July 21, 2025 • 11 mins
Roger Lipscomb has led OHIO811, Ohio’s “Call Before You Dig” Notification Center, as President and Executive Director since 2006. With over 30 years of experience in the utility infrastructure and excavation sectors, Roger’s steadfast commitment to public safety through education and collaboration has made Ohio a national leader in damage prevention. His expertise led to the formation of the Ohio Underground Damage Prevention Coalition (OUDPC), a multistakeholder organization dedicated to advancing excavation safety statutes within the Ohio Revised Code (ORC). Additionally, Roger has forged strong partnerships with state and federal agencies, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Ohio Homeland Security, and the Ohio Public Private Partnership (OP3), strengthening the resilience of Ohio’s critical energy, communications, water, and wastewater infrastructure.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is iHeartRadio's CEOs you should know. Today we're talking
with Roger Lipscomb, who is the CEO of Ohio eight
one to one. Some of you may know Ohio eight
one to one as the call before you Dig company.
But Roger, you were mentioning to me earlier, you do
more than that.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Right we do. Ohio eight one one has been in place.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Our legal name is Ohio Utilities Protection Service, and we've
been in place since nineteen seventy two. Okay, so for
fifty three years we've been serving the citizens of Ohio
as the notification before you dig, Call before you dig.
These days, there's a number of ways to reach us,
but we do more than that. We do a lot
of public education and outreach. We do trade shows, We
(00:43):
work the zoos, We work with trade schools and colleges.
We work with the elementary kids, helping them understand the
importance the call before you dig and protecting the underground
utilities that are under our feet every day.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So I do think everybody understands why you should call
before you dig, right, but maybe you should explain to
people that haven't really figured it out yet, why should
you call? What could happen what's the worst that could happen.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Well, there's all kinds of potential danger in excavating without
letting someone know you're planning to, right, and a lot
of times homeowners are the ones who don't typically think
about the importance of this. You're going to put a
mailbox in by law, you're required to notify eight one
to one. You're required to call and let somebody know.
And the reason for this is the last thing you
(01:30):
want to do is put a posthole digger.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
In the ground and hit a gas line. Right.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
You don't want to hurt yourself, you don't want to
hurt those around you. So to keep your family safe,
to keep your community safe, your neighborhood's safe, it's important
to let someone know that you're planning to excavate, even
if it's just putting a tree in your yard.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I would I will tell you that I wouldn't have
thought a mailbox, right. I would have thought obviously a
fence or something larger scale like that, a deck or.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
A swimming pool.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
A lot of and folks homeowners in general, will think
about that for those bigger projects, but even those little projects,
especially with a mailbox at the edge of the road.
You're in the right away there. There's a lot of
utilities that are buried there. And now in today's world,
we have fiber optics buried there. We have gas lines
and water lines and electric lines and all kinds of
(02:17):
utilities are buried in that right away next to the street.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Boy, if you're a homeowner and you're thinking about even
a small project like a mailbox or a birdhouse, you
might want to think about this, Ohio eight one one.
The reason to call before you dig, even not to
just aggravate your neighbors and knock out the internet, right,
because that with people working from home, you could really
hurt someone's business.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Right, You can hurt someone's business. And more importantly, you
don't want to be the person who takes out the
neighborhood on football Sunday.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
You don't want to be that guy.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
So even if we're not, if you're selfish enough to
call to not call before you dig, you don't want
to be that guy that's publicly shamed across the city.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
And it's really about keeping folks safe. It's about keeping
the workers out there safe, whether they're working in the
roadway or they're working on private property. It's about keeping
the community safe and ultimately, you know, damage prevention right
that safety is a shared responsibility that we all have.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
So we're talking with Roger Lipscomb, who's the CEO of
Ohio eight one to one on the call before you
dig the Ohio Utilities Protection Service. You know, you mentioned
people who may or may not think about this service.
Do you have any idea how many people actually do
call or don't call? I mean, is there data on that?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Actually, it's interesting because we do keep data on Typically.
For instance, last year, we took in one point five
million incoming requests for somebody saying I'm planning today. For
each one of those requests, we notify an average of
seven utilities. So we sent out almost eleven million notices
last year in the state of Ohio letting people know.
(03:54):
And that's eleven million times that somebody could have dug
into a buried utility and hurt themselves or someone around them.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
So you are really saving lives, impacting business commerce in
a good way.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
It's very very important. I mean, anytime there's a disruption
or a damage to that underground infrastructure, obviously there's costs
associated with that, but for us being a damaged prevention organization.
First and foremost, it's about the public safety. If you
ask me who is our largest stakeholder, it's the eleven
plus million citizens of Ohio. And that's who I work for.
(04:24):
That's who I serve. Even though we're not a government
agency or a privately held corporation. Two of the primary
functions that we perform are public facing and public safety functions, right,
making sure that the neighborhoods and communities are safe.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Well, and you mentioned Roger, eleven million notices went out.
That's potentially eleven million.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Dare I say live saved or at the very least
disruptions prevented? Do you think that when you're looking at
this situation here, people who may or may not think
it's difficult. I've used eight one to one. It's only
a few days and it costs nothing. Sure, That's where
I think people need to really understand. Making a called
Ohio eight one one doesn't delay your project by more
(05:06):
than a day or two.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
It actually doesn't delay it at all.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Right, So if you think about it, you have to
wait forty eight hours in the state of Ohio.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
So if you call, if.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
You're planning to work on Saturday, make sure that you're
calling in on Wednesday. If you've got a planned day
where you want to start your excavation, just plan in
advance that forty eight hours before that, you're going to
notify our service and we're going to let the utilities
know that you're planning to excavate so that they can
send someone out there to put the paint and the flags.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
On the ground.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Yeah, and there's a very important color code there to
understand what those painting flags mean. The American APWA established
a color code nationally a long time ago. So yellow
represents gas, orange represents communications fiber cable TV, red is electric.
You see red, you know there's an electric line there.
(05:58):
Blue is water, green as so or white is a
proposed excavation. Pink is survey. So these are all very
important colors in the color code to know so that
you understand what utilities are beneath your feet once they're marked,
after you call in.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
And after you know two hundred years of the country
at all, the state of Ohio, there's millions of miles
of everything buried.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Under there, right, and as you think about as cities
have grown, as we've expanded into the rural areas. Obviously
the congestion in the public right of ways has increased substantially.
You have companies that have been here and gone, and
companies that have been bought and sold, systems that have
been expanded and grown, systems that have been aged and replaced,
(06:44):
and so there is a lot of a lot of
uninfrastructure complication. Go to the busiest intersection where there's utility
poles and look at everything that's attached to those utility poles.
It's now flip it And that's what the underground infrastructure
looks like.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
It's like an ice. You don't see it right.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Right, And unfortunately that's the problem. Sometimes folks forget it's there,
uh huh, and they lose track of it being there.
And this is where safety issues can come into play.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well, so yeah, I mean, forget the fact that it's
safe and very much could save lives if you call
eight one one, including your own. But it's certainly you
don't want to disrupt utilities or power or cable or
internet or god forbid gas in the winter. Right, So
you know, we're talking with Roger Lipscombe, CEO of Ohigwaight
one to one the call before you dig, folks. If
(07:33):
you haven't decided to call before you dig now, I
don't know what else we can do to convince you. Roger,
how did you come into this organization? One of the
things we like to talk about in CEOs you should
know is how you, as a CEO became part of
this organization.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
I've been blessed in the fact that from the time
I left Youngstown State University and began my working career,
I began repairing electronics back in the day. These VCR
stereos appliance is that kind of thing. About that time
home computing started and home computers started coming into play
and folks started getting them. I learned how to network
(08:07):
those computers, and that led to me working for an
organization to put the first computer networks in K twelve
education in the state of Ohio.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Interesting, so, back.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
In those days, if you grew up on a computer
in a school in Ohio, it was our engineers, our
system that put that in place. As the phone lines
between the schools, the communications lines between the schools became
too slow for the amount of data and processing, we
began to build fiber networks area and underground between those schools,
(08:39):
and that led to me working for a construction company, engineering,
designing and building fiber networks, broader fiber networks. When the
telecom bubble everyone went bankrupt here a number.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Of years ago.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
That put me into the world where I began to identify,
locate the underground utilities so my teams would go out.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I built a.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Division into the Midwest where we would go out and
we would respond to those excavation requests, put the paint
and the flags on the ground so that the utilities
were identified. Eventually that led to the opportunity with Ohiowai one.
Twenty years ago. I became its executive director. I'm the
longest sitting executive director president executive director for ohioan one.
(09:21):
And that's kind of brought when we brought me to here.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, well, listen, it's great work you're doing, you and
the team at the Ohio Utilities Protection Service. I mean, look,
at the end of the day, you can wake up
every morning knowing that you're probably saving lives, which is
really exciting. And I guess the message one more time
you call before you install any sort of fence, any
sort of mailbox.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
If you're disturbing the earth, if you're excavating, if you're
going to be planning trees, if you're going to be
putting in posts, if you're going to be putting in mailboxes.
As homeowners and as professional excavators, if you're hiring a
professional excavator to do this work for you, they need
you need to know that it's their responsibility to make
sure they're calling. So as a homeowner, an informed homeowner,
(10:09):
you want to make sure that if you're hiring a contractor,
that you're asking that contractor did you make your one
call notice, did you call in and get these utilities identified?
And that's an important responsibility homeowners have as well, whether
they're doing the work themselves or they're hiring it out,
it's important that they're aware of the importance of protecting
those underground utility facilities.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So call before you dig. It's not only free, it's
not only responsible citizens ry, it's the law.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
It is it is you're required under the law, and equally,
the utilities are required to make sure that they're coming
there and putting that mark on the ground so that
you can be safe.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Right, So it's a really easy, seamless transition. Before you call,
before you dig a call before you dig, that's the part.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, you contact us too.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I mean you can dilate one one, or you can
log in and put your information in remotely through one
of our remote ticket entry systems and you can find
that at Ohio eight one one dot org.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
All right, so for those of us who are adverse
to making a phone call Ohio eight one one dot org.
Roger Lipscombe, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Great, thank you and.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
This has been iHeartRadio CEOs. You should know today's show
is produced by Bob COATESID. I'm Keith Hotchkiss.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
We'll see you next time.
This is iHeartRadio's CEOs you should know. Today we're talking
with Roger Lipscomb, who is the CEO of Ohio eight
one to one. Some of you may know Ohio eight
one to one as the call before you Dig company.
But Roger, you were mentioning to me earlier, you do
more than that.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Right we do. Ohio eight one one has been in place.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Our legal name is Ohio Utilities Protection Service, and we've
been in place since nineteen seventy two. Okay, so for
fifty three years we've been serving the citizens of Ohio
as the notification before you dig, Call before you dig.
These days, there's a number of ways to reach us,
but we do more than that. We do a lot
of public education and outreach. We do trade shows, We
(00:43):
work the zoos, We work with trade schools and colleges.
We work with the elementary kids, helping them understand the
importance the call before you dig and protecting the underground
utilities that are under our feet every day.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So I do think everybody understands why you should call
before you dig, right, but maybe you should explain to
people that haven't really figured it out yet, why should
you call? What could happen what's the worst that could happen.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Well, there's all kinds of potential danger in excavating without
letting someone know you're planning to, right, and a lot
of times homeowners are the ones who don't typically think
about the importance of this. You're going to put a
mailbox in by law, you're required to notify eight one
to one. You're required to call and let somebody know.
And the reason for this is the last thing you
(01:30):
want to do is put a posthole digger.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
In the ground and hit a gas line. Right.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
You don't want to hurt yourself, you don't want to
hurt those around you. So to keep your family safe,
to keep your community safe, your neighborhood's safe, it's important
to let someone know that you're planning to excavate, even
if it's just putting a tree in your yard.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I would I will tell you that I wouldn't have
thought a mailbox, right. I would have thought obviously a
fence or something larger scale like that, a deck or.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
A swimming pool.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
A lot of and folks homeowners in general, will think
about that for those bigger projects, but even those little projects,
especially with a mailbox at the edge of the road.
You're in the right away there. There's a lot of
utilities that are buried there. And now in today's world,
we have fiber optics buried there. We have gas lines
and water lines and electric lines and all kinds of
(02:17):
utilities are buried in that right away next to the street.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Boy, if you're a homeowner and you're thinking about even
a small project like a mailbox or a birdhouse, you
might want to think about this, Ohio eight one one.
The reason to call before you dig, even not to
just aggravate your neighbors and knock out the internet, right,
because that with people working from home, you could really
hurt someone's business.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Right, You can hurt someone's business. And more importantly, you
don't want to be the person who takes out the
neighborhood on football Sunday.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
You don't want to be that guy.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
So even if we're not, if you're selfish enough to
call to not call before you dig, you don't want
to be that guy that's publicly shamed across the city.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
And it's really about keeping folks safe. It's about keeping
the workers out there safe, whether they're working in the
roadway or they're working on private property. It's about keeping
the community safe and ultimately, you know, damage prevention right
that safety is a shared responsibility that we all have.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
So we're talking with Roger Lipscomb, who's the CEO of
Ohio eight one to one on the call before you
dig the Ohio Utilities Protection Service. You know, you mentioned
people who may or may not think about this service.
Do you have any idea how many people actually do
call or don't call? I mean, is there data on that?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Actually, it's interesting because we do keep data on Typically.
For instance, last year, we took in one point five
million incoming requests for somebody saying I'm planning today. For
each one of those requests, we notify an average of
seven utilities. So we sent out almost eleven million notices
last year in the state of Ohio letting people know.
(03:54):
And that's eleven million times that somebody could have dug
into a buried utility and hurt themselves or someone around them.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
So you are really saving lives, impacting business commerce in
a good way.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
It's very very important. I mean, anytime there's a disruption
or a damage to that underground infrastructure, obviously there's costs
associated with that, but for us being a damaged prevention organization.
First and foremost, it's about the public safety. If you
ask me who is our largest stakeholder, it's the eleven
plus million citizens of Ohio. And that's who I work for.
(04:24):
That's who I serve. Even though we're not a government
agency or a privately held corporation. Two of the primary
functions that we perform are public facing and public safety functions, right,
making sure that the neighborhoods and communities are safe.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Well, and you mentioned Roger, eleven million notices went out.
That's potentially eleven million.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Dare I say live saved or at the very least
disruptions prevented? Do you think that when you're looking at
this situation here, people who may or may not think
it's difficult. I've used eight one to one. It's only
a few days and it costs nothing. Sure, That's where
I think people need to really understand. Making a called
Ohio eight one one doesn't delay your project by more
(05:06):
than a day or two.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
It actually doesn't delay it at all.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Right, So if you think about it, you have to
wait forty eight hours in the state of Ohio.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
So if you call, if.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
You're planning to work on Saturday, make sure that you're
calling in on Wednesday. If you've got a planned day
where you want to start your excavation, just plan in
advance that forty eight hours before that, you're going to
notify our service and we're going to let the utilities
know that you're planning to excavate so that they can
send someone out there to put the paint and the flags.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
On the ground.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Yeah, and there's a very important color code there to
understand what those painting flags mean. The American APWA established
a color code nationally a long time ago. So yellow
represents gas, orange represents communications fiber cable TV, red is electric.
You see red, you know there's an electric line there.
(05:58):
Blue is water, green as so or white is a
proposed excavation. Pink is survey. So these are all very
important colors in the color code to know so that
you understand what utilities are beneath your feet once they're marked,
after you call in.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
And after you know two hundred years of the country
at all, the state of Ohio, there's millions of miles
of everything buried.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Under there, right, and as you think about as cities
have grown, as we've expanded into the rural areas. Obviously
the congestion in the public right of ways has increased substantially.
You have companies that have been here and gone, and
companies that have been bought and sold, systems that have
been expanded and grown, systems that have been aged and replaced,
(06:44):
and so there is a lot of a lot of
uninfrastructure complication. Go to the busiest intersection where there's utility
poles and look at everything that's attached to those utility poles.
It's now flip it And that's what the underground infrastructure
looks like.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
It's like an ice. You don't see it right.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Right, And unfortunately that's the problem. Sometimes folks forget it's there,
uh huh, and they lose track of it being there.
And this is where safety issues can come into play.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well, so yeah, I mean, forget the fact that it's
safe and very much could save lives if you call
eight one one, including your own. But it's certainly you
don't want to disrupt utilities or power or cable or
internet or god forbid gas in the winter. Right, So
you know, we're talking with Roger Lipscombe, CEO of Ohigwaight
one to one the call before you dig, folks. If
(07:33):
you haven't decided to call before you dig now, I
don't know what else we can do to convince you. Roger,
how did you come into this organization? One of the
things we like to talk about in CEOs you should
know is how you, as a CEO became part of
this organization.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
I've been blessed in the fact that from the time
I left Youngstown State University and began my working career,
I began repairing electronics back in the day. These VCR
stereos appliance is that kind of thing. About that time
home computing started and home computers started coming into play
and folks started getting them. I learned how to network
(08:07):
those computers, and that led to me working for an
organization to put the first computer networks in K twelve
education in the state of Ohio.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Interesting, so, back.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
In those days, if you grew up on a computer
in a school in Ohio, it was our engineers, our
system that put that in place. As the phone lines
between the schools, the communications lines between the schools became
too slow for the amount of data and processing, we
began to build fiber networks area and underground between those schools,
(08:39):
and that led to me working for a construction company, engineering,
designing and building fiber networks, broader fiber networks. When the
telecom bubble everyone went bankrupt here a number.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Of years ago.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
That put me into the world where I began to identify,
locate the underground utilities so my teams would go out.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I built a.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Division into the Midwest where we would go out and
we would respond to those excavation requests, put the paint
and the flags on the ground so that the utilities
were identified. Eventually that led to the opportunity with Ohiowai one.
Twenty years ago. I became its executive director. I'm the
longest sitting executive director president executive director for ohioan one.
(09:21):
And that's kind of brought when we brought me to here.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, well, listen, it's great work you're doing, you and
the team at the Ohio Utilities Protection Service. I mean, look,
at the end of the day, you can wake up
every morning knowing that you're probably saving lives, which is
really exciting. And I guess the message one more time
you call before you install any sort of fence, any
sort of mailbox.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
If you're disturbing the earth, if you're excavating, if you're
going to be planning trees, if you're going to be
putting in posts, if you're going to be putting in mailboxes.
As homeowners and as professional excavators, if you're hiring a
professional excavator to do this work for you, they need
you need to know that it's their responsibility to make
sure they're calling. So as a homeowner, an informed homeowner,
(10:09):
you want to make sure that if you're hiring a contractor,
that you're asking that contractor did you make your one
call notice, did you call in and get these utilities identified?
And that's an important responsibility homeowners have as well, whether
they're doing the work themselves or they're hiring it out,
it's important that they're aware of the importance of protecting
those underground utility facilities.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
So call before you dig. It's not only free, it's
not only responsible citizens ry, it's the law.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
It is it is you're required under the law, and equally,
the utilities are required to make sure that they're coming
there and putting that mark on the ground so that
you can be safe.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Right, So it's a really easy, seamless transition. Before you call,
before you dig a call before you dig, that's the part.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, you contact us too.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I mean you can dilate one one, or you can
log in and put your information in remotely through one
of our remote ticket entry systems and you can find
that at Ohio eight one one dot org.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
All right, so for those of us who are adverse
to making a phone call Ohio eight one one dot org.
Roger Lipscombe, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Great, thank you and.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
This has been iHeartRadio CEOs. You should know today's show
is produced by Bob COATESID. I'm Keith Hotchkiss.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
We'll see you next time.
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