When working around underground utilities, one wrong move can lead to damaged lines, costly delays, or even serious safety risks. This horizontal directional drilling safety checklist helps you standardize inspections, stay compliant, and keep your crew out of harm’s way.
It’s built for teams in construction, utilities, or civil engineering who want a reliable way to prepare and monitor HDD operations. You can use the checklist to document utility markings, rig setup, bore path conditions, and post-job site checks, all from one place.
How to use the horizontal directional drilling safety checklist
Here’s a quick, step-by-step guide to making the most of the checklist:
- Customize the template for your drilling site: Open the checklist in the Lumiform app and tailor it to your site conditions. Add project-specific notes, insert extra steps based on local safety requirements, and remove anything that doesn’t apply to your crew.
- Assign the checklist to the responsible on-site lead: Since this checklist should be completed by one person, make sure it’s assigned to the team member overseeing the drill. That way, the data stays consistent and traceable from start to finish.
- Use it before, during, and after drilling: Break the job into three safety phases–pre-drill setup, active drilling, and post-drill inspection. This helps you catch issues before they escalate, from improperly marked utilities to loose pipe connections.
- Add photos and comments directly from the field: Document entry/exit pit conditions, PPE compliance, or any safety concerns with real-time photos. These visual records are useful for internal reviews or compliance checks.
- Track patterns and flag repeat issues in the analytics: Once submitted, all checklists feed into Lumiform’s dashboard. Use this data to spot recurring safety gaps, improve team training, or tweak your process across multiple jobs.
Customizing your horizontal directional drilling safety checklist
No two drilling projects look the same, since soil conditions, local regulations, and utility layouts can all vary. That’s why our horizontal directional drilling safety checklist is fully editable, so you can shape it around the specific needs of your job site or crew.
You might start by tweaking the pre-drill checks to include unique local permitting steps or utility company coordination details. If your team uses different equipment, you can swap out rig inspection items to reflect your setup.
For longer or multi-day projects, consider adding repeatable daily safety checks under each drilling phase. This helps track changes in site conditions or crew performance over time without cluttering the checklist for single-day jobs.
You can add instruction fields or embedded media as well, like diagrams or links to internal SOPs, to make the checklist a field-ready guide. This is especially handy if you’re managing less-experienced crews.
Download Lumiform’s horizontal directional drilling safety checklist today
Start with a template built to handle the realities of HDD operations. You can organize pre-drill checks, on-site inspections, and end-of-day reviews all in one place, without skipping critical steps. Assign it to your crew lead, add notes or corrective actions, and track what’s happening in the field with less back-and-forth. This tool gives you a standardized, repeatable process that saves time and cuts down on errors.