# What Are Dry Utilities? Design and Coordination for New Projects **Author:** Julio Martinez Sr. **Published:** October 25, 2026 **Last updated:** October 25, 2026 **Category:** Permitting & Utility Coordination **URL:** https://draftech.com/blog/what-are-dry-utilities **Title tag:** What Are Dry Utilities? 2026 Guide | Draftech **Meta description:** What are dry utilities? Power, telecom, cable TV and gas explained, with owner standards, joint trench coordination, wet utility sequencing and lot service. **Visible word count:** 2796 ![A worker in a hard hat and safety vest measures a trench holding red, yellow and orange pipes at a residential site.](/blog/img_what_are_dry_utilities.webp) ## What are dry utilities on a development plan? For development planning, the answer to what are dry utilities covers 4 service groups: electric power, telecommunications and fiber, cable TV, and natural gas. Wet utilities handle water, sewer and storm drainage. Dry utility design establishes supply connections and service routes, while coordination reconciles those facilities with the civil plans and each utility owner's requirements. Where will the transformer go? A subdivision drawing may show a complete utility corridor while reserving the space the serving electric utility needs for a driveway. We start with service requirements to catch that conflict. Drawing a colored line through an easement tells us little about whether the owner can operate its facilities there. **The label describes a planning category.** Gas belongs in the dry utility group even though it travels through a pipe, and underground electrical equipment can encounter groundwater despite the word dry. The distinction helps assign responsibility. It does not establish a common design standard or authorize every service to occupy the same excavation. ### Power and communications have different endpoints Before placing electric distribution equipment on the civil base, we need the expected load and the owner's connection requirements. The equipment and service arrangements must be utility-approved to connect the serving system to the customer. Even with a distribution line beside the property, capacity needs confirmation: the proposed development may be unable to connect at the point the developer has shown. The communications provider determines its network arrangement, whether that involves fiber or other telecommunications facilities. Cable TV may use coaxial cable or a network incorporating fiber. For our coordination work, the question is where those facilities can fit and how operators will reach them. An electric service location may be unsuitable for a communications handoff, particularly when separate operators need independent maintenance access. ### Gas stays under its own design authority Gas service starts with the gas utility's decision to serve the development and accept particular facilities. Its designer handles that system; we coordinate the interface with the power and telecom plans. Draftech does not design gas, water or sewer systems, and the assignment should state that boundary before anyone circulates a combined utility drawing for approval. Dry utilities can occupy an overhead corridor or an underground route; the term itself does not choose the construction method. For a new subdivision, the important question is whether each proposed service has a feasible connection and an accepted path to its customer. On a road project, we also need to know which existing customers depend on facilities that must move. ## Who designs and coordinates dry utilities? Service requests usually begin with the developer. From there, the civil engineer supplies the development geometry for checking utility layouts, while each facility owner retains authority over its own system. Who follows the interfaces through review? We recommend naming a dry utility coordinator for that work. An old standard detail gives the civil designer too little basis to infer another owner's requirements. ### Separate design responsibility from coordination **Design responsibility follows the facility.** An electric utility may prepare its design internally or accept work from an authorized engineering provider under its standards. A communications owner may use a similar arrangement. The coordinator reconciles those designs with the civil package and tracks decisions, but cannot approve a technical exception on behalf of an owner without that authority. Who can approve the proposed service arrangement? We ask that directly because supplying record drawings and accepting new facilities require different authority. A representative discussing service availability may still need an engineering review before confirming equipment locations. With the responsible reviewer recorded, the team can distinguish an informal planning conversation from permission to build a specific design. Which grading and lot layout did the utility designer receive? We compare that revision with the road designer's base before relying on an accepted utility section. Even a small civil change can invalidate it. Every base needs an identifiable revision, and the designer making a change should identify the affected utility interfaces so the coordinator can return them for review. At Draftech, engineering is 100% in-house. Our full turnkey power distribution and telecom construction is delivered by Draftech-managed subcontract crews under Draftech's QA/QC. Our [partner and delivery information](/about) helps owners identify accountability when assembling their project team; utility ownership and acceptance authority still remain explicit in the project scope. | Facility group | Design authority to establish | Interface to resolve | Acceptance question | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Electric distribution | Serving utility and its accepted designer | Equipment space and service connection | Does the owner accept the load and layout? | | Telecom and fiber | Communications owner and its designer | Route continuity and customer handoff | Can each intended customer be connected? | | Cable TV | Cable operator and its designer | Plant access and service entry | Has the operator accepted its facilities? | | Natural gas | Gas utility and its authorized designer | Approved separation from other systems | Has the gas owner accepted the arrangement? | | Wet utility interface | Civil designer and respective system owners | Crossing elevations and grading | Do the coordinated plans preserve required separation? | ## Owner standards govern the joint trench arrangement Sharing an excavation requires agreement from the participating utilities and an arrangement permitted by the applicable requirements. We start with the owners' accepted details, then check them against the actual facilities proposed for the joint trench. A generic section alone gives us no permission to combine electric distribution with the communications or gas lines nearby. ### Apply the NESC within its scope Part 3 of IEEE's National Electrical Safety Code covers underground systems. The 2023 edition, designated IEEE C2-2023 and published on August 1, 2022, addresses electric supply and communications utility safety. Before we use a detail, we establish which edition the project has adopted and which owner requirements apply. Publication alone does not establish local adoption of that edition. The NESC provides a safety framework for the facilities within its scope; it does not supply a complete gas design or replace a serving utility's construction requirements. We require the design to identify which rules apply to the proposed installation. A separation copied from an unrelated project cannot be accepted merely because both drawings use the words joint trench. **Separation depends on the arrangement.** Parallel runs and crossings need their own evaluation, and equipment access can require space beyond the buried facilities themselves. We avoid publishing one universal depth or clearance for dry utilities because the applicable configuration and owner standard must determine it. Where requirements appear incompatible, the responsible designers need an accepted resolution before construction release. ### Show the arrangement each owner will maintain After turnover, each owner must be able to reach its separately operated assets in a shared corridor. Our access review includes the working area around aboveground equipment and any space another owner must keep clear. Consider a route that fits between the property lines: if a repair would require entry onto land outside the granted rights, that route may still be unsuitable. Joint-build agreements define the participating owners' responsibilities and acceptance obligations, as discussed in our [joint-build fiber and power construction guide](/blog/joint-build-fiber-power-construction). Sometimes separate routes are the better choice. Ownership requirements may resist reconciliation, or sharing the corridor may compromise future access. Even when we prefer a shared route, one owner's unresolved equipment location can hold up the other participants' designs. A limitation of our shared-route approach is that design release depends on resolving every participating owner's affected interfaces. Our decision needs to come before the developer bases the construction package on a common section that the owners cannot accept. The coordination effort should produce decisions that each designer can use. Our [utility coordination services](/services/utility-coordination) address the handoffs between owner comments and revised drawings, including the point at which a proposed corridor needs to change. A meeting closes an issue only when the responsible party accepts the resulting arrangement and the affected plans reflect it. ## Sequence dry utilities with the wet utility work Gravity systems may leave little flexibility in wet utility elevations, limiting the corridor available for other facilities. Those constraints guide our dry utility route from the start. Once the design is coordinated, we can establish the construction order around its crossings and access conditions; a blanket instruction to finish every wet utility before starting any dry utility may conflict with that sequence. ### Resolve crossings before releasing adjacent work A crossing review needs elevations and relevant outside dimensions as well as the plan view. We use them together to check whether the facilities can coexist beneath the finished surface defined by the current civil grading revision. When an existing facility's position is uncertain, the design must specify what needs verification before the crossing detail can be accepted. We use a conflict matrix to assign unresolved interfaces to a responsible party and track their disposition through the [utility coordination process for fiber construction](/blog/utility-coordination-fiber-construction-process). An accepted run on one side of a site may be ready for release while a crossing elsewhere still needs redesign. We check that the released section will remain useful and that its interfaces are clearly defined. Its limits should appear on the issued drawings, where a field supervisor can see exactly which work is accepted and which route remains a planning alternative. **Keep the crossing open for review.** When a civil revision changes an elevation at a shared crossing, send the affected section back to the utility designers before releasing work that fixes either facility in place. The revision needs an engineering response even when the plan-view alignment remains unchanged. Trench mechanics, including excavation protection and installation details, belong in the accepted construction package and its inspection requirements rather than being inferred from the dry utility label. ### Road projects must preserve existing service Existing customers need service throughout a road relocation. If widening shifts a curb into distribution equipment, we compare the proposed permanent location with the sequence for moving it: the old facilities may need to operate while the new route is built. The utility owner decides how to transfer its system, including any work that requires an outage or operating restriction. The road contractor's proposed staging area may block access needed for a utility transfer. Or a relocation may depend on a crossing that the current traffic phase leaves inaccessible. We work through those dependencies with the road team and obtain acceptance for the temporary arrangements themselves, without assigning unsupported durations to work controlled by the utility owner. Before restoring an affected area, who releases it for closure? We ask because owners sharing a corridor may use different inspection organizations. Restoration follows accepted installation and the inspections those owners require. Drawing and dimensioning every permanent alignment still leaves the construction package incomplete if nobody has resolved responsibility for releasing the area. ## What are dry utilities expected to deliver at each lot? Lot numbers and boundaries can change while utility designs are under review. We reconcile the utility layouts with the current lot schedule and building information, checking previously accepted equipment locations whenever a boundary revision moves a customer or its access. Each intended customer needs a usable service connection; a main route drawn along the frontage cannot establish that by itself. ### Confirm the customer handoff Who supplies the route beyond the electrical service point, and how does the building design reach it? We establish both sides of that interface between the serving utility's facilities and the customer's installation. A cabinet near the lot line leaves the handoff unresolved when the customer-side designer has assumed a different entry or meter location. For communications, our [fiber design guide for new housing developments](/blog/how-to-design-fiber-for-new-housing-developments) explains how the network layout and lot connections support service to the planned addresses. Phase boundaries deserve a separate check in our review. A future phase might rely on a route across land outside the current construction package, while equipment reserved for it could occupy space needed for the first release. The drawings should distinguish installed connections from provisions reserved for later use, so neither is presented as ready for service prematurely. ### Make acceptance traceable to the installed facilities An approved field change needs a clear path from the record drawing to its acceptance record. We want the utility owner to see what was installed and where it differs from the design, without having to reconstruct the change from an unmarked plan and photographs. Those records must also retain the asset boundaries between the electric utility and communications provider, even when both occupy a shared trench. Construction completion and customer activation are separate decisions. The utility owner must accept the relevant facilities and arrange its connection or service activation work under its operating requirements. We carry those dependencies into closeout so the developer understands what remains after physical installation, and the accepting owner receives the records needed to operate the new infrastructure. ## Our recommendations before the next design release **Developers:** Confirm service availability before treating the lot layout as fixed. Give each owner the current development information and require a defined service handoff, so the subdivision's usable area reflects the equipment and rights needed to supply it. **Civil engineers:** Establish the controlling grading revision and resolve the wet utility crossings with the dry utility designers. Flag changes that affect accepted equipment locations, because an updated base can quietly invalidate another discipline's approval. **Utilities and co-ops:** State the accepted design arrangement and the authority for any exception. Require the shared corridor to preserve your operating access, and identify the conditions that must be satisfied before your facilities can be accepted. **ISPs:** Confirm your customer handoffs and the rights needed to reach them. Check development phase boundaries against your serving network so a completed frontage route can support the connections the developer expects. **Municipalities:** Tie relocation decisions to the road design and its construction phases. Require clear responsibility for maintaining existing service while replacement facilities are installed, and keep unresolved utility interfaces visible in each release. Active in 24 states. Available across all 50 U.S. states. Our [service coverage](/states/) supports owners planning projects across different utility territories, with each assignment still governed by the requirements of its participating facility owners. Unaccepted equipment locations and unresolved crossings need an accountable team through construction. Draftech's [joint-trench and joint-build delivery](/services/utility-construction/joint-trench-joint-build) connects our in-house power and telecom engineering with full turnkey construction by Draftech-managed crews under our QA/QC; send the current development or road plans to [info@draftech.com](mailto:info@draftech.com) to discuss that scope. For an eligible route, our [free-design offer](/free-design) covers engineering the first 20,000 linear feet at no cost, from feasibility and field survey through permit approval. The owner reviews each request before Draftech commits the package, so qualification and the route's engineering scope are established before the offer becomes a project commitment. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What services are included in dry utilities? Dry utilities include 4 common service groups: electric power, telecommunications and fiber, cable TV, and natural gas. The grouping helps a development team coordinate energy and communications infrastructure with the civil plans. We still establish a separate design authority for each system, because a shared planning label does not give one designer approval rights over every participating utility. ### Who designs dry utilities for a subdivision? The serving utility or its accepted designer develops the facilities within that utility scope, while the civil engineer supplies the development geometry and a coordinator reconciles the interfaces. Draftech performs 100% of its engineering in-house for its power and telecom scope. We coordinate with the responsible gas and wet utility designers without taking on gas, water or sewer design. ### Does the NESC specify every joint trench requirement? No; Part 3 of the NESC addresses underground electric supply and communications systems within its scope, while the participating owners also impose applicable design and construction requirements. We establish the adopted edition and the accepted owner arrangement for each project. Gas requirements come from the responsible gas authority, and a shared corridor still needs approval from every affected owner. ### Can power and fiber share a trench? Power and fiber can share a trench where applicable requirements and the participating owners permit the proposed arrangement. Even a trench shared by 2 owners needs accepted separation and a clear allocation of responsibilities for installation and inspection. We check maintenance access during design, because either owner may later need to reach its facilities while the other system remains operational. ### Does Draftech build the dry utility facilities it designs? Draftech delivers full turnkey power distribution and telecom construction through Draftech-managed subcontract crews under our QA/QC, with engineering performed 100% in-house. We define the construction scope and utility acceptance responsibilities before release. Gas and wet utility facilities remain with their responsible providers; distribution substation work at Draftech is design only, with construction performed by the owner or its contractor.