Dear Member,
This is to to inform you about Mandatory Damage Reporting. While only our top volume Members (see the list below) are required to report damages into DIRT, we encourage all members to submit damage reporting.
If you are a top volume member and you are currently reporting damages into DIRT, thank you. If you are a top volume member and you are not currently reporting, your organization will need to get organized to report all damages before the deadline of January 13th, 2023. It is highly recommended to submit damage reporting monthly or quarterly.
Background
Mandatory damage reporting is vital to understanding the root causes of damages and to inform strategies to help Members, Excavators and One Call centres reduce risks.
Approach
Ontario One Call requires our top volume Members to supply damage information to the DIRT program, which is maintained by the ORCGA. Members are expected to submit data for the year 2022 by January 13th, 2023.
Our top volume Members are determined by the number of notifications that a Member received in the period between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2021. The following Members comprise the top volume Member List:
• Alectra Utilities
• Bell Canada
• City of Brampton
• City of Hamilton
• City of Markham
• City of Mississauga
• City of Oakville
• City of Ottawa
• City of Toronto
• City of Vaughan
• City of Windsor
• Cogeco Cable
• Durham Region
• Elexicon Energy
• Enbridge Gas
• Enbridge Pipelines
• Hydro One
• Hydro Ottawa
• London Hydro
• Peel Region
• Region of Halton
• Region of York
• Rogers Communications
• Telus Communications
• Toronto Hydro
This approach was chosen because the top volume Members represent more than 70% of all notifications received. Focusing on this group of Members allows us to collect a robust data set without putting an administrative burden on all 800+ Members of Ontario One Call, many of whom receive less than 500 notifications per year.
Members not included in this list are still welcomed and encouraged to participate.
For New Participants
For new participants in the DIRT program, we understand that some of this data will be submitted later this year once their data submission processes are established. This year’s deadline for submission is January 13th, 2023. We strongly recommend that data be submitted on a monthly or quarterly basis through the DIRT website.
You can learn about the process by going to the DIRT website at https://www.cga-dirt.com/orcga. This website has not only the registration page but also links to a 101 introductory page, FAQ, Training courses as well as the link to the Tools and Resources and a collection of the USA annual DIRT reports. Ontario’s annual DIRT reports can be found at the ORCGA website https://orcga.com/publications/dirt-report.
Please note that the DIRT database does provide a number of built-in reports that you can use to analyze your own company’s damages to determine what educational programs will help to protect your own infrastructure and reduce damages and interruptions to your service.
You can find assistance by contacting Jennifer Parent at the ORCGA at jennifer@orcga.com or your Member Services contact at Ontario One Call. For those Members who are currently submitting into DIRT we thank you for your continued support of this program which is an essential tool in our continuing efforts to measure and therefore reduce damages, and increase the safety of the excavation community. To those that are new to the program, we welcome you and look forward to assisting you.
Regards,
Ontario One Call Team
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