The first time I ran into the uffer ground was in sunny Las Vegas in the mid 1980's and we were required then to put the copper wire in the footer and tie it to the rebar and it was inspected and signed off by the same inspector that preformed the footing inspection. As I recall the building inspector did that. I'm not sure but I seem to remember them saying that they had to go and take a class so they would be qualified to inspect the grounding.
If we missed getting the uffer in or some low life cut it off, we had to dig a 2'x2'x2' hole, drive 4 stakes and coil 20 feet of cooper, and tie it to the stakes and pour it full of concrete. When this happened then we called the electrical inspector to inspected. All in all we didn't have that much problem with wire damage or thievery as we would sleeve it with PVC. When we got ready to tie it in to the service we just cut the PVC at the slab of bottom plate and put a little bit of pour stone in to seal up the PVC.
Since moving back east in the early 90's I have yet to see anyone use a uffer ground. The fact is I was suprised by how few of the electrical contractors here had ever heard of it.
