Welcome to Julie's Toolbox Talks podcast, your go-to resource for safe digging and protecting Illinois's underground infrastructure. Each episode, we'll share practical tips, real stories, and expert insights to help you dig smart, stay safe, and keep your projects on solid ground. Brought to you by Julie Illinois Facility Notification Center. Hello and welcome to Julie's Toolbox Talks podcast brought to you by Julie Illinois Facility Notification Center.

I'm your host Jill Sailer. Thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, we're talking about empowering professionals and how Julie's remote ticket entry program helps contractors and excavators streamline the locate request process, save time, improve accuracy, and all while staying compliant with safe digging laws.

But before we dig in, like to say hello to my co-host, Brian MacKenzie, who's been with Julie since 2012. Brian, how you doing today?

I'm good. How about you? Good to see you again.

Yeah, nice to see you. Well, Brian, to help us better understand how RTE works and how it benefits the people who rely on it everyday. We're joined by Paula Browning, Julie's member and remote services manager. Hey Paula. So, Paula has been with Julie since 1999. Beginning her career as a call center agent, she advanced through several positions, including call center chief, quality auditor, and QA trainer for remote ticket entry, all before stepping into her current leadership role. So, with more than 25 years of experience, Paula combines deep operational expertise with a strong commitment to service, helping both Julie's members and excavators work together to protect underground infrastructure and keep communities safe. Welcome, Paula.

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

25 years. That's awesome.

Yeah, it's been it's been a hot minute, I'll tell you that. So, yes, I've enjoyed a lot. So, we've been seeing a lot come and go. So yeah, I'm excited to share what I know with everybody.

Excellent. Brian, you ready to get started?

Let's get started. Paula, here. Here we go with another training. I know you trained thousands of people on this remote ticket entry over the system. She does a great job for us. So, I'm excited to ask you some of these questions today.

Cool. So, I'm excited to share what I know. All right.

So, for those that may not be familiar with remote ticket entry, how hard is it to sign up? How hard is it to become a member? Tell us more about remote ticket entry.

All right, so remote ticket entry. The whole purpose of designing this program is to make it easier for the excavators to be able to input information into our uh remote ticket entry program. Um very similar to what the uh call center agents currently use if they were to phone one in. It's the same question formats and everything. It's just the excavator is going to have control of it themselves. uh they have um they'll be able to access maps and all that uh that they talk with the operators about training simple easy peasy go on our website you can log in we'll ask you to register for a webinar training um training's about 90 minutes um try to keep them shorter if I can um based on questions um we ask you to fill in all the information based on your company we need your company name your name email address all that information, we'll send you a link for um a Zoom meeting and right through there, we'll go ahead and get you trained. And once the training is over, my team creates user accounts, I email them to you, and you're ready to rock and roll.

Fantastic.

Pardon my lack of knowledge in this area, but um Brian and Paul, do you when you're submitting an RTE, can can you do that like on a laptop, a desktop, or a phone?

Excellent question. Yes. So, the laptop um desktop um they work pretty good on an iPad and a tablet. Smartphones probably not so much because it's a larger program. So, you don't you're not really going to be able to see. It's not as user friendly there, but it will work on an iPad and tablet. So you do have to have internet access. It's not anything that needs to be downloaded or anything like that, but as long as you have web access, you can go ahead and uh enter in tickets.

Thanks.

Fantastic. I mean, so what are some of the advantages of using remote ticket entry versus calling in to the call center as an example?

Actually, the biggest thing for me is it's the excavator. You guys know they know their job sites. So, they can enter in um specifically the work type that they're doing. Um provide those specific directions for the locators to follow for um where their work is going to take place.

And the biggest advantage I think is um you have access to the Julie maps. So you can actually we you'll hear me talk about polygons a lot when we're going through our training. The point of the polygon is to identify the members that are notified on the request. So you are actually viewing the map. you're creating a polygon in our system to identify where you're working, but in the underlying layers, identifying the members that are being affected by your excavation. So, it gives you a little bit more control. You can increase the size of polygons, decrease the size of polygons depending on where the work's taking place. So you're more in control of what's actually being submitted to the member companies.

Makes sense. So, how this definitely could help improve safety and efficiency for the for the professional on the other end using the system.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, going back to you're in control of what's being submitted on the tickets and you can add those extra notes if you know that it potentially is in a  you know, a busy area or something like that. You can make those additional notes on the tickets. Making the locators that are coming to that job site aware of maybe any hazards that are present or if it's a busy intersection, things of that type. Again, that's as a person safety, but you're also in more control of um where your work's going to take place. You're, like I said, you're applying that polygon to identify the appropriate members as well.

And we had a chance Paula in another podcast we had a chance to talk to a locator and Brian's obviously a former locator too. And you know one of the biggest things that both of them taught me is like how important it is like the more information the more you can communicate. So having that ability to enter all of that into the RTE is super important like it less is not better in this case. More information is better. You are 100% correct Jill. Yes. So there's we give like three additional fields. So, we have a section on there that you can provide those additional driving directions or identifying buildings, hospitals, um business names, making the excavation site identifiable to the locators. Then you've got the portion that tells the locators where you're actually working. That's a whole another section where you enter as much detail as possible. Then, if we've missed something, we give you an additional area that you can add more information if it's necessary as well. So yes, less is not always good. So more information is really good.

Yeah, it's I like to when I train and when we talk about this section is like just more information the better because again more information is going to equal a better locate. if they've got to hunt and peck and look and search and find. But if you're able to pre-mark or able to and my next question or my next topic we're going to talk about here with Paulie is all the changes that we've seen throughout Julie with the law this year with additions to remote ticket entry with you being able to upload maps with the addition of design stage coming on and the what you guys have already done with the joint meet process where you can do online. So what would you say? How do you see remote ticket itchy train changing and some of these tools that we've gotten out now that are that maybe excavators don't know about that they can use?

Yeah, very good question. So yeah, so there are some things I haven't even mentioned yet that have already been implemented this year. So one of the biggest ones which I think is fantastic are attachments. So, if you as an excavator are have a maybe a complex area, not even a complex area, it's just going to be clearer for you to attach a map or an image or something like that. I've seen even photographs. People have taken photographs and then they've drawn on the photographs from their computers, uploaded them to their tickets. Now, you've got a description on the ticket. You've got the driving directions, and everything listed there. In addition to that, now you've got an image or a map or something that the you as the locator the locator can reference and get hopefully a little bit clearer idea of what is um what's to expect before they even go out to the site. So that's beneficial. Um Brian talked about joint meets. That's something new that got implemented this year, too. Um joint meets has become part of the law. So now we've made it a little bit easier for remote ticket entry users to be able to submit them online. So you can complete your joint meet in the field. You're going to fill out a joint meet sheet. We've given the remote ticket entry users that have that capability um the uh ability to retransmit a ticket and upload that meet sheet to the ticket that's already been um submitted for the joint meet itself. So again, another again what Joe mentioned earlier about keeping that communication more is better. So this is another addition that members will be able to see that meet sheet themselves. Um planning and design that's coming up. So um probably we're starting before the end of the year. Planning and designs is going to be an option for remote ticket entry users as well. Um let me back up here a second too. The joint meet trainings, you do need an additional training for that. It's probably maybe 30 to 40 minutes long because you already need to be an existing remote ticket entry train uh user in order to use that. I call it an enhancement to your existing account. Um but you can take that additional training. Planning and design starting from scratch because a lot of times with planning and design those are engineers that are going to be doing that work. Um sure they're similar they're familiar with how polygons and that work but we do um another full-blown training just for the planning and design. Like I said, that'll be starting a little bit later this year, so in 2025.

This remote ticket entry with the ability to upload maps is just another way for you to be able to speak to the locators on site. And again, that I constantly hearing, you know, locators are late all the time. And then I kind of look at the ticket extents and it's entire property. It's locate both sides of the road for 28 miles going south. you know, the we we've changed the law and we've given these tools to allow the professional excavator to be quicker and faster the way that they enter tickets with more information for a better locate. Again, I think that's going to be our tagline, Jill, is uh I don't know. We need to come up with something communication is better or something like that, but all of our all of our guests have been going pointing to the same direction of communication is key. So with that being said, Paula, can you give us some examples or some common miscommunications about remote ticket entry? Some of the common misconceptions out there?

I would say about the biggest thing is I mean the excavators, they're going to spend some time with me in that initial training. You get a 90-minute training. I that's your opportunity as an excavator. Ask those questions um on how to submit tickets and that type thing. One of the misconceptions is that using remote ticket entry is that um my staff or someone at Julie looks at every single ticket that gets submitted.

That is not true. Um we do spot check some of the tickets and we will reach out to them to find out if um maybe if something's uh if a member's been missed or the marking instructions aren't as clear as they should be.

But we will not check 100% of the tickets once the training is completed. you guys are responsible for submitting good tickets. So like I said, we will spot check them on occasion and if we do find something  we'll reach out and you know get it corrected as quickly as possible.

So I think some of the common misconceptions you may agree or disagree is that when people go through your trainings and you do give them different examples of how this how the system works that they can see that once that they've used it they're like wow you know you talk to them six months eight months down the road they're like this is the greatest thing ever. So, I think that's one of the misconceptions that people maybe think it's hard and it's not because of the way that you do the trainings and that you're able to help people.

That's very good point. Yeah, because I mean when you first open up the program, it could be a little intimidating. There's a bunch of different tools on there and a bunch of different fields that if you've never worked with anything like that, of course, that can be very intimidating. But I promise we do not we do not send you off to the wolves and set free. We we're here for support. where I provide you with four people that are available at your as you as you need them. Um, also if you if they're unavailable, say it's on off hours or something like that, call center agents. Again, I way back at the beginning of our um meeting here today, I talked about how the same information that the call centers use is what's available to remote ticket entry users. So, they're familiar with what they're what you're looking at as well. So, um, the excavators, if they're they're uncertain on something, absolutely. We we're there for support. Um, we're not just going to set you free and let you do what you need to do. We're here to help you out.

That's for all things we do here, Julie, ladies and gentlemen, our visitors. We just we do not let anybody uh just throw you to the walls out there. We are here for constant training as our webinar juliebeforeyoudig.com. There's plethora of information on there for you as well as that. But uh I'm glad you're starting to get some of these misconceptions out there because again that's this is very nice program. It may not be for everybody, right? I mean it's we can do Paula. You can do what you can do simple tickets all the way up to very complex tickets if you need to.

Absolutely. Yeah. Single site addresses. I mean you can work with GPS coordinates. You can do linear jobs. you can use. There's tons of different map views, too. Um, you know, you can look at an aerial image if that's beneficial to you. There's some other ones that are built in that it just gives you um, you know, different views that that will help process the requests.

Plenty of tools. Um, I really honestly believe that every user that listens to us today, you will find value in this at some point. Some key thing going on there. there there's a lot of information out here for you to use to if you've ever wanted to become your own Julie operator, now is your chance because we do give you the exact same tools that our operators have. So, with that, let's uh one more question, Paula, and uh I always like to end these on a feel-good story. So, can you share a real-world example where remote ticket entry made a process faster for somebody or more accurate?

I think about my favorite one. This is what I just got done talking about this actually. Good segue. So, we were just talking about the different map views. Um, so there we've got I think there's different eight different map views and there was one I was working with someone that they were um working at a forest preserve. So, you turn on an aerial image of a forest preserve. What are you going to see? Tops of all the trees, right? You're not going to be able to see anything other than that. So, we were he was working uh along the paths that were in this forest preserve area. And again, one of the tools that we have is additional map view. And I think it was USGS um topo I think is what it was, which gave you all the paths underneath the trees. So, we spent some time figured out exactly where he was working. Um and it took a little bit of work to get them done, but it I felt like we submitted an accurate ticket because he was able to see some underlying things um to be able to apply an accurate polygon. Um that way we knew that the appropriate members were notified on the request, um was able to add some driving directions in there because now he's got an image that he can look at in the Julie maps and provide some more accurate uh footage and directions and that type thing. Um so it just made the whole process I believe a lot better. Um I'm sure the me the locators in the field appreciated that too because now that they had a little bit more accurate information to uh review as well.

100%. You talked about driving directions and that's something that people take for granted. The user knows where they're digging. The user knows where they're excavating and how to get there. The locator may not. So, the more information like you say you're working on these paths and everything that that is so key is so crucial to get the best information, you know, and just instead of saying entire property because that is such a waste of resources and time. I wish everybody understood that that every time they call an entire property and they're not digging on entire property, they're actually hurting themselves because now we're wasting time and energy where we shouldn't be. So that's why we got you, Paula, to train them and educate them on how to upload those maps, how to enter them online, and narrow those job sites down.

Yep, for sure. For sure.

Well, Paula, thanks so much for sharing your insights and experience today. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you, Jill.

I'm glad I was here. Excellent. Um, Brian, always a pleasure talking to you. Appreciate you as well.

Thank you.

And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in to Julie's Toolbox Talks podcast. And if you'd like to learn more about RTE or Julie membership resources, just visit Julie before you dig.com. I'm Jill Sailer reminding you that safe digging starts before the shovel hits the ground. So always contact Julie before you dig.