Rich Maxwell recently asked contractors, "What are two things you hope your HDD crews do on every bore to prevent hitting other utilities in the ground?"

While he's not an economist nor a historian, columnist Rich Maxwell explains that the current decline in directional drilling jobs has the obvious signs of a real recession.

Rich Maxwell mentions some things to do that make HDD more successful when directionally drilling in sand.

Rich Maxwell warns that if you think "enlarging the hole" is all that back reaming is about, you are missing several important functions of back reaming.

With HDD becoming a mature methodology, various groups from many origins have come to similar conclusions -- that some form of industry-wide standard guidelines would mitigate HDD damages and accidents, according to Rich Maxwell.

Columnist Rich Maxwell says that "to the best of my knowledge" the HDD business has been around for about the same length of time as The Driller -- 20 years.

In the facility locating industry there is testing of real-time gathering of underground infrastructure location information (GPS) and the drill path.

There has been extensive discussion regarding having drillers qualified or certified before they could work on a project. Find out what the industry has done in this situation.

One of the main features that caught my eye us the Web-based services of keeping and managing projects, free.

There is no guarantee with HDD, but the quicker inadvertent returns can be detected, the better.