2021 Brings New Beginnings at Alberta One-Call

A new year brings new beginnings for Alberta One-Call Corporation (AOC). On Jan. 1, 2021, Canada’s first One-Call / Notification Centre, which began serving the public October 1984, officially began delivering the services of the Alberta Common Ground Alliance. The two safety organizations unified services following a decision by the AOC Board of Directors in November 2019 and an overwhelmingly positive vote by members of the ABCGA in April 2020.

With the unified services, all existing buried asset owners registered with AOC become members of the ABCGA; and, existing ABCGA members, that are not buried asset owners, will immediately notice a dramatic reduction in their annual membership fees.

“The majority of the ABCGA’s operating costs were eliminated through unification”, explained AOC president, Mike Sullivan. “Times have changed in Alberta. Over the last five years, our member companies have gotten leaner and there is an expectation that the organizations they support do the same.” 

The former ABCGA committees (Best Practices, Education & Marketing and the Training Standards Committee) will continue to operate as they previously did, but there will be more rigor to the objectives. “AOC won’t be chairing these committees”, explained AOC operations director Sher Kirk, “but it will ensure the committees adhere to their terms of reference, and identify and fulfill annual objectives. If they can’t, AOC will step-in to complete tasks.”

As for the Damage Reporting and Evaluation Committee, formerly known as the DIRT Committee, it will now become an AOC operational function. “AOC has the means to manage this committee’s critical deliverables,” Kirk continued. “Our staff are well-positioned to manage the expectations and deadlines associated with damage reporting in Alberta.”

In another new twist, beginning Jan. 1, the AOC will begin administering the successful Where’s the Line? program for Alberta. “Four of the five overhead power line companies that created the WTL program are AOC Board Member companies and a desire to bring both safety organizations’ operations closer has been discussed for years”, Sullivan said.

Similar to the fiscal realities faced by the ABCGA, the WTL initiative was losing members. Operating costs were high and duplication with AOC’s awareness and advertising budget was significant. “The part that really nagged at me,” continued Sullivan, “was that Alberta could lose the great work that had been achieved and also lose the Where’s the Line? call-to-action. It was unacceptable.”

Two AOC board member companies took the lead to convince the AOC board of directors to absorb the WTL program into AOC operations. “It just made sense,” says Kym Fawcett, AOC board member and director, health, safety, environment and quality at ATCO Utilities. “The biggest challenge will be to promote awareness of buried and overhead energy and utility assets and how to work safely near them — but Mike and the AOC team have proven time and again they are capable of anything we ask them to do.”

With these major changes, AOC released a Request for Proposals to create a new brand consistent with the expanded services. “For almost 40 years, we’ve been Alberta One-Call and now that’s changing," Sher Kirk said. "We’ll still provide the same locate request services that have been the core of AOC operations since 1984 but we’ll also be providing a lot more.”

“Change is inevitable,” continued Mike. “And our name needs to reflect the changes that are happening.”

“The AOC team has experienced more changes in the last 10 years than I can count!” joked Sher. “And, our team has responded to every challenge along the way with glowing reviews. It won’t be any different this time.”