utility line locator

field technician

locator

field supervisor

dispatcher

UtiliQuest, LLC

I got hired a year ago.  I was completely new to utility location.  The recruiter made a lot of promises.  He said they had excellent benefits.  He said there was going to be rapid career advancement.  He said I should probably receive a promotion within 6 months.  He said we were going to branch off into other utility related jobs that would mean new management jobs, etc.  He said that management was top notch.  And he said their would be plenty of overtime in the summer, and enough work to give us 40 hours a week in winter.

Almost none of this is true.  The insurance is sky high.  I had the most basic insurance, without vision or dental.  For me and my two daughters I was paying nearly $250 a week.  The insurance didn't cover much.  You have 10 days of PTO a year, but people have had to fight to use it.  They do let you take your work truck home, but you are not allowed to use it for personal use.  Yet on your W2 they list the personal use of truck as a benefit.  They receive a tax break, and you pay more on your taxes.  

There are no promotions.  People on my team have been elevated to "Lead."  That title comes with no extra pay, so not really a promotion.  One person has actually been promoted, after our 1 year anniversary.  The other utility related jobs never materialized.  We barely received any over time in the summer.  It was very uneven.  Some people got plenty.  Others got none.  It depends on your routed area.  

Production is a joke.  You are expected to finish 2 tickets per hour.  These tickets fall into two categories.  Single lots and project.  Single lots are one single property, usually a house.  These tickets take about 15 to 30 minutes to finish.  Its very easy to get your 2.0 production rate.  Project tickets are larger tickets.  Usually they want either 500 ft, 750 ft or 1500 ft of roadway marked,  These tickets can take upwards of three hours to finish.  Yet these two types count the same.  Some routed areas are almost 100% single lots, whereas others are mostly project.  All raises and promotions are based on production.  But if you are in a heavy project area, getting production is almost impossible.  At one point this summer I was overseeing about 10 different projects.  3 out every 4 tickets I got was a 1500 ft ticket.  Overtime had to be approved.  So I had to work three times harder than other guys to try to get close to 2.0.  I averaged a 1.4 production rate, which management said was bad.

This winter my hours were slashed.  Some weeks I worked as little as 8 hours all week.  Most weeks this winter I worked about 20 hours.  SInce I received very little overtime during summer, I had nothing to fall back on.  

Bottom line, this company will lead you to believe a lot of BS.  Expect good pay, lousy benefits and unstable working hours.

I enjoyed working with all managers and technicians.  Everybody was nice to me.  The type of work can get to be confusing at times.  Overall I thought everything is great except one thing.  I see this company is thriving with work load and well that's great but it might be too much.  Everybody looks busy and stressed out especially during the times of Spring Summer and Fall.  I think the biggest problem with this company is that they are trying to bite off more than they can chew when they just are not quite ready for the work load with the current available employees.  There is too much demand (work) with not enough supply (workers).  I think it is creating an even further hole when some people are quitting due to reasons that I guess have relations of being overly loaded with work. I see they have advertising with magnets on trucks.  I constantly saw new employees in training, but I guessing it might not be enough when I still saw a high turnover rate. If I could help out with any ideas to share maybe put up billboard signs on I 66 and I 95 commercials on T.V. or radio stations, raise the price for clients to pay for services.  Some days in the summer, I worked in the office and I spent the entire day helping in the dispatcher out asking customers for time extensions to help the technicians, and I am sure it helped but it's not lowering much in the overall demand load.

I saw the managers trying to give the employees the location where they wanted to work but I thought maybe this idea I had in mind could be beneficial, create an optional survey for all technicians that involve asking where they live, then where they want to work a) work in the same city b) a different specific location c) I don't care I like working in different areas everyday. Then map out everyones location and maybe give more preference to those technicians who have had more months/years of experience.

I trained in Savannah GA and the company provided a stipend of $35/daily and a hotel room for the 4 week training that was required. The training is the only good part of the job really, the rest was not.

Pros: Company vehicle, tools

Cons: 
-Vehicle has DriveCam. Records on a 10 second loop and if a wreck or accident happens it will take the 10 seconds before and record 10 seconds after the incident and upload to a server at night to be reviewed by a 3rd party and sent to your manager if they find you in the wrong. The DriveCam is sensitive and will go off if you hit a curb, railroad tracks, speed bumps, etc... So always be aware of what you are doing because you may end up in a training video where the class gets to watch you dig for gold. 

-Inadequate training. Once you are on your own you will realize that the training you received doesn't cover what is in the field and when you reach out for support you are not given any and sometimes may receive a sarcastic reply or treated as if you are unintelligent.

-Ticket quotas. They will tell you that there are none if you're new, this is false. You have to maintain a 3.5 ticket rate per hour. Which means at least 3 tickets need to be closed per hour and working on the next one or else you will be docked on your performance and have a warning form to complete which basically means you have to pick up your numbers or they will let you go. This is really not great because some tickets will have you working longer than expected, so you will try and do quantity instead of quality. This method fails miserably and is the reason the company is, if it hasn't already, losing its contract with windstream. 

Be wary going into this company, do your research and make an informed decision, not just one based off my review but others as well.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Having a company vehicle and not having to pay for gas. You’re not working side-by-side with other teammates. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?

Doing more work with less time
 Unrealistic expectations from  management
 Micromanagement slowing productivity
   New Policies that waste drive time.
    Management/supervisors ignores technicians field experience. 
No yearly reviews no incentive's . But this company expected the world from us.


What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The culture at UtiliQuest has recently become more micromanaged and productivity-driven, with policies that increased unnecessary drive time and workload. As an Experienced locators I feel my field knowledge and efficiency is overlooked, especially when required to physically visit every ticket regardless of familiarity with the area. This has  added stress and  longer hours.  There is no teamwork among field employees. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
A typical day at UtiliQuest involves managing a high volume of locate tickets across large coverage areas, spending long hours driving and walking outdoors in all weather conditions.  
You can only get so many damages a year. 
Daily emergency tickets and  3 hours flood you, communicating with contractors and homeowners can be exhausting, and balancing productivity expectations with accuracy under pressure.
Getting called by your supervisor and or a manager every couple hours to ask you why you haven’t got this done or why you haven’t got that done. Making sure you don’t run out of supplies and hopefully your computer doesn’t act up through out the day.

This job used to be fulfilling and rewarding. At the end of my time at Utiliquest, I would lay down at night and see the blinking red light of the drivecam wondering if the nightmare I had of rolling through a stop sign had set off the camera or not.. When I was able to get that out of my head, it was thinking about if I took a picture of what I had marked properly since there may be a damage and I know that the investigator is just looking to throw me under the bus. Marking out miles of lines without any help for over 10 hours every single day only to be asked to work the weekend on top of taking on-call got to be too much. Then when there was changes in management, you would hear tales of people, good, hard working people getting fired for the smallest reasons or in some cases, no reason. Policies seemed to change daily and there was hardly any incentive to excel. Constant threats and broken promises. After the company addressed some issues, new ones would arise. Even with excellent numbers and not doing a thing wrong, I found myself worried that I was going to get fired. There was supposed to be freedom here but it felt like I was being watched with drivecam, the tablet and even in person. It got to the point where I wanted to just drive off the side of a mountain and let them gps the remains. The insurance is so high, I had to take a second job just to offset the cost. The "good old boy" mentality of the upper management was pretty much run over anyone that stands in their way of doing things. Google what the president makes and then see how much an average tech makes and you can see the problem. If you want to be micromanaged, lied to and jerked around, this place is where to go. I left just in time!

Worked for utiliquest for many years. Health benefits are not super great, pretty expensive. Management was usually helpful with work loads when they got out of hand. As far as damages it always seemed like they wouldn’t even try to have your back and just bend over for the utility companies. If you do good work and are a quality employee you will get raises and promotions… but Utiliquest will always do the bare minimum and the raise will not be much. Took years to get to a decent wage and even then it still didn’t feel like my worth given that I was their most productive technician while also training new hires and running crews… the list goes on. It’s a good job to have, Utiliquest is an OK company to work for but they are definitely just a stepping stone to something greater if you can find it. They don't put in enough effort to keep their employees or keep them happy. Also never really felt like they care about employees, only care about production.  They will work you to death if they could 12 hours a day 7 days a week they don’t care about your life outside of work. My best advice if you work for them is. Do a good job put in the hours and learn how to locate so well that you are super productive to the point you’re not expendable and they can’t threaten you with termination or anything like that for not wanting to work weekends or more than 55 hours in a week. you’ll be a lot better off mentally, then you can leave on your own terms once you’re ready. 

The DriveCam is a nightmare, constantly having to worry about setting it off for taking a turn too hard or braking too hard and going to a “meeting”, having them tell you how to drive. 
Also, they don’t disclose it, but they can pull your DriveCam at any time and watch whatever you’re doing in your truck at any moment (audio AND video)Although they can’t use it against you unless it’s actaully set off. 
They recently introduced “Tech Tier” pay, meaning you get a grade or rating based on how many locates you complete per hour. 
But you are only able to meet those requirements based off what area you are in. If you are in an area where there is only 1 utility to locate and 30 minutes driving time in between tickets, it’s impossible to get more than 2 locates per hour meaning you won’t get anymore money unless you stay there long enough to get your annual raises. 
They introduced this as a way to improve turnover rate, but it is a very unfair system which favors those in areas where there are multiple utilities to locate. To be graded a “lead technician”(and make $30 an hour) you have to locate over 6 utilities per hour, and that’s just impossible in a lot of areas. A set up for failure. 
I would have to work here for about 14 years to make the same as someone else could make just by being in a different area. 
I am desperately trying to use my experience to get into another company where the payscale is more fair.

As an employee, what’s most concerning about the UtiliQuest handbook is the lack of clarity, consistency, and transparency in several key areas that directly affect job security, especially for field employees like me who drive company vehicles daily. There’s no dedicated policy explaining how to operate or manage a company-owned vehicle (COV), which puts drivers at risk of being disciplined for undefined or selectively enforced rules. The company claims to value safety but offers no clear procedures for vehicle incidents, GPS tracking, or personal use, leaving employees vulnerable. The handbook outlines a strict at-will policy, meaning you can be fired at any time without warning, and many policies—like those on IT use, attendance, drug testing, and remote work—are written in vague, overly broad terms that can be interpreted however management sees fit. There’s heavy emphasis on monitoring (devices, emails, possibly vehicles), limited clarity on what’s protected under whistleblower or retaliation policies, and inconsistent enforcement is a real fear due to management discretion being mentioned in multiple disciplinary sections. Ultimately, it feels like the company protects itself legally at every turn while giving employees minimal protections, which creates a work environment where you’re never quite sure what you can or can’t do without risking your job.

Free going atmosphere, a get up and self starter job. A very influential place of employment. My daily day would consist of: Routing tickets, pulling prints, concentrating on driving and safety, arriving early, assessing my work area and understanding what the ticket is calling for, consistently in touch with various contractors, locating the utilities and marking the underground utilities with water based paint and flags in every weather condition, taking pictures, E-Sketching, measuring for footage, billing the customer properly, and closing the ticket successfully. I've learned that this type of job can come with a lot of unpredictable changes such as Contractors digging to soon, Implement weather conditions, and uneven surfaces, other traffic, trouble locates patience is needed. The Management team at Utiliquest are very focused on its crews, it takes dedicated individuals to manage a team from afar. My co-workers here at Utiliquest are always willing to help so no one person ever feels alone while working in the field. The hardest part of my job would have to be not being able to see underground utilities trusting the equipment and my training keep me confident. The thing I enjoy most is this has become another tool in my wide range of experience to provide for my family.

Work was what you expect. If you are wanting to get overtime, you can have as much as you want within reason. Feels a bit of a bummer that there usually isn't enough people required to cover the designated area for the teams, but don't think that is really the company's fault as it pertains to retention. There's a lot of work to do because there isn't enough staff. You hire new people and a good portion of them feel overwhelmed so they leave which keeps the stress on people who do stick around waiting for more hands. Terrible cycle but can't exactly blame the company of it so much as the nature of the field. 

Your crew or direct supervisor are usually decent people as they go through the same stuff you do and will usually help you should you run into problems(if not, agree to meet up with you at a later point to help).  Just don't expect people above the supervisor(the ones inside the offices and not actually out in the field) to be pleasant. You won't talk with them much, but a good portion will treat you with extreme disdain like you hurt their family.

That aside,  you can approach your tasks in your own way for the most part. If you prefer to do things on your own and don't want a job that requires you to socialize with colleagues too much, then it's a pretty nice job. You will talk with people daily(like homeowners and contractors), but the conversations can be short, polite/professional and strictly about the scope of your work.

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Utility line locator 1312 salaries reported	$22.45 per hour
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Field supervisor 7 salaries reported	$67,857 per year
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