Looking back, 2022 was a year of grounding. Unification of Alberta One-Call Corporation, the Alberta Common Ground Alliance and the Where’s the LINE program which took place in 2021 had settled in and the new organization had taken shape. While the Contact Centre continued its feverish pace managing the locate request and notification process for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the committees that operated under the previous Alberta Common Ground Alliance had clearly hit their stride.

While 2023 will see the usual procedural updates, policy tweaks and tightening of process, USP will also be formalizing the Quality Control arm of the Contact Centre that was put through a trial in 2022 (see the December 2021 column!). With it, our Contact Centre will have multiple levels of checks and balances for Agent performance management, and a more cohesive and structured set of requirements for the Quality Control group. While 2022 was a testing interval, 2023 will see the fully realized version of this idea brought forth. I have high hopes for this program and foresee great things in our future!

Since October 1984, the message of “Call Before You Dig” (and more recently, “ClickBeforeYouDig™” and “Where’s the Line?”) has become a common mantra for homeowners, utility operators and the contractor community.  These phrases encourage people to arrange for the locating and marking of buried facilities and overhead lines before their ground disturbance and construction activities are initiated.  While essential for the safe completion of projects big and small, have you considered that the damage prevention process may include other steps?

The last few years have been extremely difficult for a lot of people for varying reasons, not the least of which being a global pandemic. Tempers are short, patience is thin, people are on edge all over the world. We are however very much in this together. People get up in the morning to go to work, do a good job, and take pride in the work they do. Contact Centre work can certainly affect employees’ mental health, and we all need to be working together to reach the same shared goal: safety. We are much more equipped to help when we are treated with respect.

In Alberta, there are thousands of kilometers of power lines, most of which are overhead in rural areas and underground in the larger cities. They are necessary to transmit electricity to hundreds of Alberta communities, farms, businesses and homes. These lines follow the standards set by the Alberta Electrical Utility Code and it is reviewed and updated as needed.

People may wonder how deep the pipelines on their property are buried underground, or they may assume that the pipe is several feet underground. The honest answer is that you can’t make any assumptions about the depth of the pipe – even if you watched them put it in the ground when they built it.

Every year the CCGA releases its signature report called the Damage Information Reporting Tool (DIRT) report. The DIRT report was designed to collect and record the data found in damage reports for damages made to underground infrastructure. It provides a summary and an analysis of damages reported throughout Canada in a form that users can easily breakdown, assess against their own damage prevention programs and look for improvements that can lead to a reduction in damages. Not many industries publish a book dedicated to their lack of success. Let's look at how we can use this lack of success to get a return on our investment in DIRT.

Times Square in New York City is one of the busiest and most congested intersections in North America. Everywhere you look, there are throngs of people moving about, street entertainers, New York’s finest, oodles of advertising and at night, the lights are so bright you almost need shades! A few years back, I had the unique happenstance of being in Times Square while buried infrastructure beneath the intersection was exposed for road upgrades. For someone like me who has worked in the buried utility industry for decades, it was an eye-opening experience. I mean, I do know what’s below and have spent the better part of my adult life promoting safe work around buried energy and utility assets. But this? This was stunning!