When thinking about customer touchpoints, it can be easy to focus all your attention on external communication. However, that discounts a vastly important aspect of customer relations – the education of and communication with your internal employees.
Map it out
Your employees are your greatest asset and greatest ambassadors, and investing internally allows you to grow your communication strategy from the inside out. It’s essential for you to have an understanding of how information is being distilled internally so that you can mold the communication appropriately. Take a step back and map out communication touch points with your employees. Take a hard look at how information is being conveyed, the channels on which you’re depending, and who is included at every step of the way. Who are you missing? Are there employees that aren’t involved in the feedback loop? Is the messaging consistent across all channels and departments? Don’t forget that communication needs to be a two way street as well. Ensure that you have systems in place to get feedback from employees, as well as take their questions so that you can address concerns and educate where needed. This type of internal audit allows you to fill in the gaps in your communication and truly ensure that every one of your team members is armed with the right messaging and equipped to be a brand ambassador.
Internal communication is a living, breathing thing
Once you’ve initially mapped out the internal communication, don’t depend on that to carry you through for the foreseeable future. Constantly be revisiting internal communication to understand how and where you can improve. Perhaps most important, understand that communication doesn’t just change over time – you also need to be aware of how it’s changing in the present, among different levels of your staff. You can’t be 100% sure that a message conveyed to management will trickle down without being distorted, like a game of telephone. Operate with transparency and clear communication across all levels to make sure that everyone in your utility is on the same page. Building trust with your customers starts with building trust internally – and communication is key. Ensure that every member of your team is educated and engaged in what you do, and truly understands your messaging. That way, when they engage with customers, you can be assured that that touchpoint is a positive experience across the board. To read more tips for customer touchpoints and to check out the rest of the blog posts in the series, check out our full infographic here.
The Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI) baseline service line inventory deadline is November 1, 2027. For a lot of utilities, the number that matters most right now is how many "unknown" service lines are still sitting on that list.
A recent webinar on verifying those unknowns, presented in partnership with the National Rural Water Association (NRWA), brought in 120Water's Josh Hawley, Director of Water Utility Services, and Maddie Brogan, Director of Client Experience, to walk through the playbook operators are using to close that gap, drawing on real field experience.
Here are some of the highlights, including a case study from Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, that showed just how fast that gap can close when the plan is right.
Know Where You Actually Stand
Before any digging happens, the first move is an honest gut check. Pull up whatever you submitted back in 2024 and compare it to what you know today.
Have you logged materials during meter swaps, main breaks, or service line repairs since then? If the answer is "not really," you're not alone.
Most utility teams admit their historical records, as-built maps included, aren't much to work with. Tap cards without any real information on them are common, too.
None of that is anyone's fault. Nobody was keeping these records with this rule in mind, because this rule didn't exist yet.
This just means record keeping starts now, for good. This inventory push is only the first of several LCRI initiatives that will lean on the same data. Whatever you document today pays off again down the road.
Work the Low-Hanging Fruit First
Once you know where you stand, the goal is minimizing how often a shovel actually hits the ground, since that's by far the most expensive way to identify a service line. The playbook starts with the cheapest options and works up from there.
Age reviews and records reviews cost nothing and clear out a chunk of unknowns immediately. Anything built after the lead ban went into effect is done. From there, statistical analysis is the biggest lever for utilities that have already inspected some lines and have reasonable confidence they're a non-lead system.
If field inspections so far show no lead and no galvanized requiring replacement (GRR), a state-approved plan lets you inspect a representative 20% sample of remaining unknowns, spread across build decades and neighborhoods rather than one street. If that pool comes back clean, the other 80% can be classified as non-lead, with a smaller validation sample required down the line to confirm the method held up.
However, if you find any lead or GRR in that sample, the math changes. You can finish the sample pool since you're already out inspecting anyway, but you can no longer classify the rest as non-lead based on an assumption that's now been proven wrong.
That's where predictive modeling takes over. The tool assigns a probability to each remaining line, drawing correlations from everything already in your inventory. It's front-loaded work, with a heavy first-round verification list, but accuracy climbs fast once the model is calibrated. Utilities typically want to see accuracy in the 95% range before relying on it.
Both predictive modeling and statistical analysis vary by state, so check what your regulator accepts before committing to either one.
Decide Who's Doing the Digging
Contractor or in-house isn't just a budget question.
Plumbers are great at plumbing, but that doesn't automatically mean they're equipped to identify buried materials in a way that holds up to state and EPA scrutiny.
Look for a track record with this specific kind of work, and get clear upfront on what support your team needs to provide, from knowing where meter boxes sit to supplying tools. Payment terms matter too: some contractors charge by location, others by the dig, and a statement of work that spells out who handles what gets rid of a lot of confusion later.
If you're keeping the work in-house, the same questions apply: who's trained, who owns resident communication, and who's responsible for restoration once a hole needs to be filled back in.
Get the Field Basics Right
In the field, small habits determine whether a photo actually holds up as documentation.
Daylight enough of the pipe to see it clearly, remove debris, and use the flash on your camera even in daylight. Label which side is the system side and which is the customer-owned side. Then, show the scratch or magnet test if one confirmed the material. Document any connectors you run into as well, even though nobody is digging specifically to go find them.
The Payoff
Ocean Isle Beach had 708 unknown service lines and a three-person team, including the superintendent, which made digging that many holes on their own a non-starter.
Because the system had no history of lead or GRR, statistical analysis was the right fit. Their inspection pool dropped to 142 sites, a contracted crew finished the fieldwork in about three days, and the result was zero unknowns remaining.
Not every system will move that quickly, but it's a real example of how much the right method can shrink the workload.
Watch the Full Session
Our full walkthrough goes deeper into validation pools, tricky GRR determinations, and the connector questions utilities are asking most. Watch the complete session to get the full field playbook to ensure you're on track for LCRI compliance.
November 1, 2027 isn't as far away as it feels. The utilities getting a head start on their baseline LCRI inventory now are going to have a much easier time than the ones who wait. That was the throughline of our January webinar, and here's a taste of what it covered.
The state of play
The Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI) is finalized. It's also being challenged in court. Both of those things are true at once. The timeline runs from the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) October 2024 finalization through a petition for judicial review from the American Water Works Association (AWWA), a pause requested by the incoming administration, and up to oral arguments expected this spring.
The short version: the EPA intends to keep the LCRI as written, and the lawsuit continues in the background. The practical takeaway hasn't changed from last year either. Prepare as if the current rule holds. Catching up later is a lot harder than staying ahead now.
There's also a fiscal year 2025 funding data drop from last November tied to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) worth knowing about, including a shift in the national lead service line estimate and what it means for how funding is allocated across states.
Connectors: the new addition to your service line inventory
This year's inventory has a new resident: connectors. Think pipe – not fitting, not fixture, not solder. Most states treat connector material as separate from service line classification, and right now there's no hard deadline to identify or replace them.
That doesn't make it a "do nothing" item. A handful of common questions came up from utilities working through this already, and a few states are already showing some openness to flexibility here, which is worth knowing before you build your approach.
Turning unknown service lines into progress
Statistical analysis and predictive modeling are two very different tools depending on whether lead or galvanized requiring replacement (GRR) has already turned up in a system, and real case studies from utilities in North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, California, Texas, Indiana, and Wyoming showed what each approach looks like in practice.
Some systems went from thousands of unknowns to a fully non-lead classification with a few hundred targeted inspections. Others are mid-process, pivoting strategies as state guidance evolves in real time. One theme showed up again and again: the utilities getting ahead of this aren't necessarily the biggest ones or the ones with the cleanest records. They're the ones who started building their case early.
A strategy some utilities are exploring to reclassify certain galvanized service lines came up too, along with a preview of what non-lead validation looks like down the road in 2034.
Watch the Full Session
There's a lot packed into this LCRI Inventory webinar:
Timelines
Funding shifts
Connector definitions
Verification math
Real utility numbers
Q&A covering everything from Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR) to sampling tiers.
If any of this sounds like what your team is working through right now, the full recording walks through every example in detail, numbers included.
Compliance webinars can get theoretical pretty fast, but this one didn't.
Our February session paired regulatory context with a genuinely practical playbook for verifying unknown service lines, backed by a technical assistance program that has already identified over 20,000 service lines across three states and a field contractor with thousands of inspections under his belt.
Here's what stood out.
A quick regulatory refresher
The Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI) status has not changed since our last recap:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized the rule.
The American Water Works Association (AWWA) is still challenging it in court.
The EPA still plans to defend the rule as written.
The advice is the same too: Prepare for LCRI compliance as if the rule holds since the baseline service line inventory deadline, November 1, 2027, is approaching fast.
One update worth flagging: five states (Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York) currently treat connector material as something that does affect service line classification, unlike most states where it doesn't. If you're in one of those states, it's worth checking.
Verification is a project, not a task.
The bulk of the session made a simple but important point: Treating lead service line verification like a single to-do item is exactly how it goes sideways.
One utility's do-it-yourself attempt got through 30 addresses in two weeks, with data scribbled on paper that was barely legible by the time it made it back to the office. Not exactly audit-ready.
The alternative is to treat it like any other capital project, broken into three phases:
What you know before you start
The actual fieldwork
What happens with the data afterward
Most of the payoff comes from phase one. The more due diligence done up front – records review, customer surveys, tracking down materials already documented from unrelated projects like meter change-outs – the fewer expensive digs are needed later.
Statistical analysis and predictive modeling both showed up again here as ways to shrink that inspection pool, with a rule of thumb for choosing between them:
Statistical analysis works well when a system has no known lead service lines or galvanized requiring replacement (GRR).
Predictive modeling picks up once some lead service lines or GRR have already been found.
Choosing verification tools and contractors
A geographic information system (GIS) came up as the recommended way to manage field data, both for its accessibility to field crews and its ability to feed a dedicated water data platform for reporting and dashboards. A live example showed how a simple red-to-green dot system can track inspection progress across an entire project.
Contractor selection got real talk too. The advice: look past the local guy who fixes leaks and installs service lines, and vet specifically for experience with this kind of verification work, GIS compatibility, and a willingness to work without constant utility oversight.
A signed statement of work covering responsibilities, deliverables, pricing, and timeline was called out as a must, not a nice-to-have, so expectations stay aligned from the start.
What verification actually looks like in the field
The session's field contractor walked through what a typical inspection day looks like, from routing crews (harder than it sounds in an unfamiliar system) to reading the room during kickoff meetings (staff who know their system inside and out make everything run more smoothly).
GPS points and photo documentation from every inspection were highlighted as the backbone of defensible data, which matters if records ever face regulatory scrutiny.
Customer communication came up as its own art form. Timing mailers and social posts too early means people forget; too late means confused customers calling the police on a crew standing near their meter box. A few real examples of both extremes made the case for planning your LCRI communications strategy early.
Watch the Full Session
We discussed many more important verification topics, including:
Funding options, inspection method tradeoffs (meter pit versus potholing versus hydrovac), documentation strategies, and a full Q&A covering everything from access agreements to lead service line replacement plans when a homeowner owns the entire service line.
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