2021 - A Look Back

2021 - A Look Back

By the time you’re reading this, 2021 will be fading away and we’ll be turning our attention to the year ahead. For Utility Safety Partners, 2021 was a year of unifying change predicated by several years of system optimization, procedural efficiency and organizational streamlining. 

By year end, the USP Contact Centre Operations, which remains the core of our service, will have processed over 465,000 locate requests and notified its members of excavation activity near their buried assets over 1.5 million times. That process, initiated by safety conscious Albertans, triggers a process that is designed to keep Albertans safe and maintain the integrity of our province’s critical buried infrastructure. This is the most locate requests USP has processed in Alberta in over 10 years and is a strong indicator of our provincial economic perseverance and our commitment to public, worker and community safety.

Eighty-five percent of those locate requests—over 385,000 of them—originated on the web (ClickBeforeYouDig). Alberta contractors and USP Members continue to lead the way with over an amazing 97% of their locate requests originating on the web. 

In November 2020, the USP Board of Directors approved implementation of Annual Member Fees (AMF) to replace Notification Fees as USP’s revenue source. The AMF provides USP Members with a precise and predetermined annual fee and delivers revenue certainty. 

Following unification with the Alberta Common Ground Alliance and the Joint Utility Safety Team’s “Where’s the LINE” campaign, USP’s DigSafe Ambassadors began promoting overhead powerline safety awareness as well as DigSafe / ClickBeforeYouDig awareness. Over 2021, our Safety Ambassadors’ combined efforts reached over one thousand direct, and over 25,000 indirect, stakeholders (buried facility owners, equipment / materials suppliers, general contractors, homebuilders, line locating contractors, municipalities, realtors / real estate companies and safety representatives). Unique to USP, each Ambassador maintains and manages their own social media profile. 

With unification, USP is responsible for maintaining the successful member committees that operated under the Alberta Common Ground Alliance. And in addition, USP continues to coordinate the Operations Oversight and Guidance Committee (formerly the Members Resource Committee) and the Government Relations Committee. USP is committed to maintaining member-driven committees but has also provided operational objectives. 

Finally, in late September 2021, Utility Safety Partners was unveiled under which the combined services of Alberta One-Call Corporation, the Alberta Common Ground Alliance and the Where’s the LINE campaign would now be delivered.

With any change, there are growing pains and while we continue to work through those, the vast majority of feedback from our members and abroad has been very positive. 

In many respects, 2022 will be a year unlike any other. It will be our first complete year operating as the Utility Safety Partners and my colleagues and I are looking forward to the experience, the growth and the challenges that lie ahead. As a united partnership, there are no challenges too great.

Mike Sullivan – President, USP