Services
Now serving hyperscale and enterprise campuses
Data Center / Mission Critical
GEI self-performs the underground power, fiber and cooling-water infrastructure that data centers run on: medium-voltage and telecom duct banks, fiber trench trough, process cooling water piping, hydro excavation, locating, staking and as-built documentation. Redundant, documented and on schedule, while taking every precaution to avoid damage to existing infrastructure and targeting a zero-strike record.
Dry Utilities
Underground power, telecom and fiber. Dry utilities are the conduits and duct banks that carry power and data. GEI trenches, places and backfills them for electric utilities, carriers, electrical contractors and data center owners: primary and secondary URD, concrete-encased medium-voltage and telecom duct banks, manholes, vaults and handholes, service conduit, site lighting and security pathways, grounding grids and counterpoise, pad-mount transformer and switchgear pads, fiber trench trough and innerduct. Every run is mandrelled, pull-stringed and recorded on the as-built before it is covered.
Our longest relationship is with PSO, now part of AEP, where we have worked for more than 35 years on everything from service replacements to whole-neighborhood overhead-to-underground conversions. We have built long-haul and metro fiber for Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, Level 3, Sprint and Zayo, and we self-perform the underground power and fiber packages on hyperscale data center campuses in Oklahoma.
Wet Utilities
Water, sewer, storm and process piping. Wet utilities carry something that flows, and they are installed once and never touched again, so grade, bedding and testing matter more than speed. GEI installs domestic water and fire water loops with hydrants and hydrostatic testing, sanitary sewer with lift stations and force mains, storm sewer with inlets, structures and detention, process cooling water supply and return, gas and geothermal loops, and underground plumbing to the building line. Excavations deeper than five feet are protected with engineered trench boxes or shoring under a competent person, dewatering is handled by our own crews, and every line is tested and documented before backfill.
We work as the underground subcontractor for plumbing, mechanical and general contractors, for rural water districts and municipalities, and directly for owners who want one company responsible for everything below grade.
Hire GEI and a competitor for the same scope and both of us will show up with similar iron. The difference is in the details: the pre-task plan before the first bucket, the locate and the pothole before the trench, the compaction test before the next lift, and the jobsite we leave behind. That is The Gable Way, and it is the same on a two-hour service repair as on a two-year campus.
Aerial Utility Construction
GEI got its start in aerial utility construction in the early 1990’s working for the Public Service Company of Oklahoma or PSO. Back in those days, Gable’s aerial work primarily consisted of building electrical facilities for PSO and was mostly ancillary work that came along with underground electrical excavation. This work continued for several years but was never a substantial portion of Gable’s business. During the dot-com boom of the 90’s, Gable’s Excavating also worked for telecommunications providers helping to build fiber optic networks for several major carriers. Gable’s provided some aerial construction services to these customers but again, mostly as a byproduct of underground construction. It wasn’t until another Tulsa based company, a business telecommunications provider startup known as EasyTel reached out to Gable’s Excavating in the mid 90’s that aerial construction became a focal service in Gable’s repertoire.
As you can tell, aerial utility construction can mean several different types of work. For Gable’s it has meant electrical and fiber optic work. Other types of aerial construction can include copper (traditional telephone and internet), coax (cable television and internet) and end user fiber optic (fiber to the home or business). GEI’s current primary niche in the aerial construction market is assisting service providers and utility companies with network OSP (outside plant) construction. This can be summed up as the infrastructure that supports global communications. Our primary customers in this field are companies you may have heard of such as: Verizon, AEP/PSO, SPRINT, AT&T, Centurylink and Zayo to name a few.
GEI’s number one priority is safety and that commitment is front and center in our aerial construction division. GEI offers customers in this market a unique value – results based on production without sacrificing safety and quality. We bring the same safety standards adopted from working with high voltage electric and nationwide corporations to the telecommunications industry. You will always recognize a GEI crew by their bright yellow, hi-visibility, fire-resistant uniforms, white hard hats and safety glasses. Fall protection is worn on every aerial lift, every time, and every crew works within the scope of their daily pre-task plan. We bring the standards learned on energized distribution to telecom work, which is why owners who audit their contractors keep us on the list. A huge contributor to GEI’s success on both the safety and production front is its dedication to reinvesting profits into the company. This investment results in late model, dependable bucket trucks, trucks, equipment and support equipment that are always kept up to date on safety inspections, free from defects, clean, and ready to produce results in the safest, most efficient manner possible.
Some of the more recent aerial utility construction projects that GEI has successfully completed include: aerial ADSS (All Dielectric, Self-Supporting) fiber routes from a single span to 100 miles for American Electric Power Company in Oklahoma, maintaining and providing emergency call-out response for Verizon’s Tulsa and Oklahoma City markets, and backbone fiber replacement for Centurylink. GEI was also responsible for building approximately 75% of the former Easytel’s Tulsa network.
Each and every project is approached individually and with the same level of detail. GEI is regularly involved in projects as a consulting company to assist providers with input based on years of knowledge and familiarity with the Tulsa market before construction has even begun. Once a project is started, GEI’s team moves from planning to construction seamlessly, beginning work in a timely manner and staying ahead of the curve by anticipating and addressing potential time killing factors before they occur. GEI’s project managers work hand in hand with customers throughout construction and provide progress reports in a clear, timely and transparent manner. Our commitment to customer satisfaction does not change when the work is complete. GEI follows up each and every project up with timely final reports and as-builts, post construction inspection, customer satisfaction survey and prompt invoicing and close-out. It is our goal at GEI to add value to our company by adding value to our customers and employees. Give us a call today to see what GEI can do for you or your company!
Horizontal Directional Drilling
Horizontal Directional Drilling is one of if not the most significant advancements in our industry in quite a long time. Horizontal directional drilling, also known as boring or road boring is the process of installing a utility beneath the surface in between two points without disturbing the soil at ground level. While this may “on the surface” seem like a very big deal, the advantages of this form of utility construction are massive.
GEI has been involved in the horizontal directional drilling market nearly since the inception of the technique. GEI purchased its first horizontal directional drill more than 35 years ago and has been perfecting the practice and techniques used to complete a successful bore ever since. From the first HDD machine that we owned, up the current, most advanced equipment and electronics available, Gable’s Excavating has always been on the cutting edge of innovation in this field.
There are a lot of HDD contractors that have come and gone over the years, but GEI has survived the test of time and proven its 
mastery through its longevity in the industry. GEI has the ability to install a gas, sewer, water, storm sewer, fiber optic, telephone, cable television, electric, geothermal or any other type of underground utility imaginable in sizes ranging in diameter from <1” all the way up to 36” and lengths up to 1,500’ under existing or future obstacles without actually excavating the area in between starting and ending points.
There are three main factors that contribute to our extremely high success rate in this field. The first of these factors has been and always will be our employees. GEI has always taken pride in the level of skill and experience we require in our foremen and equipment operators but this goes above and beyond for our HDD personnel. Due to the unknown factors that play into each and every bore GEI begins, our personnel must be extremely knowledgeable and have the utmost respect for safety. GEI’s equipment is the second factor in our success in HDD. GEI’s commitment to investing back into the company have resulted in the latest and greatest horizontal directional drills, the newest and most advanced locating technology, the most effective tooling specific for ever changing ground conditions and the correct drilling fluids to ensure highest probability of success. Lastly, and perhaps the most important, is the education. While extremely expensive, money alone can buy the most experienced employees, the newest and most costly equipment, the most sophisticated locating system, etc… While these things might seem like a guarantee for success, the education is the most expensive and most crucial part of the equation. GEI has earned that education over more than 35 years of providing HDD services. We have completed thousands of bores in Tulsa, throughout Oklahoma, and extending into the surround states of Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas. We’ve learned a lot from our success. We have learned more from our mis-steps, as is typically the case, and have evolved our processes to avoid those mistakes in the future. This is where our company sets itself apart from others who provide similar services. There are few circumstances we have not previously faced and rarely a complication without a solution based on past experience.
If you or your company are looking for a horizontal directional drilling utility contractor that has the experience, expertise and equipment to handle projects of all shapes and sizes. Or, maybe you are looking for a more dependable, more competitive, more safety conscious, or more capable partner than your current subcontractor. Please give GEI a call today to schedule a no-obligation consultation with a HDD project manager to discuss what we can do for you. Quotes within one business day.
Hydro Excavation
Hydro excavation uses pressurized water and a vacuum to expose buried lines without a bucket ever touching them. It is how we open the ground around energized feeders, fiber, gas and process piping, and it is the step between locating and digging on every critical pathway we build.
Why it matters
- No utility damage. The water jet breaks up soil without the force of a bucket or an auger, so existing power, gas, fiber and water lines are exposed, not struck.
- Safer crews. No accidental strikes means no gas releases, arc flashes or waterline ruptures in the hole, and no one in a trench next to a running machine.
- Lower cost of the unexpected. Avoided repairs, outages and claims pay for the truck many times over.
- Precision in tight spaces. Operators control pressure and vacuum to work between parallel runs, under pads and inside congested yards where a machine cannot swing.
GEI owns a fleet of over 20 hydro excavation trucks, all with remote-hose capability for more logistically challenging work areas. Daylighting, potholing, slot trenching, excavation, dewatering, cooling tower clean-out and demucking among countless other use cases.
Utility Locating
Public 811 locates stop at the meter or the property line. Everything past that point, on private property, inside a plant fence or across a campus, is the owner’s responsibility, and it is where most utility strikes happen. Abandoned lines, private electrical feeds, irrigation, fiber laterals, process piping and storm drains rarely appear on any public locate ticket, and old as-builts are often wrong by several feet. GEI’s utility locating division, True-Spot, was built to close that gap for contractors, engineers, facility owners and utility companies.
Our locators combine electromagnetic locating with ground penetrating radar (GPR) so that one method backs up the other. Electromagnetic equipment traces conductive lines such as power, tracer-wired gas and water, and metallic communications cable by applying a signal directly or inductively and following it above ground. GPR sees what electromagnetic tools cannot: non-metallic pipe, PVC and HDPE conduit, concrete duct banks, voids, tanks and buried structures. Together they give a complete picture of what is under a site before a bucket, an auger or a drill head goes in.
Locating is more than paint on the ground. True-Spot delivers concrete and slab scanning to find rebar, post-tension cables and embedded conduit before coring, cutting or anchoring, subsurface utility mapping with GPS positions and depths, and CAD or GIS deliverables that engineers can design from and owners can keep as a permanent record. Every mark is photographed and logged, so a field crew that arrives a week later can see exactly what was found and where.
Because True-Spot is part of GEI, locating is coordinated with the people doing the digging. When a critical line is found, our hydro excavation crews can expose it and confirm the depth the same day, and our construction crews build around it with the exact position in hand. On data center campuses, substations, hospitals and industrial plants where a single strike can mean an outage, that combination of locating, exposure and documentation is how we keep targeting a zero-strike record. Learn more at true-spot.com.
Fiber Splicing
Fiber splicing is where an underground or aerial fiber build becomes a working network. Placing the cable is only half of the job. Until every strand is spliced, sealed, tested and documented, no light passes and no customer is served. GEI’s splicing technicians fusion-splice single-mode and multimode fiber, loose-tube and ribbon cable, ADSS and OPGW, build and seal splice enclosures in handholes, vaults, pedestals and aerial closures, and terminate fiber in cabinets, patch panels and equipment rooms.
Fusion splicing joins two glass fibers by aligning their cores to within a fraction of a micron and fusing them with an electric arc, producing a permanent connection with almost no signal loss. Our technicians work with loose-tube, ribbon and micro-cable designs from 12 to 864 strands and higher, follow the carrier’s color code and splice matrix exactly, and manage slack, bend radius and strain relief so the splice survives for decades in the ground or on the pole.
Every splice we make is tested and documented. Our crews run OTDR traces and optical power-meter tests on completed spans, deliver bidirectional test reports, splice diagrams and as-built drawings with the closeout package, and keep emergency restoration crews on call for cut or damaged fiber. Because our splicers work alongside our own construction crews, the pathway, the cable placement and the splice are coordinated by one company instead of three, and a problem found in testing is fixed by the people who built the route.
From long-haul backbone and middle-mile routes to fiber-to-the-home, campus networks and data center connectivity where a single backbone splice carries an entire facility, GEI splices what we build and what others build. Splicing is available with our underground and aerial construction or as a stand-alone service for carriers, contractors, utilities and enterprise owners.
Engineering and Design
Good construction starts before the first truck rolls. GEI’s engineering and design group provides outside plant (OSP) engineering and route design for underground and aerial telecommunications and power, including route selection, pole loading and make-ready analysis, duct bank and vault layout, permit drawings and the bill of materials that turns a concept into a buildable plan.
A design is only as good as the data under it. Our field team collects the existing conditions a plan has to be built on: GPS survey of the corridor, utility mapping from our True-Spot locating division, ground penetrating radar scanning, drone and ground photo documentation, and measured elevations at every crossing and tie-in. That data goes into CAD and GIS so the engineer, the owner and the crew are all working from the same picture.
During construction the same team provides construction staking and layout from the engineer’s model using GPS and robotic total station equipment, sets and maintains control points, stakes duct bank alignments, vaults, handholes, equipment pads and grades, and keeps daily redlines as the work progresses. On a mission-critical site with dozens of parallel runs and tight separations, layout done by the contractor’s own crew is what keeps every run where the design says it should be.
When the work is complete we deliver as-built CAD and GIS documentation that records every run, vault, handhole, depth and tie-in as it was actually installed, so the owner’s record matches what is in the ground. These services are available with our construction work or on their own for owners, engineers, utilities and other contractors who need accurate field data, layout or as-builts.
Concrete Wall and Floor Scanning
Cutting, coring or anchoring into an existing slab or wall is one of the most common ways to cause a serious incident on an occupied site. A single core drill can sever a post-tension cable, cut an embedded electrical conduit, hit an in-slab heating or plumbing line, or remove the rebar a structural engineer was counting on. Concrete scanning finds those hazards before the drill touches the surface.
GEI’s scanning technicians, through our True-Spot division, use high-frequency ground penetrating radar built for concrete to see inside slabs, walls, columns, beams and equipment pads. A scan locates and marks rebar spacing and cover, post-tension tendons, embedded metallic and PVC conduit, voids and honeycombing, and measures slab thickness, typically up to 18 inches depending on the concrete. Because GPR is non-destructive and produces no radiation, scanning can be done in occupied buildings, live electrical rooms and clean environments without shutting anything down.
Every finding is marked directly on the surface in the location where the work will happen, photographed and logged, so the coring or saw-cutting crew knows exactly where they can and cannot cut. Where a project requires it we deliver a written scan report with images, depths and a marked plan, and we can scan both faces of a wall or the top and bottom of a slab to confirm what is inside.
We scan for owners, general contractors, electrical and mechanical contractors and engineers in data centers, hospitals, industrial plants, parking structures and commercial buildings, on schedules that range from a single core location to an entire floor plate ahead of a tenant fit-out or equipment installation. Concrete scanning is available with our utility locating and hydro excavation services or on its own.
Mass Excavation and Site Grading
Every building, yard and roadway starts with dirt moved to the right place at the right elevation. GEI provides mass excavation and site grading for commercial, industrial, utility and mission-critical projects across Oklahoma, Texas and the surrounding region, from clearing and stripping through finished subgrade. Our fleet of late-model excavators, dozers, motor graders, scrapers, articulated haul trucks and compaction equipment is sized for everything from a single equipment pad to a full campus.
The work includes clearing and grubbing, topsoil stripping and stockpiling, cut and fill to design grade, building pad and parking lot preparation, roadway and access drive subgrade, retention and detention pond excavation, and structural excavation and backfill around foundations, vaults and duct banks. Where soils do not meet the specification we handle over-excavation and replacement, moisture conditioning, lime or cement stabilization and compaction, with testing coordinated with the owner’s geotechnical firm.
Our dozers, graders and excavators run GPS and laser machine control loaded with the engineer’s design surface, so the operator sees cut and fill in the cab and grades directly to the model instead of chasing stakes. Finish grades are verified with our own GPS rovers and documented with as-built surfaces. On data center and industrial sites where a pad or an electrical yard is specified to a few hundredths of a foot, that precision is the difference between a pad that is ready for the next trade and one that has to be reworked.
Grading is coordinated with our underground utility, duct bank, hydro excavation and staking crews, so utilities go in before the pad is finished rather than through it afterward. We also provide erosion and sediment control, storm drainage, dust control and haul-route management on active campuses. Mass excavation and site grading are available as part of a full site package or as a stand-alone scope for general contractors, owners and developers.
Trucking
Every underground project moves dirt twice: spoil out and select material in. On most jobs that hauling is left to whoever the contractor can book that week, and the schedule belongs to the trucking company. GEI runs its own fleet of end dumps and bobtail dump trucks so material import and export is self-performed, dispatched by the same people who run the crews, and sequenced to the excavation instead of the other way around.
Our trucks haul spoil, rock, flowable fill, sand and aggregate bedding, topsoil and demolition debris between our sites, our pits and our suppliers. Drivers are GEI employees working under the same pre-task plans, inspections and safety expectations as every other crew, and the trucks are on the same documented maintenance schedule as the rest of the fleet.
Owning the hauling is how we own the schedule. When a duct bank trench opens at six in the morning, the trucks to export it and the bedding to backfill it are already on site, and a rain day or a plant delay is managed by one dispatcher instead of negotiated between three companies. Trucking is available as part of our excavation and site work or as a stand-alone service to general contractors, owners and other trades who need dependable capacity on a critical schedule.