The Alternate Locate Provider (ALP) Program

By Sher Kirk - Operations Director - Utility Safety Partners

Over the last decade, the damage prevention industry started to question whether the traditional model of providing locate requests and locate delivery was sustainable. The volume of requests continues to increase, as does the challenge for facility owners to keep up with demand and control costs associated with providing locates at no charge to the excavator. Increasing delays mean that, despite not being charged for locates, costs for excavators can rise and become unpredictable. While effective marketing and upgrades to online software served to manage the increasing processing costs of requests, creative solutions were needed to address the locate delivery side of the equation. One solution was to find a way for excavators to control their own locate schedules by letting them hire an asset owner-approved locator to perform the locates.

The Alternate Locate Provider (ALP) Program (expected to be available at the start of the 2024 digging season) is a new option for how locates can be delivered in Alberta.  Development of the program started almost two years ago, when shallow utility owners began workshopping a locate and marking standard . Asset owners knew that increasing the pool of locators authorized to locate their assets would be necessary to maintain the integrity of the damage prevention process. Once a standard was developed and agreed to by the asset owners, a training program was developed and tested by the USP Training and Standards Committee. The training program will be one of the steps locators will have to take to be assessed and approved to provide locates as part of the ALP Program.

The ALP Program provides excavators with the option to hire a registered, approved locator to complete locates on behalf of participating USP members. The goal of the ALP Program is for project owners to receive locates in line with their project requirements and provide certainty around project timing and costs. The Alternate Locate Service Provider (ALSP) works directly for the project owner on their timeline and can serve to reduce unnecessary downtime to improve project outcomes.

Alternative Locate Service Providers must be registered to participate in the ALP Program and are required to meet specific criteria defined by infrastructure owners, including specialized training, quality assurance audits, reporting, insurance, experience, and capabilities.

An ALP locate request is submitted through Utility Safety Partners’ standard ticket creation process by selecting “YES” in the Alternate Locator Option field. Once submitted, the ticket requestor works directly with their selected Registered ALSP to agree on payment and project execution to have locates completed for members participating in the ALP Program. Members who are not participating in the ALP Program will receive a copy of the ticket and will respond to the request following normal procedures. If members participating in the ALP program receive a locate request where the ALP option is defaulted to "NO," they will respond to that request following normal procedures.

At this time, there are still some final pieces of the program being developed and approved. The most up-to-date information can be found by checking the ALP Page at utilitysafety.ca. Interested parties should also review the ALP FAQs .