January 2025 News & Updates

🦺 News & Updates from Sunshine 811 – Announcing Your 2025 Liaisons + More

Happy 2025! We’re excited to announce something new for you! We’ve launched a brand-new bi-monthly newsletter just for our stakeholders on topics you’ve told us you want to know more about, as well as issues and processes we can help clarify for you. Our goal is to help you work through the 811 process more efficiently, to improve locate ticket practices and get sites prepped, marked and ready for digging.

Be sure to check out our new video – The Best of the Best Safe Digging Practices for 2025

Welcome to our first issue!

Announcing Your 2025 Sunshine 811 Liaisons

Sunshine 811 employs four education and damage prevention liaisons in Florida. Your liaison, specific to your geographic location, is available for everything from one-on-one damage prevention presentations and meetings to answering questions about the 811 process to troubleshooting issues. Get to know them ... and reach out!

Brad Martin

North Florida

(386) 575-2035

Brian Dean

West Florida

(386) 575-2042

John Segovia

South Florida

(386) 575-2058

Elliot Patterson

Central Florida

(386) 575-2057

Understanding positive response

4 Quick Tips

Member utility operators use positive response to communicate with excavators about whether a facility has been marked, cleared or left unmarked, along with the reason. Florida law requires excavators to verify the positive responses of all members listed on the locate ticket before beginning excavation, so understanding Positive Response is vital to the work you do as an excavator.

Four things to know about Positive Response

Excavators can access the Positive Responses through Exactix as an account holder; by using their ticket and phone numbers at my.sunshine811.com; or by calling 811 and selecting option 5.
Some responses may include instructions for the excavator that need to be completed before marking can occur. Checking early ensures you have time to follow those instructions or supply additional information to the locator before the locating process begins.
Compare responses to the dig site each day to confirm that marks remain accurate, and each utility's status hasn’t changed. Check out all the codes and their definitions here.
Contact the member utility operator if you notice any discrepancies, such as:
1. The Positive Response Code indicates "clear," but permanent facility markers are visible nearby.
2. Markings are in an area where digging is not planned.
3. A facility is coded as "marked," but no marks are present.

Tips to improve locate process

As we welcome 2025, we have five tips to help you get your locate tickets addressed quickly. These tips reflect the most significant issues we’ve observed that end up causing delays.

Confirm all information on your ticket. Double-check that the details of each ticket are correct before submitting.
Review your locate instructions. If you only have checkboxes in the Locate section when doing tickets online, and they don’t fully describe where you need marks, you need full-access ticket entry. Follow the instructions here: Full ITE Access — Sunshine 811. Use the remarks section for site access details only, not digging instructions.
Follow low impact marking guidelines. Provide contact information for someone on site. Premark the dig site to help locators quickly identify where marks are needed. Remember, a locate ticket’s life is 30 days (where you’ll be digging). If renewing a ticket, remove completed sections and, if marks are still visible, note "marks not needed" in the Remarks section. ** Do not renew if digging is complete, job is on hold or moved to a later date. **
Break large areas into smaller dig sites that you’ll work within 30 days to help members and locators respond more quickly and reduce the overload of tickets for inactive dig sites. As you finish one section, request a new ticket for the next.
For extended projects, coordinate with the facility owner and locator to agree on a marking schedule.

Announcements

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Register today!

Join Sunshine 811 at the CGA Conference for rich educational content, workshops and panel discussions. You'll gain new ideas and fresh perspectives to achieve 50-in-5 (reduce damages by 50% in 5 years).

Be the solution

The Damage Prevention Council of Florida (DPC) has grown to six regional DPCs. We're working through issues and gaining new perspectives. Meetings open to all stakeholders. Upcoming Meetings.

811 Essentials
Monthly Webinar

Join us on the second Thursday of each month for 811 Essentials. This is your once-a-month Sunshine 811 webinar that covers the prepping, digging and post excavations phase of a project.