Published September 2007

Setting Standards

By Marian Bond (page 34)

Greenline Underground uses current technology and trained and certified staff to build a strong competitive position in Northern California.

Those who come to clean up after a tragedy have a huge responsibility to be prepared with the most up-to-date equipment. Likewise, when a job requires advanced equipment and training, the company with the goods will always have an edge.

Greenline Underground Plumbing Video put those abilities to the test after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, which struck in October 1989 in Northern California. Greenline, based in Salinas and at the time owned by John and Priscilla Grider, had been in the video inspection business for just two years with one van and video equipment supplied by RS Technical Services Inc.

The devastation centered on the City of Watsonville. Greenline worked five days a week there for three years, establishing itself as the frontrunner when the job required video inspection. David Phillips and his wife, Kim, daughter of the Griders, were then employees of Greenline. In June 2006, they became the owners.

Established in 1984, Greenline had been cleaning and hydrojetting pipes for some time, but other companies were handling the televising. In 1987, with one van and a camera, they put themselves in a position to handle all phases of that work. David operated the inspection van on the Watsonville project.

Today, Kim is secretary/treasurer and office manager. David is president, but still operates one of the firm’s two inspection vehicles, working in the field right alongside the other employees. “I’ll be doing that for a long time,” he says.

Staying out in front

Keeping ahead of the game remains the policy at Greenline and its sister companies, Roto-Rooter and Tom’s Septic Tank Service. Staying on the forefront means investing in the latest equipment and training, and certifying employees.

Phillips and Tom Blackwell, operators of the video vans and equipment, were among the first in California to be certified under the Pipeline Assessment Certification Program (PACP).

“The certification shows engineering people across the country that we are using national standards,” Phillips says. “When we call out something we see in the pipe, they know that we are using common terminology. If it is in our paperwork, someone on the East Coast as well as someone on the West Coast will understand what is being said.” Phillips is now studying for his state-certified Qualified Applicators License that will enable Greenline to provide chemical root control for municipalities. The firm can locate root intrusion with its inspection cameras and has root- cutting equipment, but roots removed mechanically can grow back rapidly.

Local cities require roots be treated with foam herbicides so that they don’t grow back. State law requires herbicide applicators to be licensed. The firm is already equipped to apply the treatments. It will take Phillips about six months to earn his license. Once he is licensed, his employees will need to be certified as applicators, at which point the company will be in a position to perform the root treatments.

Tree-lined streets

Phillips says roots are a big problem in the company’s service territory, which mainly encompasses the Salinas Valley, the Monterey Peninsula, and the San Francisco Bay Area, a radius of about 100 miles, and a highly populated region.

“Our streets are lined with trees in most areas,” says Phillips. “You get into the Monterey Peninsula, and homes are in forest areas. The roots grow right into the sewers. This has a lot to do with homes on hilly terrain, and they are everywhere. Homes built on hills have limited access to their sewers. With houses on the crest of hills, the sewers are behind.”

Greenline is equipped with two Omni Eye III cameras from RS Technical Services, both with an inclination feature. “This is an important feature, particularly in video taping lines in new construction, where there can be dips that you can’t see with your eyes,” says Phillips. “This camera shows the percentage of fall in the line. You can see if it has sags or dips that would result in not getting water through the pipe. You can check the grade with the camera. The screen shows the amount of fall in the lines as they are televised.”

Walk the line

The firm does about 50 percent of its video work in new construction before final acceptance. Phillips will not bid on a job unless he has checked out the situation on the ground. “I will not bid on a job off of a set of plans,” he says. “I will drive to the site. That way, we can see the access, and assess the traffic flow. That helps take away the unforeseen problems.

“Most cities have a combination of some flat and many hilly areas. In the City of Pacific Grove, it’s about 95 percent flat with sewers in the street, and five percent hilly. In Morgan Hill, the flat area is about five percent. While many cities are equipped to handle the inspections, they find it more economical to entrust the work to contractors, who get it done in a more timely fashion.

The inspection work itself is typically routine — the conditions encountered in getting to the job cause the problems. “Since there aren’t many sewers in the streets, we get into some weird situations,” he says. “We do a lot of easement work that other companies won’t do.

“We were working in Tiburon (a hilly community across from San Francisco) where the manholes were running down gullies, down hills. Some of the manholes had no access to within a thousand feet. We were stringing a thousand feet of video cable past houses, over fences, through gullies, through poison oak and creek areas to video tape the sewers. Twelve companies looked at the job. Two of us bid. We got it.”

Always ready to go

Greenline travels throughout the state on jobs. However, the company is not enthusiastic about going as far as Los Angeles because of the distance and the competition in that part of the state.

Inspection jobs are frequently long-term as well as long-distance. Phillips has spent long months working in the San Francisco region, 100 miles from the home base. Before crews go out on long-term jobs, all required maintenance is handled by an in-house mechanic.

Greenline started out with RS Technical Services equipment, and continues to use it. The firm uses pipe survey software from WinCan America. Line cleaning equipment includes two CJ 1600 hydrojetters from Super Products LLC.

“We want to stay ahead of our competition,” says Phillips. “If a newer camera comes out, once they get it right and in production, we upgrade our cameras. Probably every three to five years we buy new cameras and tractors with the new components.”

What next

Looking to the future of the industry, Phillips would like to see a requirement that anyone doing video work be certified so that the playing field is level.

“In our operation, we keep up with the times in training people,” he says. “It’s a little rougher for us, as we spend money doing that. But we have employees better informed than a lot of our competition.”

That advantage — in staff expertise and technology — will help keep Greenline running at the head of the pack.