Best Practices – Updating the Alberta Guidelines

Best Practices – Updating the Alberta Guidelines

The Utility Safety Partners Best Practices Committee has both the responsibility to be the voice of Alberta’s damage prevention industry for the Canadian Best Practices, and to maintain and update the Alberta-specific guidelines Damage Prevention Process in Alberta.

This year, the Committee will be completing a review of the Alberta guideline document to update several areas where industry changes are required. Along with several minor changes to update references to Alberta One-Call instead of Utility Safety Partners, the committee will be looking at practices where there are differences between the process for shallow utilities, the construction industry and the oil and gas sector. The need for the guidelines to identify differences between highly regulated practices and less-regulated industry practices was noted in the last update (see Image 1), but multiple changes within the Best Practices Committee itself delayed any action on this issue. Since the Best Practices Committee has representation from multiple stakeholder categories, it is the right time to address this update.

Image 1 – excerpt from current Damage Prevention Process in Alberta

Utility Safety Partners encourages all stakeholders to get involved in the important work of the committees. We recognize that not every organization has the capacity to provide consistent representation on the committee. Downsizing in many organizations means that many are now forced to wear many hats and that has impacted available resources for volunteer activities like committee-work. The depletion of resources is one of the reasons for the unification of the ABCGA and Alberta One-Call. The critical work of keeping up-to-date best practice documents, of raising industry awareness of safety issues, of maintaining standardization of training is still so important. We all have a part to play in safety, and committees need people to step up to keep the journey to improved damage prevention going.

If your organization has the capacity to join the Best Practices Committee to be involved in this document review, I encourage you to reach out to info@utilitysafety.ca and volunteer. However, even if you cannot participate in the work at the committee level, it is still important that proposed updates receive your industry’s review and feedback. As the committee makes updates, we will require USP stakeholders to commit to careful review of the work in progress and to provide comments. The finished guidelines will only be effective if they are created collaboratively and are accepted by stakeholders.

Sher Kirk - Operations Director - Utility Safety Partners