HDDA Becoming the Voice of the HDD Industry

The Horizontal Directional Drilling Association (HDDA) was born with a focus on one important idea: safety.

“The original conversation behind the formation of HDDA started with a focus on safety and the goal of keeping everyone in our industry safe. This was to be achieved by preventing avoidable injuries,” says Cory Baker. “At the time, there had been several incidents where people were seriously hurt or killed. These incidents were due to the lack of proper procedures or failure to follow them.”

Baker is the chief operating officer of HardRock Infrastructure Services, an HDDA founder and a member of its Board of Directors.

What began as a safety initiative in 2021 quickly evolved into something much larger. The group envisioned an organization dedicated not only to safety but also to the advancement and best practices of horizontal directional drilling (HDD). And so, the HDDA was formed.

Despite some misconceptions, the HDDA is not just for large-diameter HDD contractors. “It was never intended to be focused solely on large-diameter contractors,” Baker says. “We have members operating all sizes of rigs across many different markets. The key point with HDD is that safety should not change, whether you’re running a small rig or a large rig.”

This way of thinking is at the heart of HDDA’s mission: to create a universal HDD Operator Qualification (OQ) program that standardizes training and best practices across the board. “That’s exactly what the HDDA is working to bring to the industry,” Baker says. “A universal HDD OQ program can help organize training, establish consistent best practices, and most importantly, save lives.”

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