Stanley, it's not lack of communication. The heavy equipment, compaction, shifting, etc. used in building the roadway would destroy many of the undergrounded utilities, so instead of the utility putting in cable, pipe, or whatever, having the roadway construction destroy it, then digging it up and replacing it, they wait 'til all the heavy stuff has gone away then open a trench, drop in their stuff and patch it. Cheaper all the way around IF they close up properly.
Ensuring a proper closure is up to the municipality that controls the roadway, and that often means that no one realy cares 'cause it's "not my job."
The only place I lived where the road patches were done to spec was one small town who's mayor used to do road construction ... he managed to get a city law passed that before a utility (or any private party) could dig up a public right-of-way, an amount equal to the city repairing the cut to full city spec had to be put into an interest bearing escrow account, or bonded in some way.
That amount was kept set aside for repair of the patched cut for the projected "life" of the road until resurfacing (generally several years).
If the patch survived as well as the rest of the road and didn't need additional work in that time, they got their money, with interest, back. If repair of the patch was needed, it was charged to the set aside amount until it ran out, then the utility was billed for any further repairs needed.
Amazingly, after the first few screwups, the patches started to be done properly and lasted as long as the rest of the roadway ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif It proved the mayor's point that if done right there was no problem.
(I worked for a utility at the time, and our construction guys hated it - they had to be extra careful to do the job right or it would come back and bite the company, who in turn was likely to bite them if it happened too many times ... Eventually we ended up having an outside professional road building crew do our closings and that worked out much better for everyone. No, it wasn't the mayor's old company /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif )