At the core of USP is its Contact Centre Operations that continues to manage the damage prevention/ClickBeforeYouDig process; accepting and processing locate requests and providing support for same. During the height of the digging season, USP operates with 33 damage prevention associates who are our front-line resource and during the winter months, we reduce to 12. Those agents and contact centre administration, including three team leaders and a contact centre manager, provide the same services for Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

One of the reasons USP produces this newsletter is to inform industry stakeholders about what’s new and what is happening with safety partners in Alberta. A second reason for this newsletter is to increase engagement and encourage open dialogue among safety stakeholders. It is for that reason I am starting this stakeholder opinion article as a monthly newsletter feature. It is my hope to encourage you to submit an opinion article of your own on any subject related to safety or damage prevention, intended to spark dialogue and share a viewpoint from your unique perspective in industry. Let’s get the conversations started.

The committee does the important work of reviewing suggested changes to the National Best Practices and taking part in the consensus-based process that determines what our guiding best practices will be. It is critical to the integrity of that process that the highest number of stakeholder groups possible are represented at the table. No single interest group can fully understand the most important elements in keeping people safe, so every group’s viewpoint needs to be considered. We all have a stake in safety.

For years we have offered online webinars, as I’ve mentioned here previously. The data I have collected shows that excavators placing their requests online (rather than phoning them in) year over year results in lower damage rates for web-submitted requests. Of course, this is old news to long-time readers of this column. For 2022, I’m looking at some minor overhauls to the webinar program, with more robust offline video tutorials and more opportunities for excavators to request one-on-one time with a trainer.

Every person who drives a motor vehicle today knows what a stop sign is and what we do when we encounter one. Although the language might be different, its shape and colour are consistent wherever you go in North America and most places around the world. We see it and we react accordingly for safety. Damage prevention messaging needs to be the same. It needs to be consistent, simple and direct, alerting people to behave in a manner that will protect them and the utilities they are working near.

DIRT is the Damage Information Reporting Tool introduced by the Common Ground Alliance in 2003 and brought to Alberta by the Alberta Common Ground Alliance (now Utility Safety Partners) in 2013. It is a critical tool for collecting information about the root causes of damages to underground infrastructure.

The Common Ground Alliance has published an annual DIRT report every year since 2004. The report includes an analysis of data from all regions, including Canada, and by reporting events occurring in Alberta, we can target areas of concern specific to our digging community.

While it has always been a problem that professional training organizations have worked to minimize with safeguards like OCR codes, validation stickers and online ticket verification systems to best protect our workplaces, incidents are on the rise. Recently, Energy Safety Canada reported a large operation in central Alberta that had engaged in illegal activities resulting in the production of several thousand counterfeit certificates. In this instance, the students were often innocent victims of misinformation and the illegal handywork of the criminal purporting to be an “Endorsed” or “Authorized” training provider. The students had paid tuition, attended training to what they believed was an endorsed training program, only to be issued a certificate that when checked to a validation system, would be proven to be counterfeit.

In 2010, TC Energy and the Canadian Common Ground Alliance were presented with an opportunity to promote damage prevention awareness — Justin Bieber had agreed to film a Call Before You Dig public service announcement (back then, ClickBeforeYouDig wasn’t yet the call-to-action and everyone was promoting Call Before You Dig). Logistics were worked out — Justin’s current tour had him in Winnipeg in September and he agreed to take some time to film the segment. Arrangements were made and we waited.

The foundation of the Education and Public Awareness Committee’s initiatives starts with partnership. By collaborating with industry stakeholders, we can deliver consistent messaging to our collective audience. This consistency further amplifies the outreach programs that are already in place and reinforces the importance of the safety messages. By collaborating with other working committees, we can raise awareness about ongoing damage prevention “Best Practices” initiatives that the other committees are working toward and encourage participation from all stakeholder groups. We are all, after all, partners in safety.