The Utility Safety Partners Organization

By Mike Sullivan, President, Utility Safety Partners

Utility Safety Partners is the unified services of Alberta One-Call Corporation, the Alberta Common Ground Alliance and the Joint Utility Safety Team (JUST) that promoted the Where’s the LINE? campaign. Together, we promote public, worker and community safety, administer the ClickBeforeYouDig damage prevention process and provide overhead powerline safety awareness. 

A 16-member board of directors, consisting of 15 founding members that initiated Alberta One-Call Corporation 40 years ago and two at-large members representing the interests of the former Alberta Common Ground Alliance, governs Utility Safety Partners. 

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 and during the winter months, we reduce to 10. Those agents and Contact Centre administration, including three team leaders and a Contact Centre manager, provide the same services for Saskatchewan and Manitoba. 

Over 850 individual buried asset companies are registered with USP. They require support provided by our three-person member services team and our two-person accounting staff. Member services help members manage their data, administer contracts, represent USP at tradeshows and conferences, and coordinate our safety ambassadors, while accounting coordinates invoices, revenues, payables, payroll, professional annual financial audits, monthly and annual reports, and all other accounting requirements.

Unique to USP are the member-driven committees from the Alberta Common Ground Alliance. Their objectives complement, promote and support USP’s core purpose. USP administration participates on those committees and provides administrative services if required but the goal from the very beginning is that those committees retain their member-driven engagement. As such, they are chaired by industry partners.

Rounding out the USP organization and its objectives are contract resources, such as the safety ambassadors, social media, advertising, training standards committee administration, government relations and human resources. 

Finally, senior administration consists of USP’s operations director comptroller, who report directly to the president, who reports to the board of directors. The operations director oversees critical operations and is responsible for USP’s ability to forecast and meet core service demands. Within the unified structure, the operations director is also collectively responsible, with the president, for transitioning and expanding services to meet the goal of a damage prevention and safety hub.