Insights

The Locate Call, and Why It Shapes the Schedule

Every concrete job starts with digging, so every concrete job starts with finding out what is already down there. It is the step that decides your start date, and the one most likely to be misunderstood as a formality.

Updated October 2026 · Pleasant Prairie Concrete

People think of a driveway as concrete work. Most of the first day is excavation, and excavation on a residential property happens above a surprising quantity of buried infrastructure: electricity, gas, water, telecoms, and whatever previous owners installed without telling anybody. Establishing where that is before a tool goes in the ground is not optional, and it is the item that most often determines when your job can actually start.

What the process is

Wisconsin runs a one-call system through Diggers Hotline. A single request goes to the member utilities with infrastructure in the area, and each sends somebody to mark their own lines on the ground with paint or flags.

Colours are standardised nationally, so the marks mean the same thing everywhere. What they are telling you is the approximate horizontal position of something buried. They are not telling you how deep it is, and depth is frequently not what anybody expects, particularly where ground levels have been altered since installation.

Why it sets your start date

The request has a required notice period attached, set in law. We are deliberately not printing that figure here: it is a legal requirement, the authoritative source is Diggers Hotline, and a number repeated wrongly on a contractor's website is worse than no number at all.

What matters for planning is the shape rather than the value. The locate is not something that happens on the morning of the job. It sits between agreeing a date and breaking ground, and it is a real interval that has to be in the schedule.

Which has a practical consequence worth knowing: a contractor who can start tomorrow either made the request before you agreed, or is not intending to make one. The first is possible and the second is a problem, and it is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask about directly.

The gap the system does not cover

This is the part worth reading twice, because it is where homeowners get caught.

A one-call service covers the utilities its member companies own. It does not generally cover privately installed lines on your own property. That means an irrigation system, a supply to a shed or garage, a gas line run out to a grill or fire pit, low-voltage garden lighting, a septic component, or anything a previous owner put in themselves.

Nobody is coming to mark those. If you know about one, tell whoever is quoting, and if you half-remember something being installed, say that too. A vague recollection of a cable somewhere along that side of the house is far more useful than silence.

It is also a good reason to keep a note of anything you install yourself, because in fifteen years neither you nor the next owner will remember where it runs.

What marks do and do not permit

The marks give you horizontal position and nothing else. Depth is unknown, and ground levels change over decades in ways that move things closer to the surface than the original installation intended.

Near a marked line, machine excavation gives way to hand digging and care. That takes longer, it is part of a competent quote, and it is the correct response rather than an inconvenience.

Marks also expire. Paint weathers and a defined validity period applies, so a job delayed by a month may need a fresh request. Digging against faded marks from weeks ago is precisely the shortcut that ends badly, and it is worth confirming rather than assuming when a start date slips.

Why this matters more on a replacement

A first-time driveway goes into ground nobody has touched recently. A replacement goes into ground that has been dug before, and that difference matters.

Services installed at the same time as the original surface may sit at depths that made sense then and do not now, particularly where levels have been altered since. Older work was not always recorded. And a previous contractor may have routed something to suit their day rather than to suit the next person.

So the locate is not a formality on a job where concrete is coming out. It is the step that tells a crew where to be careful while breaking up a surface that may be sitting directly on top of something, and it is one of the reasons demolition on a replacement is quoted more cautiously than people expect.

What this means for your project

Expect it in the timeline. Ask whether the locate has been requested when a date is being discussed, because the answer tells you whether the date is real.

Volunteer what you know about anything private on the property, before the visit rather than during the dig. And do not be surprised if the marks change the design: occasionally something turns up exactly where the new edge was going, and moving a line on paper is trivial compared with moving a utility.

Where the work reaches the public road there is a separate permitted process with its own lead time, set out in the Pleasant Prairie approach rules. Between the two, the gap between agreeing a job here and starting it is longer than most people assume, which is the best argument for having the conversation early.

The work itself is on concrete driveway, and what it costs, with assumptions stated, is in what a driveway costs here.