STILL ON PAPER
Many locate crews in North America still document with paint, flags, a phone photo and a paper ticket. It isn't because they're behind. It's because it works. It costs nothing, needs no training, and for many companies it has never once let them down.
That last part is the trouble. "It's never failed" doesn't mean it works. It means nobody has asked yet.
What paper actually gives you
A ticket number showing the locate was requested and closed. A sketch showing roughly where the line runs. A photo of marks that will be gone in a few weeks. The locator's memory of the depth reading.
That's enough to answer was the locate done?
It isn't enough to answer was the line where the marks said? After a strike, that's the only question anyone asks.
Asserted, not proven
A closed ticket is the locator saying the job was done right. We believe them. Most of the time they're right.
But it's an assertion. There's nothing in it a third party can check. And because every paper record looks equally complete, nobody can see which locates were thin and which were solid. The gaps are invisible.
A structured record is different. Every point has a position, a depth, the method used to find it, the locator who found it, and a timestamp. Anyone can open it later and check.
What changes when a claim lands
Right now, defending a locate is a conversation. Your locator says he marked it. The excavator says the marks weren't there. Right now it comes down to two accounts.
With a structured record, it's a different conversation. For example: the gas main was found at 36 inches (91 cm), at these coordinates, by direct connect, at 12:47 on March 14, by this locator, with the GPS reporting its accuracy at the moment of capture.
One of those is a memory. The other is a measurement.
Why a phone photo isn't enough
Tolerance zones are set by state law, commonly 18 inches (46 cm) either side of the mark and wider in some states (PHMSA state law summaries). GPS.gov puts a phone's GPS at about 16 feet (4.9 m) under open sky, and it's worse under trees (GPS.gov).
So a geotagged photo doesn't tell you where the line is. It tells you roughly which yard you were standing in.
An RTK receiver on a pole gets that error down to something the manufacturer specifies at about half an inch to an inch and a quarter (1 to 3 cm). Pair it with the locator and every point on the ticket carries a position you could stand on again next year.
The question is coming. You can watch it arrive.
This isn't a forecast. It's already on the public record.
April 2026: PHMSA's advisory bulletin on excavation damage, ADB-2026-05, asks pipeline operators to "fully integrate" the Common Ground Alliance Best Practices into their procedures, focusing on Practice 4-11, Accuracy of Locating, and to audit locator performance. It isn't a new rule. It's a clear signal of where the rules go next.
In Congress (as of September 2026): the Senate passed S. 2975, the PIPELINE Safety Act of 2025, in April 2026. Section 211 lists one-call practices it wants state programs to adopt, including requiring white-lining, requiring a positive response before excavation begins, and "requiring that newly installed underground facilities be locatable with commercially available technology". In the House, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's H.R. 5301, the PIPES Act of 2025, carries similar provisions, including white lining or electronic white lining and encouraging GIS and other commercially available locating technology. Neither is law yet.
At state level already: Colorado has required new underground facilities to be electronically locatable when installed since 1 January 2020 (SB 18-167). In Ohio, the Underground Technical Committee reviews every damage inquiry and can recommend fines of up to $2,500 for a first violation (ORC 4913.15, 4913.151). In Texas, pipeline operators must report excavation damage to the Railroad Commission (16 TAC §18.11).
When the question reaches you, it won't arrive as a technology decision. It'll arrive as a condition of work.
The companies that move first do it on their own schedule, on one truck, in a slow week. The ones that wait do it against a deadline, across every crew, in the middle of the season.
What it actually costs to switch
This is the part vendors skip.
Your hardware stays. TerraFlow reads the locators and GPS receivers your crews already carry: Radiodetection, Vivax-Metrotech and Rycom locators, and Trimble, Eos, Emlid, Juniper and Bad Elf receivers. There's nothing to buy.
Your workflow stays. We set up your asset types, your attributes and your sketch conventions. Locators keep working the way they work. Tickets keep coming in the way they come in now.
Training takes about an hour. The help centre has all of it written down: your first locate start to finish, setup for every supported device, and what happens to the data afterwards. Read it before you talk to us if you like.
You start with one crew. Not a rollout. One truck, one month.
Who's already off paper
Premier Locates uses TerraFlow to map locates straight to CAD.
"TerraFlow is at the leading edge of the industry change. They're easy to work with, receptive to how and why you're using the software, and the ability to customize is impressive." Peter Tatham, Premier Locates
PUC Services in Sault Ste. Marie deployed TerraFlow to connect its crews' RTK receivers to ArcGIS Online. Esri Canada reports PUC's positioning error fell from 10 to 16 feet (3 to 5 m) to about an inch (2.54 cm) (Esri Canada, March 2026).