Aim small, miss small.

It’s a common phrase used in firearms training, referring to aiming at a small portion of a target (i.e. the bullseye) rather than the entire target. That way, if you miss, you will not miss far from the intended target.

It’s also a phrase that Trevor Igo has semi-officially adopted as the motto for the horizontal directional drilling work he does. His Weatherford, Oklahoma-based utility construction company is known for mastering long and difficult HDD bores.

One bore his company Igo Inc. successfully completed in 2019 stands out not because of its length, but because of its accuracy. The goal was to create an underground path for an icemaker drainline to enter a home.

“He was a really good customer and he needed a line put in from about 50 feet out,” Igo says.

Igo Inc. positioned its Vermeer V120 HDD unit on the street in front of the house and bored beneath the brick veneer walls of the structure to a certain point in the kitchen. Specifically, the drill bit rose to the surface precisely within the circumference of a 12-inch hole cut out of the concrete pad directly beneath the kitchen counter. Igo used a Digital Control Inc. product, a Falcon F5 transmitter location system, to pinpoint the endpoint.

The startling accuracy of the completed bore demonstrates why the “aim small, miss small” phrase has been adopted by Igo for his directional drilling work. In this case, the operator aimed the drill bit to surface dead center in the hole. It was off only slightly from center, but that still made it well within the 12-inch concrete cutout.

Read more about Igo Inc. in the March 2022 issue of Dig Different magazine.