Report to / Rapport au :
Finance
and Economic Development Committee
Comité des services organisationnels et du
développement économique
and Council/et au Conseil
|
Ref N°: ACS2011-ICS-INF-0008 |
SUBJECT: Review OF CITY
PARTICIPATION IN A ONE CALL TO DIG SYSTEM
OBJET: EXAMEN
DE LA PARTICIPATION DE LA VILLE AU SYSTÈME «APPELER AVANT DE CREUSER»
REPORT RECOMMENDATION
That the Finance and Economic Development Committee receive
this report for information and direct staff to work with the
Ontario Government on the development of a province-wide one call to dig
system.
RECOMMANDATION DU RAPPORT
Que le Comité des finances et du
développement économique prenne connaissance du présent
rapport et demande au personnel de travailler avec le Gouvernement de l’Ontario
sur l’élaboration d’un système « appeler avant de creuser » à
l’échelle de la province.
BACKGROUND
At its meeting on 24 March 2010, Council passed the following motion:
That Council approve, as
part of the Corporate efficiencies initiative, that the City Manager review the
cost-benefit of participating in the One Call to Dig System and report back to
the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee (CSEDC) in Q3 of
2010.
Subsequently staff advised the CSEDC members by memo in October 2010 that the work on evaluating the One Call to Dig System would not be completed until Q1 2011 with a report to the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee in Q2 2011.
One Call systems are non-profit call centers established by the owners and operators of buried utilities that receive excavator locate requests and notify member organizations with underground facilities within the vicinity of the dig site. These are utility member-driven call centers servicing the excavating industry. Call centers operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to process excavator locate requests and notify utility members with underground works in the area of the requests. The One Call service provider does not provide locate services, the actual locates are done by the Utility companies. Those requesting locates are not charged for the service. The service is paid for by the utilities that subscribe to the service on a cost-per-call basis.
There are a number of Provincial regulations that require excavators to request locates for underground utilities in and near a proposed excavation site. Construction Regulation 213/91 under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) is enforced by the Ministry of Labour (MOL). Section 228 of the Regulation states that:
228 (1) Before an excavation is begun,
1. the employer excavating shall ensure that all gas, electrical and other services in and near the area to be excavated are located and marked;
In addition, there are specific requirements pertaining to underground Oil and Gas Pipeline Systems under Section 9 of Ontario Regulation 210/01 (the Regulations to the Technical Standards and Safety Act enforced by the Technical Standards and Safety Authority ( TSSA) and pertaining to electrical distribution infrastructure under the Ontario Electrical Safety Code Reg. 22/04 enforced by the Electrical Safety Authority (ESA).
The legislative framework in Ontario places an obligation on excavators to carry out accurate locates of underground infrastructure prior to excavation.
The Ontario Ministry of Consumer Services (the Ministry) is currently reviewing a Province-wide requirement for a One-Call system as part of the Provinces Open for Business initiative. The Ministry retained Deloitte in 2010, to undertake “An Analysis and Report on the Participation of Municipalities and Electrical Distribution Companies in Ontario’s One Call to Dig Initiative.” Based on interviews with municipalities, local electricity distribution companies and other stakeholders the report identified the following perceived benefits and obstacles to membership in a one call system.
Benefits
· Improved safety and reduced incidents causing injuries and damages to existing infrastructure may be achieved.
· Streamlining the utility locate process for both contractors and homeowners.
· Expected to help achieve underground mapping consistency and uniformity by encouraging members to develop and/or upgrade digital mapping.
· Increased efficiencies to excavators through a reduction in the number of calls and amount of scheduling and co-ordination that must take place.
· Reduction in repair costs due to damage.
· Fewer incidents of service loss.
· Contribution to awareness of health and safety issues.
· Excavator compliance with the Ministry of Labour, the TSSA and the ESA with greater ease and within appropriate time frames.
· Economies of scale, the larger the membership the lower the cost of service.
Issues
On 13 April 2011, a private members bill was introduced into the Ontario Provincial Legislature titled “Ontario One Call Act, 2011” Bill 180. The Bill received Second Reading on 21 April 2011 and will now go to one of the Legislature’s standing committees for in-depth review before receiving a final third vote.
In Canada, one-call systems have set-up operation in the provinces of British Columbia (BC One Call), Alberta (Alberta One-Call) Saskatchewan (Sask 1st Call) Manitoba (Call Before You Dig) and Quebec (Info Excavation). In Ontario, there are currently three one call services operating - Ontario One Call (ON1Call), DigLine Ontario and DigNORTH. Ontario One Call is the largest system. It should be noted that in Canada and Ontario with the existing legislative framework there is no mandatory One Call Legislation. As a consequence, there is no true one-call system, where one call would provide excavators with access to all necessary information, rather than making multiple calls to various utilities. Not all Utility operators are currently members of a single one-call system, and excavators must contact each of the Utilities or the call centre for the Utility uses.
The Ontario One Call (ON1Call) System was reviewed by City staff in 2002 as part of the City’s review of alternative service delivery models for water and sewer locates. At that time, it was determined that it would end up costing the City more to use the One Call Model than to continue with the current internal system. A review of the actual calls received in 2000 indicated that the City’s water and sewer locate service would receive almost a 200% increase in locate requests through the Ontario One Call system. The increase in calls would mainly be due to requests for works that were shallow (<1.2m) and would not have an impact on the deep City services.
In the 2002, alternative service delivery review was completed. The financial component indicated that additional costs to move to the Ontario One Call System would amount to approximately $800,000 in annual operating costs and a one-time Capital investment of approximately $500,000 to respond to the additional calls received. It was noted in the original report that annual damage to plant due to dig-ins amounted to approximately $30,000.
Since the motion was tabled, a Bill has been placed
before the Provincial Legislature that may make One Call to Dig Service
mandatory. Notwithstanding this
development, staff have reviewed the current options and have provided costing implications
in response to the 2010 Council motion. Curently,
the City of Ottawa provides utility locating services for City water and sewer
infrastructure, for City streetlighting (through the City’s service contract
with Black and McDonald) and for City traffic signals. The majority of requests for locates are
received directly by the three work areas with a smaller number of calls coming
through the City 311 call centre. For example, in 2009 out of 9,900 locate requests received by
Environmental Services for water and sewer locates, 1574 were initiated through
311 and the remaining were sent directly to Environmental Services.
In Ottawa, Ontario One Call (ON1Call) is the one-call
to dig service provider for Enbridge Gas, Bell Canada, Ottawa Hydro,
TransCanada Pipeline, Hydro One Transmission, Atria and Videotron. Ontario One Call provided
statistics for their call centre for the past four (4) years. For the Ottawa
area they received 48,839 calls for locates in 2010. The total number of requests managed by
the Ontario One Call’s call centre for the City of Ottawa has increased in the
last four years from 40,000 calls to almost 49,000 calls in 2010. This is a significantly higher volume of calls
than is currently received by the City’s locate services.
To reduce the
number of calls received by a Utility, Ontario One Call utilizes standard filters.
These filters can be by depth, property ownership or service area. Of the 48,839
calls received in 2010 - 15,600 were on
private property and 19,443 were for excavations of less than 1.2 metres. These are the types of filters the City would
use to reduce the number of calls that would be forwarded to our water and
sewer locators from a one-call service. Even
with the use of filters, if the City moves to a One Call to dig service there
is the potential for an increase in the number of calls received by the City. For water and sewer services, the increase could
be from approximately 10,000 calls to between 15,000 to 30,000 calls ( 50% to
200% increase) depending on the filters applied. Streetlighting could experience an increase in
calls from 19,000 to 30,000 calls..
Summary of Information Available for Locate
Requests Received
|
Year |
Ontario One Call |
City |
|||||
|
Streetlighting |
Traffic Signals |
Sewer / Water |
|||||
|
|
Total |
Depth < 1.2m (4ft) |
Depth < 0.3m (1ft) |
Private Property |
|
|
|
|
2009 |
49,648 |
20,641 |
3,965 |
16,006 |
17,718 |
|
9,900 |
|
2010 |
48,839 |
19,443 |
3,012 |
15,600 |
19,392 |
2,500 |
10,489 |
Currently, the City is not experiencing a significant number of locations where City infrastructure is damaged as a result of excavators self-filtering and only obtaining locates where they determine a utility locate is required based on the work being completed. In 2010, there were 10 locations where water utilities were not located and damage occurred. It should also be noted that there were 8 locations where there was damage even though utilities had been accurately located. The cost for damage to watermains that had not been located in 2010 was less than $1,500 per location for a total cost of $15,000.
Annual
Damage to Plant
|
Year |
Street
lighting Cable Cuts |
Traffic Signals |
Watermain |
||
|
|
with locates |
without locates |
with locates |
with locates |
without
locates |
|
2010 |
10 |
16 |
1 |
8 |
10 |
There is the potential for a cost-saving to the excavation
community based on the number of calls or requests required to be made prior to
excavation. Currently in Ottawa, an
excavator has to contact between five to ten separate utility operators for
locates depending on where the work is occurring in the City and the type of
work. Most locate requests today are made using an electronic distribution list
and e-mail or fax, so the time-saving of having the City with One Call will be
minimal from an operating perspective.
There are over 20 utility plant owners identified that
have buried plant in the City of Ottawa. Some, like the Federal Government,
have plant in limited areas of the City. Often excavators contact the core list
of Utilities and are unaware of the need to contact these additional utility plant
owners. The real advantage, both from a financial and a safety perspective, to
having a One Call system will occur when all Utility providers are utilizing
one system to accept incoming requests for locates so that excavators, whether
the City’s own staff or private companies, truly have to make only one call to
get access to all Utilities operating in the City.
There
are two One Call service providers operating in the Ottawa area. Currently
Ontario One Call is offering Municipalities a free membership. Non-Municipal members of Ontario One Call
pay $1.70 per call. The proposal provides the following services:
Potential costs to the municipality will be the cost
of additional staff to process the increased number of calls received and the
resulting increase in the number of locates. It is anticipated that not all of the
additional calls received will result in an actual field locate required. Mapping
information on utility plant locations can be used to better filter locate
locations at the front end of a request to reduce the number of calls coming to
each utility provider, and to reduce the number of field locates required.
Without clear definition of the business process of the successful vendor and
the filters that their system can accommodate, it is difficult to determine if
we can actually provide enough filtering based on the current information the
City has available to minimize or eliminate an increase in locate requests and
the associated increase in costs to the City.
For the Traffic Signals group, the
current locator is working at full capacity and has no additional capacity to
perform additional locates. Any increase
in locate requests would require an additional staff allocation at least during
the summer months to review requests for locates and clear or complete the
field locate requests based on the current mapping system. Traffic Signals Branch feel there is an
opportunity to leverage improved mapping of the Traffic Signals network to
better filter the locate requests to reduce the number of locates received if
the City moves to a one-call service. Joining One Call will extend
locate coverage to the City’s entire communications network which will
also increase normal and after hour locate requests.
To do this, Traffic Operations will require a temporary
Drafting/GIS Technician for a one-year term estimated at an annual cost of
$65,000 to work with One Call on the transfer of Traffic’s electronic
data, refine filters and set procedures for ongoing data transfer. This
temporary funding requirement will be managed through compensation gapping in
the existing compensation budget through temporary vacancies.
The current
Streetlight Service Contract between the City of Ottawa and Black and McDonald
has provisions for locate services in the lump sum contract. The current
contract was renewed last year for another 5 year term with an expiry date of 31
March 2015.
In Environmental Services (water and sewer) currently there are 6 staff positions to undertake field locates. These positions are augmented in peak periods with First Response staff. In addition, year round there is one administrative staff receiving and processing locate requests. From April to November three additional administrative staff assist in the processing of locate requests. During peak periods, additional clerical staff may be used to assist with the processing of locate requests. There would be a cost to ESD in going to a One Call system if the number of locate requests received increased.
There are a number of operating groups within the City
that require locates to be undertaken prior to excavations in the field. There
is a cost for each of these groups to make calls to obtain locates. These
groups would benefit from the reduction in calls being made. Most do use an electronic contact list and as
long as the contact list is accurate and up-to-date there would not be a large
impact in the level of effort required to make a locate request between the
current system and moving to a one-call system.
The greatest benefit in the City moving from the
current system to a one-call system will be in ensuring that all excavators
contact all of the City services and that none are missed. There will not be a
reduction in costs for the City in the receipt and processing of locate
requests, in fact the City will likely see an increase in the number of calls
for locates under a One Call System with a resulting increase in staff, fleet
and equipment costs.
Overall the greatest benefit to the community will be
realized when all utilities operating in the City of Ottawa are members of a
true One Call system so that anyone excavating has only one contact to receive
locates from all Utilities operating in the area of excavation.
RURAL IMPLICATIONS
The One Call to Dig System would be implemented in rural as well as urban areas of the City if ultimately adopted by City Council.
CONSULTATION
Meetings were held with Ontario One Call and Digline / Dig North, the two service providers operating in Ontario to obtain information on their current operations in the Ottawa area and throughout the Province of Ontario.
Staff has also contacted the staff at the Ministry of Consumer Services that is reviewing the implementation of a Province-wide one-call system. Staff also participates regularly in Ontario Regional Common Ground Alliance (ORCGA) forums. ORCGA is a province-wide non-profit organization dedicated to shared responsibility in damage prevention and in the promotion of damage prevention best practices. Membership includes all of the major Utility owners and operators in the Province of Ontario as well as representation from the excavators, contractors, design professionals and other stakeholders working within the public road allowance.
Locally, staff acts as the Chair and provides administrative support to the local Ottawa Utility Coordinating Committee (UCC) which also provides a forum for the coordination and establishment of safe work practices for Utilities working within the public road allowance. The Ottawa UCC is also attended by the Ottawa Heavy Construction Association. The City’s participation in a One Call system has been discussed at the Ottawa UCC.
Public Works Comments
The Public Works Department has been consulted in the development of this report and is supportive of the report recommendations. Public Works will work with the Infrastructure Services Department to implement the recommendations subject to approval by Committee.
COMMENTS BY THE WARD COUNCILLOR(S)
There are no specific Ward Councillor
comments as this is a City-wide issue.
LEGAL/RISK MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS
There are no legal/risk management impediments to implementing the recommendations in this report.
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
This report has
no financial implications. Detailed cost implications will be identified for
appropriate years once the Province makes a decision on a mandatory One Call to
Dig System, upon which staff will report back to Committee and Council on a
final program. The cost of a one (1 ) year temporary Drafting/GIS Tech to
transfer Traffic’s electronic data, refine filters and set procedures for
ongoing data transfer will be funded through positional compensation gapping.
TECHNOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
There are no technological implications in this report.
CITY STRATEGIC PLAN
This report is consistent with the Service
Delivery and Sustainable Finances priorities of the City Strategic Plan.
CONCLUSION
After a review of current utility locate practices, staff have concluded
the City should urge the Province to implement a One Call to Dig
system for the following reasons.
If the Province establishes a one call to dig system, the City will work
with the system’s administers to establish filters that will limit the number
to calls for locates. In this way, it is
anticipated that the City will be able to limit the expected increase in costs
associated with a one-call to dig system. When this work is complete, staff
will report back to Committee and Council with a recommended program, including
a detailed estimate on the cost of implementation, for consideration.
If the Province does not move to implement a one-call to dig system,
staff will report back to Committee and Council with a proposed course of
action.
DISPOSITION
Staff will implement Committee direction and actions described in this report.