Colorado’s House Bill 1266: Industry Leaders Chart the Future of Utility Coordination

On June 18, 2025, 4M Analytics hosted a workshop in Colorado that tackled one of infrastructure’s most persistent pain points—utility coordination—and Colorado’s innovative new solution to this pain point, House Bill 24-1266.

The bill establishes new frameworks for how local governments and utility companies work together on infrastructure projects. And the workshop was designed to provide actionable strategies for municipal leaders to accelerate projects, ensure compliance, and improve utility coordination through partnerships and technology via this bill.

The room was packed with the people who made this legislation possible—utility coordinators, municipal staff, engineers, and technology providers. Colorado State Representative Eliza Hamrick, who sponsored the bill, opened with the backstory of how it came to be. Then a panel of experts from CDOT, the City of Denver, subsurface utility engineering, and academia had a collaborative and productive discussion about how to best navigate this new law.

Building a Law from the Ground Up

Representative Hamrick isn’t your typical legislator. After 32 years as a high school history teacher, she arrived at the State House with a particular view on how to get things done that matter: “Beginning from the public education space, you need to ask the people on the ground, when you’re thinking of a bill: How is it going to impact them? What are the repercussions? What are some of the unforeseen things that might happen? Because they know.”

So when Arapahoe County’s Public Works and Development director, Brian Weiner, approached her at a holiday party in late 2022 about utility coordination nightmares—including one project that burned 200+ days and roughly $5 million due to unknown utility conflicts—she listened with that lens intact.

“The cities have different types of contracts with utility groups and they wanted something like that for counties,” she said. “They wanted to make sure that the system was transparent, accountable, and they also wanted to make sure that taxpayers’ money was saved. That was the beginning of the idea for the bill.”

What emerged was House Bill 24-1266, designed to create a predictable process where both sides are held accountable. The law streamlines infrastructure projects by improving coordination between local governments and utility providers, reducing delays and associated costs, and enhancing coordination between local governments and utility companies during improvement projects that necessitate the relocation of utility facilities. It creates procedures for determining roles and responsibilities of local government and utility companies for relocation plans that are memorialized in a clearance letter. Originally drafted for counties, it evolved to include municipalities after the Colorado Municipal League saw its potential.

Here’s the remarkable part: the bill passed unanimously in both chambers. In an era of partisan gridlock, that’s practically unheard of for substantive legislation. “For a bill of substance to get bipartisan unanimous support says so much,” Hamrick noted.

Her message to the industry professionals in attendance was clear: lawmakers need your expertise. “You know what’s going on. I don’t. You gotta tell me.” She encouraged attendees to reach out with implementation challenges, necessary modifications, or ideas for streamlining processes, because legislation is only as good as its real-world application.

The Expert Panel

The panel assembled diverse perspectives across the utility coordination landscape:

• Rob Martindale, CDOT’s Utilities Program Manager overseeing utility relocation programs across five regional offices
• Ryan Sorensen, CDOT’s Local Agency Area Engineer managing design and construction projects, who has been with CDOT for 23 years
• Jim Anspach, Professor at Iowa State University and the acknowledged “godfather of subsurface utility engineering” who helped pass Colorado’s pioneering utility legislation in 2017-2018
• John Reynolds, City of Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, managing right-of-way standards, permitting, and utility coordination

4M’s Joe Eberly kicked things off with an informal poll: roughly a quarter of attendees were using AI in their utility work, with many more exploring it. That set the tone for a discussion about how technology, process, and policy need to work together.

Why Utility Coordination Actually Matters

Rob Martindale cut straight to CDOT’s bottom line: risk management. “CDOT has a lot of very large projects and with that, the exposure to delay claims to our contractors is much, much higher.”

The old playbook—design first, deal with utility conflicts later—was creating expensive problems. “The later we received the utility information, the more we had to back up our design and redesign,” Martindale explained. “Sometimes we lose time that we had made on progressing designs.”

CDOT’s evolved approach now prioritizes avoiding utility conflicts and relocations altogether, whenever possible. “They’re expensive, they take a long time to move, and that’s where we start increasing our risk,” he said. The agency follows a project lifecycle that emphasizes early coordination and better utility records, using technology to bring utility data into design decisions from day one.

Denver’s OneBuild: Coordination in Practice

John Reynolds introduced Denver’s approach to the coordination puzzle: OneBuild. It’s the evolution of the city’s earlier Construction Coordination and Scheduling Meeting (CASM) process, now meeting virtually every two weeks with a growing roster of utilities, contractors, and city departments.

“CASM was a great opportunity and a test to get folks together and talk about what is happening in the public rights-of-way, and how a city can overlay its project plans and its planning documents on top of what the industry was bringing on their end and create some of that symbiosis,” he said. “That has since evolved over the last five years in Denver to what we’re calling OneBuild.”

The magic happens through transparency. During OneBuild meetings, Denver presents each capital project, complete with scope, schedule, and budget, while displaying live maps that layer current and planned work across transportation, wastewater, and maintenance. “All of these things are overlaid on top of each other at the meeting, shown live in front of the virtual audience,” Reynolds explained.

The goal isn’t just coordination—it’s finding opportunities to combine work and opportunities. Projects cycle through OneBuild at concept and key milestone phases (30%, 60%, 90%), giving utility companies multiple chances to integrate their plans.

For Denver, House Bill 1266’s notification requirements are an enhancement opportunity rather than a regulatory burden. The city can layer those requirements onto OneBuild’s existing framework instead of building something entirely new.

The Technology Piece You Can’t Ignore

Martindale was enthusiastic when technology came up: “Technology is one of the biggest things we’ve been chasing at CDOT for close to 10 years now. The technology’s changed exponentially over the last 10 years.”

CDOT now uses AI platforms like 4M Analytics early in planning to map existing utilities within project boundaries. The Central 70 project was a perfect example—converting a viaduct to a below-grade corridor meant inevitable utility conflicts. Getting ahead of those with good data was critical.

But the technology stack extends far beyond initial discovery. CDOT is deploying cloud-based systems, mobile apps that connect field inspectors to design data, augmented reality for visualization, and they’re investigating using LIDAR scanning as well. “Digitalize your world,” Martindale urged. “Try to bring that digital world to your construction inspection capabilities, even planning. We leverage GIS information in the field during planning with utility companies during design.”

Beyond Compliance: The Facilitation Mindset

Professor Jim Anspach delivered the panel’s most provocative take: coordination isn’t enough. “Our underground and overhead environment is too complicated to have 20 different utility owners that you know about and the seven that you don’t know about out there trying to do something on their own,” he said.

The problem is geometric. Dozens of utility owners, all independently seeking the logical clear space, inevitably produce five sets of plans targeting the same location. “That only happens because there is not an active coordination or a facilitation mode for that,” Anspach argued. “So I’d rather call it utility facilitation rather than coordination.”

He also hammered home the need for measurement. “If we don’t track whether [policies] are working as intended, there’s very little chance that we’ll make progress.” Rather than retrospective studies years later when memories fade, he advocates for real-time tracking mechanisms built directly into projects.

John Reynolds also talked about the issue of siloed information hampering collaboration and coordination. “One of the hangups is this idea that you have proprietary information you’re not willing to share. If you don’t know where your program is and you can’t share it, and we have no ability to reference it, it becomes quite difficult for the city to engage, to overlap, to share those maps and figure out a plan. The more willing you are to share your company’s infrastructure, the more participation that you have in the process, and the better it gets.” Without that data, cities can’t effectively identify opportunities for collaboration.

How to Actually Work with Municipalities

Reynolds delivered some of the most actionable advice of the day for contractors, consultants, and utility companies:

Fix your contact lists. This was an ongoing issue for Reynolds: “I can’t tell you how many times in a city as large as Denver that we sent out communication and it’s simply sent to the wrong person. They’re out on leave. They’re gone. They’re no longer with the company.” His solution: create generic company inboxes for municipal communications and audit your contact lists regularly.

Respond quickly to plan reviews. Denver’s policy is clear: “Approved due to no response.” If utility companies ghost electronic plan reviews, projects move forward anyway. “Don’t let those go out into an inbox and sit there unopened,” Reynolds warned. “You're missing that valuable opportunity to get those comments in and identify the needs that your company might have.”

Start at the right level. Going straight to legislators with complaints backfires. “If you overstep, going straight to who you think’s in charge, what inevitably happens is you undercut those who are actually empowered to make those decisions.” Engage with the staff who actually process permits and manage projects.

Come in early for new ideas. Testing new construction techniques or special programs? Talk to city staff before assuming compatibility. Reynolds cited a recent proposed micro-trenching endeavor as an example where legislative pressure for unapproved techniques just creates friction and wastes time: “It can be quite efficient to come in and talk to those who are actually empowered to make those decisions.”

What Success Actually Looks Like

House Bill 1266 creates the framework, but frameworks only succeed through committed implementation. The workshop crystallized four interconnected requirements for success:

Process alignment means meeting state requirements—proper notifications, realistic timeframes, and complete clearance letter protocols.

Technology adoption provides better data, visualization tools, and real-time coordination capabilities that make early collaboration possible.

Cultural shift moves teams from passive coordination meetings to active facilitation where conflicts get resolved in the room.

Measurement systems track what’s working and what needs refinement, creating feedback loops that improve outcomes over time.

Representative Hamrick's closing thought captured the collaborative spirit needed: “I represent people in Colorado: I do what my district needs and what the state of Colorado needs. I’m always happy to hear about new ideas.” Legislators can write laws, but industry professionals make them work.

The workshop demonstrated something important: Colorado’s infrastructure community is leading the way into a future where we can all build better together. With the right combination of clear policy, practical technology, and a cultural commitment to collaboration, House Bill 24-1266 could transform how utilities and infrastructure projects coexist.

Looking to strengthen your utility coordination program? 4M’s Utility AI platform helps agencies and contractors identify, map, and coordinate utilities more effectively—reducing delays, minimizing costs, and supporting compliance with regulations like Colorado’s HB 24-1266. Contact our team to explore how we can support your infrastructure projects.