Mike Sullivan - President - Utility Safety Partners
At 8:44 a.m. on Oct. 1, 1984, a contractor by the name of Kent Hansen, representing his own company, Hansen Plumbing, placed a locate request with Alberta One-Call prior to digging up a sewer line in Calgary’s Northeast. It was the first locate request Alberta One-Call Corporation received and it signaled a new era of safety for Alberta.
Forty years later, a lot has changed. Back in 1984, less than 20 buried utility members had registered the location of their buried assets with Alberta One-Call, whereas today, over 850 buried utility owners have done so, and we routinely process half a million locate requests every year — almost 90% of which are submitted online. “Click Before You Dig is part of safety vernacular,” says USP Operations Director, Sher Kirk. Sher began her career in the early 2000s and has experienced many changes and service enhancements over those years.
“Shifting Calls to Clicks was a gamechanger and it enabled so many other enhancements with the biggest changes all happening in the last ten to twelve years of our operations,” he says.
“Online locate requests are just the way it is done today,” continues Contact Centre Manager, Josef Rosenberg, “and most of our agents working for USP today have little-to-no knowledge of how things used to be.
It was Josef who discovered that online locate requests were less likely to result in damage than a locate request submitted by phone. “Our president had a hunch and asked me to look into it,” says Josef, “and he was right – locate requests made by phone were two times more likely to result in damage!” Since then, USP mandated “ClickBeforeYouDig” for all members and contractors and our members have noticed the difference.
“Shifting calls to clicks reduced damages to ATCO’s gas distribution system” says Iain Stables, Manager, Damage Prevention with ATCO Gas & Pipelines. “Unfortunately, though, damages continue to occur — with almost 40% due to no locate request at all.”
“When you consider the combined horsepower and collective resources of USP and our members promoting Safety, Damage Prevention and ClickBeforeYouDig, ignorance of our 40-year service is surprising,” says Sher. “The data is clear — when you submit a locate request prior to excavation, the likelihood of damaging a buried utility — and risk of injury or worse — is virtually eliminated. But not doing so could easily cost you everything!”
What does the future hold for Utility Safety Partners? That’s a good question! We’ve achieved a great deal working with our safety partners and I’m certain we’ll achieve plenty more as time marches on. But one thing is for sure, on our own, we have limitations but as a team, there isn’t anything that can’t be accomplished.