates the path of the facility.
Conduit
Used for any locatable facility being carried inside conduits or ducts. The marks indicating the outer extremities denote the actual located edges of the facilities represented.
No Conflict
When there is “No Conflict” with the excavation, operators of a single type of facility mark the area “NO” followed by the appropriate company identifier in the matching APWA color code for the facility.
