Alberta One-Call isn’t the first Notification Centre to unify services with the provincial chapter of the Common Ground Alliance. Info-Excavation did it a few years back when it absorbed l’Association Pour les Infrastructures souterraines du Québec. The added challenge for Alberta One-Call was to equally absorb the operations of Alberta’s "Where’s the Line" campaign that had been successfully promoting overhead powerline awareness across the province since 2006.

With the unification of Alberta One-Call, Where’s the Line and the Alberta Common Ground Alliance, we recognized the opportunity for real change. It was time not just to re-think how we process locate requests, but to re-think our role in damage prevention. We have always been much more than our contact centre. We are enhanced member services, advocates, educators, promoters, communicators and participants at the table for best practices, industry standards, regulation and legislation. These vital activities have been going on in the back rooms of our old house for 40 years. It is time to open the floor plan to let the light shine on every aspect of our involvement in damage prevention. Not just open it up, but make the room bigger so every stakeholder has space for a seat at the table.

Unsurprisingly, despite the world’s 2020 woes deciding to continue to follow us for the duration of 2021, things have gotten back to normal in the world of construction. Extreme gazebos and bodacious decks are hastily being built to complete the work planned out months ago, just in time to be covered in fallen leaves and the first drifts of snow. It is in September that we truly enter Act 3 of each season, as the beginning of the end, the last hurrah, the final countdown.

I’d like to shine a light on the work of three remarkable women who make up the member services team. The team’s primary role is to provide support to utility owners who have registered with or who want to register with the notification service. With the creation of Utility Safety Partners, the services and support will also extend to our safety partners — stakeholders who do not own utility assets. Member services' responsibilities reach into almost every aspect of USP operations.

Over the last many years, Patricia has been a constant force as the chair of the Alberta Common Ground Alliance’s Education and Awareness Committee. Her quiet persistence succeeded in helping the committee to move the awareness needle continually forward while the ABCGA planned and hosted annual Safety Conferences, DigSafe Month activities and, more recently, helped introduce Ground Disturbance Training into several Indigenous communities.

If you’ve been listening to Alberta One-Call’s Prairie Podcast series, you might have heard the most recent edition where I spend time chatting with retired Senator, Grant Mitchell. If not, and you’re curious on the legislation journey we embarked on, this episode provides a lot of the details told by two pals enjoying a trip down memory lane.

Members of the Training Standards Committee (TSC) have worked diligently over the last few years to create robust standards for Ground Disturbance training in Alberta, British Columbia and, most recently, Manitoba. The process of becoming endorsed to any of the standards is time-consuming and costly, which is why ABCGA/AOC and the endorsed training providers promote and protect the integrity of all the GD Standards to the highest level.

When you request a locate from Utility Safety Partners, our members — the buried utility owners that have registered the location of their buried assets with USP — will be notified of your proposed excavation activity. Once notified, they will respond to your request within three business days; and, if they need to locate and mark the location of their buried assets in the vicinity of your proposed dig site, you will not be charged a fee. 

Utility Safety Partners promotes an ongoing list of useful Daily Safety Moments and encourages you to visit and follow us on Twitter @Utility_Safety to find them. Just type in #DailySafetyMoment in your browser search field and begin scrolling the various tweets. We’re sure you’ll find something helpful.