The Power of Many. The Value of One.

The August 2021 Click to Know What’s Above and Below eNews will be the final edition published under the Alberta One-Call Corporation (AOC) banner. Although AOC unified services with the Alberta Common Ground Alliance, and took over the Where’s the Line? campaign Jan. 1, 2021, the three safety organizations continued to operate as separate entities – but that all changes in the next few weeks as the three become one under the Utility Safety Partners banner.

While moving forward is a necessary and evolutionary process, it’s equally vital to acknowledge where you came from. As we close this chapter in AOC history, I found it uplifting to look back at our roots.

In the late 1970s, Alberta experienced unprecedented economic growth, primarily due to the development and expansion of energy related industries. This growth, together with intense construction activity in rural and urban Alberta, created a severe risk of personal injury from an alarming number of damages to buried facilities.

In 1979, ground disturbance activities in Alberta caused over 8,600 damage incidents with direct costs in excess of $4,000,000 just for damage repair and loss of product. This sum does not include the secondary costs incurred through loss of service, liability for property damage, personal injury, legal fees, emergency response, evacuation, environmental damage and reclamation or administration. 

Also in 1979, the Millwoods pipeline disaster in Edmonton, which nearly cost one individual his life and forced the evacuation of over 18,000 residents, resulted from an unreported hit on a propane pipeline. This incident was a major factor in the decision to implement a province wide one-call system.

Shortly thereafter, the Alberta One-Call System Committee formed in September 1979 to investigate and prepare a feasibility report on the implementation of a one-call system for Alberta. The committee comprised representatives from provincial, municipal, utility, pipeline and construction agencies. 

For decades, the AOC Contact Centre hummed with as many as 60 damage prevention associates processing locate requests from diligent Albertans calling in locate requests. Today, over 80 per cent of all locate requests in Alberta are generated through the web shifting the majority of DSA responsibilities to technical support. And we’ve been providing damage prevention services to Manitoba since 2013 and Saskatchewan since 2019. “Initiating the damage prevention process no longer requires bricks and mortar” says AOC Contact Centre Manager, Josef Rosenberg. “Since the beginning of the pandemic last year, we’ve been operating remotely to protect the health and safety of our team, without whom we wouldn’t be able to operate.”

2020 was the busiest year AOC experienced in over ten years – and we managed it all while working remotely. The agility to pivot so quickly is a testament to everyone at AOC.

Since receiving that first call in 1984, AOC has processed over 15 million locate requests and generated over 50 million notifications to our registered members of proposed excavations in the vicinity of their buried energy and utility assets. Just imagine how many lives have been saved!

- Mike Sullivan