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The Underground Damage Prevention (Locate) process has over the years become more and more critical and has now reached the point where every time you dig, you can potentially harm or kill not only yourself, but also your employees, customers or innocent bystanders. As a matter of fact, there are statistics that show that there is new damage to underground plant on average about one every sixty seconds. Damage Prevention Technicians (DPTs) who are more commonly
known as locators are charged with finding underground communications cable, gas lines, hydro cables, water pipes, fibre lines, sewer lines and any other thing that might be buried where you are planning to dig. They need to mark the
location of the underground plant and they need to make the excavator aware of where things are buried.

Most DPTs or locators work for utilities, contractor firms, municipalities or even on their own. In all cases those DPTs must somehow be notified of an impending excavation. They must reach the excavation site before the excavator arrives to start digging.

Most municipalities and utilities run a call centre allowing contractors and homeowners to call in to advise they are going to dig. Over the years independent, contractor sponsored call centres and utility sponsored call centres have started up that are offering to reduce the number of calls the consumer has to make. About 15 years ago, the average excavator had up to 35 phone numbers to call to make sure that all utilities were notified. Most independent call centres are competitively looking to sign up everyone (Municipalities, utilities, industry) who has buried outside plant.

Through technology, software and teamwork a number of approaches to reducing the number of calls the consumer needs to make have been achieved. In some areas a true one call – one locate system exists, other areas still require a home owner or an excavator to make innumerable phone calls to submit a locate order and then for the DPTs to receive the work order.

UtiLocate (U2) Software has been created to be an easy to use solution to managing the entire underground locates process.

Here is an example of what happens if an excavator needs to dig a trench along the side of the road.

The old way: The excavator looks up the phone numbers of all outside plant owners that could have plant in the area where the excavation is to happen. The excavator calls all utilities, industry and municipalities that might have something in the area. The excavator must take a lot of time to do this and so many excavators simply skip this step and go ahead and start excavating.

The best way: The excavator calls the local call centre, makes the single phone call to the known phone number … and it’s done.

ForImmediate Release, April 21, 2011

MPP Bailey’s ‘Ontario One Call Act’

Passes Second Reading With All-Party Support

Queen’sPark— Sarnia-Lambton MPP BobBailey presented his private member’s bill dubbed the “Call BeforeYou Dig” Act to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for Second ReadingDebate this afternoon. Bill 180, entitled the‘Ontario One Call Act, 2011’, if passed, will establishOntario One Call Ltd. as a not-for-profit call centre, a single point-of-contactfor all underground utility location services in Ontario

Today, MPP Bailey’s legislationreceived all-party support during debate and passed unanimously through second reading.Originally presented to the Assembly on April 13, 2011 the next step on itslegislative journey will be an in-depth review in one of the Assembly’sstanding committees before receiving a final third vote.

TheOntario One Call Act would make safety a priority bystreamlining the current system; it would require all those operatingunderground infrastructure to participate in a single 24/7 call centre in theprovince to provide the ‘locates’ for underground infrastructure.

“I’mvery happy that the other parties have seen the value in this importantbill,” said Bailey, following the vote. “This bill isn’t justabout streamlining a confusing system to make it easier to dig in yourbackyard; it’s about preventing accidents and saving lives.”

Failing to locate all underground andoverhead utilities prior to construction has led to property damage totalingnearly $33 million each year. This imposes a significant loss of revenue, aswell as productivity and efficiency for businesses of all sizes.

Between 2008 and 2009, there were over2500 pipeline strikes in Ontario,two of which resulted in fatalities. Last autumn, a Niagara Falls landscaping company was fined$225,000 following a fatal explosion at the site of a residential home. Thecompany, after failing to locate the underground utilities, accidentallypunctured a propane line on the property. Tragically, a 58-year-old grandmotherof three, who was home at the time, died in the explosion.

The Ministry of Labour found that the landscapingcompany had made no effort at all to discover the location of undergroundutilities or have their ‘locates’ marked.  This graveoversight left the workers on site with no knowledge of what was beneath theground where they dug and resulted in the death of a Niagara Falls’ woman.

“One life is too many,” saidBailey. “We need to stop dragging our feet on this issue – its justcommon sense. We need a system where anyone, anywhere in Ontario can find out what infrastructureexists under their property. With the growing complexity of our undergroundutilities, a mandatory One Call system will save money, and lives.”

TheOntario One Call Act has the full support of many of Ontario’sconstruction and utility companies, as well as the current Ontario One Callagency – so far almost 40 municipalities, agencies and companies havewritten to our office expressing their support for Bill 180.

“A mandatory one-call system hasfour major benefits,” said Paul Rietdyk, vice president of distributionoperations for Union Gas. “Most importantly, it reduces risk and willsave lives, it’s more cost-effective than a voluntary system, itsbusiness friendly in that it will improve productivity for excavators and itworks effectively. For instance, in the U.S., mandatory one call systemshave been successfully implemented in all 50 jurisdictions – and in afour-year period damages have dropped by 70%.”

A video of today’s press conferenceand debate have been uploaded online and are located at http://www.bobbaileympp.com/video-releases.html

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