{"id":93588,"title":"Clad Locates: AI for Infrastructure Contractors","tagline":"Clad Locates helps excavators submit and track 811 tickets.","body":"I’m excited to announce our newest product - [**Clad Locates**](https://www.withclad.com/locates/overview)\n\n**Clad Locates is an AI-assisted tool that helps contractors create and manage utility locate requests (811 tickets).** \n\nWe’re live in Alabama right now, and will expand to more states soon.\n\n### The Problem\n\nContractors dig all the time - to place internet cables, upgrade pipes, build fences, and more. \n\nBefore a contractor can begin excavating, they are required to call in a utility locate request. This is to make sure the contractor digs safely - that they won’t hit a gas pipe, for example.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=93588\u0026key=user_uploads/448610/eb053624-67ff-4b07-8abf-d10ece228cb4)\n\nFor contractors, handling these tickets is critically important, but a pain:\n\n1. Submitting tickets takes a lot of time and distracts project managers from higher value work.\n2. Making sure tickets don’t expire is also necessary, so contractors avoid a ‘down day’ (a day where they can’t work, due to an expired 811 request). \n\nWith 43M tickets submitted last year by tens of thousands of contractors, this is not a small problem.\n\nSo we decided to fix it.\n\n### We’ve made handling locates a breeze for contractors\n\nhttps://youtu.be/Y04NyOXGt2o\n\nWe built Clad Locates to make it fast and easy to submit and track 811 tickets.\n\n1. **AI-driven narratives -** We use AI to eliminate the most time consuming part of submitting a ticket, writing a ‘narrative,’ (to describe the path that a contractor will excavate.\n2. **Bulk Submission -** Clad connects with the state 811 systems to submit tickets automatically, 1 ticket at a time or 15 all at once.\n3. **Automated Tracking -** We get data from the state 811 systems to build an automated automated tracker to monitor when areas are ready to dig, and when tickets will be expiring.\n4. **Expiration Notifications** - To prevent ‘down days,’ Clad notifies contractors when tickets are expiring and need to be renewed. Soon, contractors will be able to renew tickets directly from Clad. \n\n### Join our waitlist and reach out!\n\nReach out to us at jason@withclad.com, or sign up on our [website](https://www.withclad.com/locates/overview) to learn more.","slug":"OLU-clad-locates-ai-for-infrastructure-contractors","created_at":"2025-09-04T19:23:52.719Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T01:50:31.247Z","total_vote_count":11,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/OLU-clad-locates-ai-for-infrastructure-contractors","share_image_url":"//bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/yc-og-image-c440a0ad1dacfb86eeeb343717479cc54d256614449b4ef719977a0a451f8bc8.png","company":{"id":28070,"name":"Clad","slug":"clad","url":"https://withclad.com/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/5ab0e3d7b0de12617818a986b541a5e524c146ae.png","batch":"Winter 2023","industry":"Real Estate and Construction","tags":["Marketplace","SaaS","Construction","B2B","Collaboration"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/28070"}}