Patent ID: 8626571

Claim:
An apparatus for requesting and assessing a locate operation, the locate operation comprising identifying, in response to a locate request ticket, a presence or an absence of at least one underground facility within a dig area, wherein at least a portion of the dig area is planned to be excavated or disturbed during excavation activities, the apparatus comprising: a communication interface; a memory to store processor-executable instructions; and a processing unit coupled to the communication interface and the memory, wherein upon execution of the processor-executable instructions by the processing unit, the processing unit: A) generates the locate request ticket identifying the dig area, the locate request ticket including or having electronically associated therewith first image data associated with the dig area, wherein the first image data includes at least one of: a marked-up image of a geographic area including the dig area, the marked-up image including at least one dig area indicator to provide an indication of the dig area; and geographic information derived from or relating to the marked-up image relating to the at least one dig area indicator; B) controls the communication interface to transmit the locate request ticket to at least one entity associated with the locate operation; C) controls the communication interface to receive a completed locate request ticket, the completed locate request ticket comprising marking information including second image data and/or non-image data relating to the locate operation as performed by a field technician pursuant to the locate request ticket, the locate operation comprising: identifying the presence or the absence of the at least one underground facility within the dig area using at least one physical locate mark placed by the field technician on ground, pavement or other surface within the dig area; D) processes the completed locate request ticket so as to provide a quality assessment of the locate operation by comparing the marking information in the completed locate request ticket to reference information so as to provide the quality assessment of the locate operation, wherein the reference information includes at least one of: first information derived from or relating to one or more facilities maps; second information derived from or relating to one or more previous locate operations; and third information relating to one or more environmental landmarks in or proximate to the dig area; and E) controls the communication interface and/or the memory to electronically transmit and/or electronically store information relating to the completed locate request ticket and/or the quality assessment so as to provide a searchable electronic record of the locate operation.