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Mike Sullivan - President - Utility Safety Partners

Welcome to the year three of the Click to Know what’s Above and Below’monthly newsletter. Did you know that you are one of 80,000 monthly recipients? Thank you for being a reader and being a partner in safety!

For four decades, Alberta One-Call Corporation, now operating as Utility Safety Partners (USP), has provided nation-leading Call and ClickBeforeYouDig services to protect public, worker and community safety. 

Every year, USP processes over 800,000 locate requests from safety-minded Albertans, Saskatchewanians and Manitobans planning a digging project. Those requests initiate a damage prevention process that protects you, your family and your community. 

But safety isn’t just about knowing what’s below, it’s also about knowing what’s overhead and knowing how to work safely. So, in addition to mapping buried utilities, USP began a pilot mapping the location of overhead powerlines in Alberta and notifying anyone digging or carrying out surface work how to do so safely.

“It’s all about safety”, says contact centre manager, Joseph Rosenberg. “Whether the utilities are buried or overhead, it’s really no different. To us, it’s all data.”

The process is simple. When a person submits a locate request and their project is in the vicinity of an overhead powerline, they will receive an auto-notification with pertinent safety information informing them to stay seven meters safe. And if they’re seeking additional information, they can contact the overhead power line operator by phone from the numbers provided. Since the pilot was initiated Nov. 1, 2023, the system has initiated over 10,000 auto-notifications to safety-minded excavators!

So once again, thanks for clicking! We have a lot of great information to share, and some good stories to tell, too!