June 2025 Vol. 80 No. 6
Features
HDD Association tackles industry issues, needs for small, large drillers
Past President Discusses Challenges of Launching New Association
CORINNA HUNT, Contributing Editor
Surprisingly, it’s been more challenging than expected to prove to company owners that there’s value in correctly and safely performing horizontal directional drilling (HDD), observed Don Riggs, long-time owner/operator and HDD advocate.
“You would think that’d be the easiest sell,” said Riggs. “But that is one of the harder sells.”
The reason is that many of the companies the Horizontal Directional Drilling Association (HDDA) is trying to reach are very small, and it’s harder for them to afford to schedule off-time for education and training purposes.
For the last two years, Riggs has served as HDDA’s inaugural president, and one of the top priorities of this new organization has been safety-focused education and training.
Riggs has worked in telecommunications industries since 1981 and founded Future Infrastructure, formerly Future Telecom, in 1999. Before selling it to Primoris in 2021 and retiring in October 2024, Riggs built Future Infrastructure to about 1,100 employees serving the utility construction industry, with a fleet of more than 75 horizontal directional boring rigs.
“We also subcontracted a large portion of our directional drilling work,” he said. “That’s why getting these people all to work safely and profitably was always really important to me.”
At the HDDA’s annual meeting in January, Riggs assumed the role of immediate past president, handing over leadership to Robert Myers. Riggs spoke with Underground Infrastructure in April to share more insight into the HDDA’s first two years – including the organization’s focus on safety and education, where that and other goals stand now, and what’s coming up in the future.
UI: Can you give us an overview of what the Horizontal Directional Drilling Association’s first two years have looked like? What were some of the top priorities and goals?
Riggs: We really focused on the growing negativity around horizontal directional drilling, and how to improve that with education and training. We reached out to folks who we thought would be good partners – mainly large contractors, maxi rig directional drilling contractors, large construction firms like Primoris, and then, of course, the vendors and manufacturers – those folks that support all of this industry. We said, ‘Hey, look – there’s a real problem with the amount of drilling going on and the amount of damages occurring. It’s starting to affect people’s bottom line, jobs are getting put on hold, projects are being delayed because of all the damage done, and cities are scared to have this directional drilling going on in their area.’ We thought we would focus our attention there.
Now, we continue to reach out to small contractors. We offer safety and best-practice training – even culture training. We find training a good culture into a company seems to be one of the most impactful things you can do. If you start at the top where a problem is, it usually solves itself better than trying to do a bottom-up approach, right? So, we started working with the leadership of these companies to improve their culture, their strategies, and safety programs and showing them how working safely also equals profitability. That’s been our entire goal.
UI: Where would you say that goal stands now that you’re a couple of years in?
Riggs: The goals are still the same – now, they’re just grander. Where we were reaching out to the individual small contractors, now we’re starting to focus on governmental agencies and permitting areas. We’re working with cities, counties and local governments to educate them on the value of directional drilling and what they should expect from contractors.
We work closely with Texas 811 and the Damage Prevention Council to help spread our message around the country. We’re trying to get some legislation out there, which would actually help us ensure that people are licensed and trained to be doing this work – force people to put a little more training and safety practices in place.
UI: Has HDDA made any progress with getting that legislation put in place? That can be a challenge.
Riggs: We have just been engaging some of the folks out there that work closely with these governmental agencies – third parties to help get the message out, now that we’ve raised enough funds, to help us make headway with legislation.
UI: Are there any other specific challenges you’ve encountered over the past two years?
Riggs: The challenge is just proving that there’s a value to doing work correctly in this safe way. Very small companies, where it’s only four to eight employees, find it difficult to take time to learn these things. They would have to shut down for a day, which has an enormous impact on that company if it’s only one or two drills. That’s what we’re facing: a lot of companies are so small that they can hardly afford to schedule downtime.
To help bridge that, we’ve reworked our entire website. We’ve got a new website coming out with all kinds of training aides and videos on it. That is our next approach. The fact is that it’s hard to get some of these small companies to shut down for training, we have to make the training available for them, in a format they can use when needed or when their schedule allows for it, such as rain days when they’re not able to work outside but could spend that time training.
We hope to have the website ready by the first of July. We want to ensure training materials are formatted so that people can personalize these programs. We believe that’s what’s going to make a real impact: when people can personalize their safety programs to share with their employees.
UI: Have you run into any additional challenges with selling the safety aspect to cities and municipalities you’re working with?
Riggs: We haven’t had a problem selling that aspect or the idea behind it. It’s ‘How do we make it applicable to everyone?’ We’re trying to build a standard of quality and safety.
There’s Gold Shovel programs that accredit people when they’ve put their company through training, and that’s what we’re trying to do. That is our next goal: How do we put up a program where we can accredit these folks? Where cities can count on, ‘These guys are HDDA-certified with safety and training and quality programs to help them lessen their damages.’
UI: You’ll spend this next year as the immediate past president; what will that look like?
Riggs: I’ll continue working on the education side. I’ll also be doing culture training through 811 programs that is geared toward the foremen and supervisors – the folks out in the field. We’ll have access to those people through the 811 programs. Those are free programs; they’re pretty heavily attended because a lot of people suggest that their contractors at least have some representatives there. We are also trying to get more of the telecom contractors involved, since that industry tends to see the highest rate of damages. I think we can turn it up a notch where we have people working more safely, being more profitable — and just be a better industry overall.
UI: Given that HDDA is still a relatively new organization, how do you feel right now about its future outlook? It sounds pretty positive, overall.
Riggs: We’ve got a lot of tailwinds behind us right now because of all the activity going on in the utility space, where directional drilling continues to grow. That’s where we’re able to keep pushing forward and continuing to keep our membership intact and bringing in new membership – currently we have more than 60 members, and we grow that weekly – because people see the value of the organization and what we’re trying to accomplish for all, large or small drillers.
Seasoned contractors who want to continue to have a good business can see the value, versus people who are just coming into the business with one or two drills and operating very recklessly and damaging lots of utilities; they're just causing more regulations to be put in place to handcuff those who already practice safely. We're able to get people involved, to help protect the industry that they're invested so heavily in.
For more information:
Website: www.hdda.us
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/horizontal-directional-drilling-association
Facebook: @hddassociation
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