811 ticket tracking that lives on the job
The One Call ticket number, the markout date and an expiry warning sit on the job record itself. Not in a spreadsheet, not in a second app, and not in somebody's inbox.
You still place the notice with your state's One Call centre. TrackOver holds what comes back: ticket number, markout date, and a warning before it expires, attached to the job so the crew in the hole can see it. Notice periods and ticket lifespans are set state by state, so we track the dates you were given rather than guessing at a national rule.
The problem is not one ticket. It is four.
Anyone can remember a single markout. The trouble starts when a contractor has four digs open, each with its own ticket placed on a different day, each expiring on a different day, and the only record is a text message or a line on a whiteboard back at the yard.
What goes wrong is rarely dramatic. A crew rolls up to the third job of the week, the paint is faded, nobody is certain whether the ticket is still live, and the choice is either lose the day or dig and hope. Both of those are expensive, and only one of them is safe.
What TrackOver actually does
- The ticket number is a field on the job, so it travels with the schedule, the photos and the crew.
- The markout date is recorded against it.
- An expiry warning fires before the ticket runs out, rather than after somebody notices.
- It reads the same on the phone in the truck as it does in the office.
That is the whole feature, and the modesty is the point. The reason it works is not cleverness, it is that the ticket is in the same place as the job instead of in a system somebody has to remember to open. If you want the background on the notice itself, the what is 811 guide covers it, and markout paint colors covers what the paint on the ground means.
Common questions
It depends on your state, and that is the honest answer rather than a dodge. Every state runs its own One Call centre with its own rules, so both the notice you must give before digging and how long the markout stays valid are set locally. Some states measure validity in days, others in weeks, and several restart the clock if the marks are disturbed or the work stops. Check your own state's One Call centre for the numbers that bind you, and build the reminder around those rather than around a figure you read somewhere national.
You are excavating without a valid markout, which is the situation every damage-prevention rule exists to stop. Practically it means the marks on the ground may no longer reflect what is buried there, because paint fades, weather moves it and other crews work the same corridor. Legally it exposes you to whatever your state provides for excavating without notice, and it usually voids the protection the markout would have given you if you did hit something. The expensive part is rarely the fine.
The problem is not tracking one ticket, it is that a contractor with four open digs has four different clocks running and no natural place to see them together. In TrackOver the ticket number lives on the job record itself, with the markout date and an expiry warning, so the ticket is wherever the job is: on the schedule, on the phone in the truck, next to the photos. Nobody has to remember to open a second app, which is the failure mode a spreadsheet has.
No, and be careful with anything that implies otherwise. You still place the notice with your state's One Call centre, and they still notify the facility owners who send locators. What this does is stop the ticket getting lost after you place it: the number, the date and the expiry sit on the job so the crew standing in the hole can see them.
Yes, because it tracks the ticket you were issued rather than trying to model each state's rules. You enter the ticket number and the dates that state's centre gave you, and the job carries them. That is deliberate: a system that guessed at fifty different rule sets would be wrong somewhere, and being wrong about a markout is not the place to be approximately right.
Put one dig through it
Free plan, no card. Place your next ticket, put the number on the job, and see whether the crew stops asking where it is.