Collaboration as a Strategic Weapon in Safety Training

A transformative change in industrial safety begins here.

Mike welcomes Debbie Shelley of Global Training and Jeff Mulligan from Aztec Safety, who share their collaborative efforts establishing the Alternate Locate Provider training program.

Their discussion highlights the program's evolution, its alignment with industry standards, and the synergy between two leading safety training providers.

This episode shine’s a spotlight on the program's significant role in propelling damage prevention to new heights across Canada and maybe beyond the borders.

Listen For:
2:20 Collaboration in Safety Training Development
3:51 Behind the Scenes of Creating a Training Program
8:37 The Launch and impact of the Alternate Locate Provider Program
12:47 The Expanding Role of Utility Safety Partners in Damage Prevention

Connect with Guest DEBBIE SHELLEY
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Connect with Guest JEFF MULLIGAN
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Transcript

Intro (00:02):

You are listening to the Safety Moment Podcast by Utility Safety Partners. Safety is always a good conversation and it's a click away. Here's your host, Mike Sullivan.

Mike Sullivan (00:16):

Joining me on today's podcast, we have Mr. Jeff Mulligan with Aztec Safety and Debbie Shelley from Global Training, global Training and Aztec have teamed up to create the alternate locate provider training. They were the first ones to roll out the door with this training based on the alternate locate provider training standard. Thanks for joining me on the podcast today, Debbie and Jeff, before we begin and let ladies go first, always Debbie, tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit more about global training. I mean, you've been doing this for a long time and global's been around for a while, so how did that all that happen?

Debbie Shelley (00:55):

Wow, that's a long story, Mike, but it's really global, was born from a passion, a passion to make a difference in safe lives, and we are one of the leading providers in Canada for industrial safety training, leadership and for development of safety products. So I get to be their proud leader and I am blessed to be working with an amazing team.

Mike Sullivan (01:21):

It is a good team. How about yourself, Jeff? How long have you been doing this with Aztec? You've had quite a career before this, so

Jeff Mulligan (01:27):

Yeah, no, as a retired CEO of a financial institution, I was fortunate enough to get into the consulting world for a few years, and that process led me to Aztec Safety. I became an owner in 2016 and we've been growing the business and largely the online sector training and service provision equipment since

Mike Sullivan (01:49):

Then. So now we're going to be talking about the alternate locate provider program, which is something that has taken some time to get to where we are. We'll talk a little bit about the history here, but before we even do that, this is the first time to my knowledge, and I could be completely wrong, that we've had two training providers come together to create a training program based on the training standard, and we can talk about how that evolves. Am I right? Is this the first time this is happening or is this something that is more common in place than I even know?

Jeff Mulligan (02:20):

Well, I think what I've seen is Deb and I wouldn't be considered the younger generation, but what we are seeing is the younger generation people realizing that collaboration is a strategic weapon and in the right setting in the right place, it becomes the go-to option that you must consider. You can't discount. So I think we want to be relevant and we want to continue to lead our companies in an innovative way. And when we looked at this program, it made sense that with the size of the immediate audience and user group and the amount of the investment that we needed to make make a first class program, that it would make a lot more sense to leverage the strengths our two companies than have them oppose one another. And we both have a long history with USP and the Training standards committee, and as such, we basically were picking up the phone to call each other at the same time to say the same thing.

Mike Sullivan (03:12):

Well, that's great. It is a testament to both companies to realize that in this space, collaboration is probably the right path forward. And obviously both companies have been around for a long time. You have a large market share to begin with and sharing the load. I gather from, like you said, an investment perspective, there's a lot to consider here. And maybe Debbie, you can go a little deeper there. For someone like myself, I get a pretty good idea of what's involved in the development of a training program, but maybe you can take us a little bit deeper into that. What is involved? How do you start?

Debbie Shelley (03:51):

Do you know? The starting part is usually having knowledgeable schmee. What we bring to the table, both Jeff and I and our companies, is the ability to understand how the learner onboards information. We always call it knowledge transfer. What we need are great schmee, like what we had on this working committee. We take that information and then we process that into whatever delivery modality that the clients need for their target audience, whether that is classroom letter, virtual letter online, or a combination or blend of any of these different options. But it's providing the client what they need for the worker or person to be able to accomplish whatever skill or knowledge that they need. It's an in depth process. Mike, I'm not going to kid you. It's not easy work.

Mike Sullivan (04:42):

Well, and again, gathering the subject matter experts, this means in one place to develop something like this even just in that it's this feat in itself mean I see it with the various committees where whether it's a training standards committee or best practices or you name it, government relations, gathering those subject matter experts into a room is not easy. And that was part of the path that led us here. And for those who aren't aware, let me just take a few moments here to explain what the alternate locate provider program is. Going back a little over two years ago, I was approached by the consortium. Now the consortium is a group of utility companies that are registered with their assets with utility safety partners for many years. And they are, shall we call the shallow utilities, even though they're not shallow, but that's what they are typically referenced as.

(05:37):

And this is telecom distribution, gas distribution, electric, and different municipalities as well. And there's about six, seven or eight of them depending where you are in the province that are part of these shallow utilities. A number of years ago, they got together to create this consortium because typically they are almost on every single notification of somebody digging and to share that load for locating and marking. They initiated the contract that would dispatch one locator to locate all of those buried utilities that are part of that consortium. It made sense from a strictly operational perspective. The digging community was only waiting for one locator to arrive on site rather than multiple. And then from a cost perspective as well, it made a lot of sense. What wasn't really considered at the time, but became apparent over time was that this contract with various locate service providers, it created somewhat of an artificial bottleneck.

(06:40):

There's really no shortage of locators in the province of Alberta. However, this contract that had been in place for many years, it created a bottleneck that in order to stay a whole, in order to be competitive and to be profitable, those contract locates service providers could only allocate so many locators as per those contracts. And as these utility owners looked around the room, I'm making air quotes here, but really the world, how were other parts of the world doing this, other parts of Canada doing this? And it struck a task force, the locating and marketing task force to develop a better method of locating and marketing in the province of Alberta for those specific utilities. And now here we are some years later, and what that task force decided to do was to fall on the same path as the ground disturbance 1 0 1 or 2 0 1 process where they would create a training standard or standard essentially that would become a training standard, be adopted as a training standard.

(07:47):

And once that standard was crafted, then the training organizations or the TSC, the training standards committee, they could receive that standard and develop their training programs accordingly. And once that was done, they would submit them for audit. And that's exactly what's happened in a nutshell. It's taken a much longer than a few moments to explain that, but to go through that in real time. And so here we are in Alberta, the training standard was completed some time ago just at the end of 2023, Aztec and Global got together, they collaborated, they created the training standard, and now you are essentially ready to take on trainees. And so when is that taking place? Are you accepting trainees now or is that scheduled?

Jeff Mulligan (08:37):

Yeah, I mean obviously the mission critical work was once the standard was created, we've put a disciplinary in place in the training standards committee to validate, to make sure that the perceived standard is teachable in an effective way. And so we did that work and that's the work that we did while we the program. And now we're at a point where we have our endorsement from the USB on our training program. And we're in a position now where we're very hopeful that by the third week in March, you'll see live delivery in classroom instructor led training taking place in the field for the many people that are calling both Global and Aztec right now saying, how do I get the alternate locator provider training? And we're fielding calls throughout the day. I took two myself today where people were looking to put 10 or 12 people into a course, largely locators, but also administrators of locating departments and some contractors that are going to be interfacing with locators on a regular basis heading into this digging season. But certainly the lion's share, the people calling right now are locators or people representing locators.

Mike Sullivan (09:51):

That's really good news to hear that, by the way, and this is what we expected or anticipated hoped, all of the above, that the locate service providers able put their people through this and hopefully even the digging community, those excavators, perhaps the road builders that are doing these works where these utilities, these consortium type utilities are being notified of almost every road builder type of construction, whether it's road resurfacing or sidewalk curb restoration, that type thing, creation or excavations relating to that. And the benefit of that is having these locators, part of the team potentially that would eliminate the downtime of waiting or locate delays. They're part of the team. So this is in terms of improving the process, the excavation, the damage prevention process. This has the potential and it's not going to happen right away, but it has the potential in a very short amount of time to dramatically change the locating and marketing landscape for these shallow utilities in Alberta. Now, let's go back now to the conference. We just had last week, utility Safety Partners, 40th anniversary and safety conference, and there were a number of sessions and the alternate locate provider session was standing room only. Were you expecting, I know I was expecting that, but Debbie, were you expecting that?

Debbie Shelley (11:27):

You know what? I think that USP has been seen as probably one of the leaders in some of the evolution that's occurring within the damage prevention space. And so this was one of the newer steps forward, and everybody looks to this and looks to conferences like we just were at for that advance advice, that advance expertise knowledge as to what's coming down the pike. What we heard though out of it was absolutely overwhelmingly support for this. And so many of the other agencies that are looking at now onboarding almost the same process. So as per usual USPS coming out as the leader, and that's why it's such a pleasure to work with SP is because they're not afraid to look outside the box. Just because that's the way it's always been done doesn't mean that's the way it should be done. And so the overwhelming success was not surprising.

Mike Sullivan (12:25):

Well, it was great to see, and I see the pictures and it really was standing room, only one of my colleagues said, I thought about trying to buy a seat from somebody who was that popular or sell my own seat. It was that popular and that, like you said, it underlines that it's time. It's time that we do this.

Jeff Mulligan (12:47):

And I think it's another credible plank in the foundation that we're building with respect to the broadening responsibility and expectation that people have for USP. They're seeing USP now as a credible publisher of standards as a credible administrator of programs and damage prevention. And it wasn't that many years ago when we were sitting there talking about bringing together the A-B-C-G-A and under the umbrella, and you and I were spending more time, and Debbie and I alluded to this morning, I called Debbie and I had, we were spending more time doing fundraising than damage prevention. And here we are today doing 99% damage prevention and 1% administering extra funds that we have from the good work that we've all done.

Mike Sullivan (13:34):

So here we are. That's a really good point, and we haven't had a chance to talk about some other things that are going on. I need to have a call with you, but very positive feedback on the Training standards committee. What we're doing collectively and Utility Safety Partners. The relationship is interesting because we're a liaison. We have a liaison to the TSC and USP brands, if you will, the certificate, that type thing. But really the TSC, it's now completely autonomous in a sense. I mean the training standards committee, the revenue structure is still there, but the revenues that certificate revenue, which used to go to the Alberta Common Ground Alliance, for example, in the General Revenue now goes directly to the training standards committee. It pays for its own administrative support, its own audit process, its own swag. Everything is completely a hundred percent generated for the Training Standards committee.

(14:45):

By the Training Standards committee and its members. There's no revenue that comes to utility safety partners whatsoever, which not only is, in my view anyway, the right way to go. It allows utility safety partners to maintain that arm's length that yes, we coexist, we work together, but there, there's no question that there's no financial stake in this. We're doing it for the benefit of the damage prevention process to enhance public worker and community safety. And that really, I like where this has gone. It's been the objective all along and seeing our board member companies and other companies that are members go to that session in Banff last week and absorb it and what was presented for the alternate locate provider, but in general sense that training standards committee, it really exonerates the path we've taken. As you said, Jeff wasn't that long ago. We were talking about unification and then COVID kind of happened and really muddied the waters, but we did a lot of work in that time.

(15:57):

So hats off to the TSC and for getting this done, but there's so much more that could happen here. Now going back to the alternate locate provider, and by mid-March, you're going to start taking trainees. Where do you think this goes? I mean, is it just going to stay in Alberta you think? Are you talking other provinces that might want to go down this path? I've heard rumblings. I am always open to other ideas, but do you think this is going to go further? There's no reason this can be borderless. There's no reason why it can't be.

Jeff Mulligan (16:32):

Yeah. Deb, take your shot at this one and then I'll chirp in with my thoughts.

Debbie Shelley (16:35):

You know what, we certainly are the same as you. Mike got lots of people that were asking questions, lots of different areas that are almost like watching us to see how this rolls out and the success behind it. But the program itself was designed to be borderless. It's designed to be carried anywhere that we've got damage prevention best practices, as well as you've got locators. So there's no reason why we can't carry it out, and we will as long as Jeff and I can.

Mike Sullivan (17:04):

Why not, right? Why not? Yeah.

Jeff Mulligan (17:06):

I think what we have to do is we have to perfect what we're doing in this environment right now and be really comfortable that we've ironed out anything that needs to be addressed and then know that we have a real product, not vapor, but a real value added product that we can go and talk to extensions of the existing consortium and other provinces and other parts of the country and see if we can engage them in driving an expansion of this product and this process across the country.

Mike Sullivan (17:35):

I think it can happen, and I had some feedback yesterday, not specifically on the alternate locate provider, but the training standards committee in general. And the question was is this only intra provincial? Does this remain inter province in the province of Alberta only? And their comment was the utility safety partners brand, it's not just Alberta. It could go and be anywhere. And they mentioned that life brand. And I did say that this is a topic that's much broader than me. I can't say one way or the other what the training standards committee is going to do. But what I did say was that when we selected the name Utility Safety Partners and the brand, we made sure that it wasn't centric to Alberta only that it could provide or be the brand that goes beyond the province. And we do provide notification center services to Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

(18:40):

They maintain their brands. We're just the notification center. We're not promoted out there at all. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But when I hear feedback from outside the province saying, that brand speaks to us, that brand makes sense. We like what we're doing with the training standards committee, that it starts to turn the wheels in my mind. How far can this go and mean as business owners, you have training programs that there're obviously not only Alberta centric, you're all over the world here mean, and for example, I mean Debbie and I know that global training, just hence the name Global, you've provided training to Canada, the us so what other markets? It's probably Mexico and Europe.

Debbie Shelley (19:32):

We're on three continents today alone. And

Mike Sullivan (19:34):

There's no reason why this couldn't go further.

Debbie Shelley (19:36):

No, and the important part is exactly what the TSC does, and these are the programs that resonate the most are the ones that have a standard. They have the capability for every employer to know exactly what that baseline knowledge, skill, or competency is. And so that ability to say, yes, I've met the standard I've been audited to. It is huge for them because it becomes transferable and it becomes a value even as a intrinsic self learner that I get that certification and I'm more marketable to various employers. So it just helps everybody across the board when you've got the standard. It also ensures that we've got training providers out there that are, how do I say this, that are ethically and have integrity behind the products that were out there. We are out there talking safety and that can't be done out of our garage. I'm sorry. It just can't done ethically that way. So yeah, that's the important part of this in a standard

Jeff Mulligan (20:42):

And what has happened over the last 10 years is that the identification of universal best practices has become prominent. And so when you're talking about best practices, the lion's share of best practices are transportable because they're industry specific. They're not country specific or border specific. And only thing that's unique is legislation. So if we build our products and our standards out of the USP in such a way that we can have a core level which is best practice oriented, and we can augment that by region and jurisdiction with legislation specific, and we build our programs, we build our standards that way, there really is no limits on the kind of benefit we can bring to the world in terms of damage prevention and people being able to count on the standards issued by USP. When we were in a situation this morning, I was in a discussion with a large infrastructure owner and they were looking at investing in a damage prevention professional program. One of the things we're also talking about and other

Mike Sullivan (21:43):

Podcast, podcast actually,

Jeff Mulligan (21:45):

To be honest, they had other people approaching them and they called me because I was the chairman of the training standards committee for USP, and they said, if there's a USP branded program that would be far better for us than say one training company or one consulting company behind it. That USP with no dog in the fight other than the promotional damage prevention, no benefit to be derived other than for industry in the world. We want that one. We want that USP endorsed program and USP administered program. Jeff, tell me what the timeline is and so what Is this timeline?

(22:20):

(22:20):

I explained our notional timeline. What is that? Well, I said that we will have conceptual alignment and agreement among the key stakeholders by the end of this year,

Mike Sullivan (22:36):

Almost the digging season. The 2024 digging season is almost upon us. What does that mean? You're going to do? It means you're going to click before you dig every time, before you start digging any hole or working on any major project, you're going to click before you dig and notify those bird utilities in the vicinity of your digging project to protect you, your community, and anybody who's working around you. Let's talk about that a little bit because it makes sense. You had two sessions on that workshop, so it wasn't really a session, it was a workshop. Did you get the information you were hoping to get out of that? Was there that engagement level that you had all walks of life contributing to that?

Jeff Mulligan (23:19):

Yeah, Deb, take a shock.

Debbie Shelley (23:21):

You know what? I think that Jeff and I were pleasantly surprised because first of all, you're in a position in the schedule where it's almost checkout time at the hotel for the conference, but it's a working session on the last day and that means more effort than other sessions. But we had probably 50 some odd experts in the room that were engaged the whole time and came back on the second one because they weren't finished. They had more to offer to this and they were excited about it. So that's the great part of it. And Jeff and I are going to go on the road show probably a little bit more with few other associations and key stakeholders doing almost that same workshop and saying, okay, this is your opportunity to help create this designation. So

Jeff Mulligan (24:12):

We had 10 stakeholder groups represented. We had 10 stakeholders. This is the amount of paper that I've got to synthesize now and catch. That was all we had to move people from station to station and when it was over, we had to tell 'em it was over because they were still engaged in conversation. And one of the things that Deb and I talked about early on when I mean Mike, you had talked about this under CCGA banner at one time, and of course the limitation there was that it would have a natural ground disturbance connotation to it, not a broad space damage prevention flavor to it if it was underneath of, say, the National Organization for Common Ground Alliance. So we've been talking about this for a few years, all of us, but it was about creating a platform USP that was capable and respected, having the TSC functioning without being burdened by its financial limitations of its old life and getting to this point.

(25:09):

So it's kind of the perfect storm now that we're at this point, but with the people that we had represented in there, the other thing that we had to do was it can make perfect business logical sense, but did it have an emotional connection to the people that would be invested in it? And if you have worked in other industries, be it financial, be it safety, be it medical, there was specific designations, even Institute of Canadian directors for directors and things like that. But if you've worked 10 years in damage prevention and you've excelled and you've done everything asked of you and you've committed to it, you don't have a recognition that you can look and hang on the wall, put after your name, take to a meeting with credibility that people can look to when they're seeking information and that community needs that. And so we said in addition to it making good business logical sense and saving lives and saving infrastructure, it has to resonate with the heart and soul of these people.

(26:08):

And what we saw was exactly that, and that's was a gratifying part. And then the other piece of the puzzle is what about the regulators? What do they think about it? Well, the regulators said, we'll do anything we can but know that we can't be the administrators of the program. We don't want the government to be the administrators of the program. But they were very supportive, would do whatever, would support it, would get information, would do whatever we wanted to help. So we have no strong objections and of the feedback we got, the only thing that I noticed that there was a pretty well a theme of is they wanted to know if there could be levels of damage prevention professional certification. They wanted some form of this is a junior, middle, senior kind of designation. And so that was good feedback and we do think there'll be a foundational program that'll be six to 10 requisite courses and achievements combined with professional time in the industry, and then there'll be electives and there'll be, it's not a one and done.

(27:11):

It's not like my MBA where in 1980 or whenever I get an MBA, does that mean I'm good at business today? Who knows? I can tell you I am because I got an MBA, but there's no requirement for me to maintain myself current, maintain myself with best practices and know that I've grown and committed to the industry's wellness over that period of time, unlike many other designations that do that. And so we see the damage prevention professional certificate program calling for those things, and we're going to put that structure in place and working underneath the U-S-P-T-S-C banner, we're going to bring back an aligned conceptual position and structure and we're going to bring that back working with all of our stakeholder partners and hopefully it'll land right where it needs to. And that's with momentum.

Mike Sullivan (28:01):

I think it's time has come, right? Honestly, I think it's time has come. I really do. I mean I make the parallels to the C-R-S-P-A safety professional or environmental services and environmental professional. I really think we're there now with this damage prevention advisor or consultant or coordinator. It's no longer just a damage prevention, no longer just a thing, a name that we refer to a group. There is something definitely a lot more in depth here, whether you're a ground disturbances coordinator, part of that land administration team or even a landman. There is a damage prevention component to that, and I think it has to be recognized. And this is something that've been near and dear to me for a long time, and I remember, Jeff, you and I in the back of a taxi four or five, six years ago, and we started talking about this. Nobody can accuse us of jumping into things right away, but this is good. I am really glad that that happened. But going back to the TSC for so long, it was just ground disturbance 1 0 1, 2 0 1, and now we have the alternate locate provider. We have the damage prevention and professional coming. What else do you think? Where else is this going to go? We talked about overhead assets and awareness. I mean, where else can we go with this?

Jeff Mulligan (29:32):

Yeah, certainly the overhead assets. We talked this morning in a session I was in about doing some more dialogue at the next TSC meeting, specifically on overhead assets and how we might embrace that into our programming and our standards, but we think there's natural extensions. We're not in the business of teaching people how to do the technical components of their discipline. We're in the business of putting standards in place, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a natural vertical off of these things. For people who engage in the TSC and contribute to the TSC, there are natural verticals for the technical training and disciplines for all of these components of industries.

Mike Sullivan (30:12):

Let's talk a little bit about maintaining the integrity of the standard, and that's something that we work hard towards. The ground disturbance 2 0 1 or ground disturbance for supervisors, that vernacular has been around for quite some time and that we've seen where there have been contractors that have taken training that wasn't endorsed by Utility Safety Partners that were required to do so, but they didn't take it for one reason or another and then they had to go back and take it again. I know we're going to be talking more about this and how to maintain the integrity of the USP brand and the standard and how that ties in together. Where do you see this going? That utility safety partner brand is solid. We know that. Where do you see this going? How can we protect that even further? Because really what we're doing is maintaining the process for all those training standards committee members that really follow the process in good faith.

Debbie Shelley (31:21):

Yeah, I think Mike, the biggest thing is really making sure our stakeholders know to look for the brand. It's really a campaign of you don't want to take any other certification unless you validate the brand. It's easy to validate the brand. You just go to the USP site. But do the employers, do the people that actually are requiring this on their site understand what it looks like? What are they looking for? What does it need? There's another part of us as part of our stakeholders is understanding that you need to demand the brand. It needs to be in your codes of practice. It needs to be in your RFPs for whenever we're requesting jobs or quoting them out. So it's really about that drive of looking and understanding what the brand brings you, and that's probably our biggest neat thing we need to do.

Jeff Mulligan (32:13):

It's a multi-pronged approach. I mean, we started with little things like eyeglass wipes, talking about the standard and things like that. It was really to acquaint people with what is a standard, it's not a training program. It's a standard for how you develop the training program to, it's what a program it's audited to. It's not USP creating their own little fiefdom of training courses and making money off of training. That's not it at all. So we need the contractor, the infrastructure owner, the people that are involved in the business. So we've got to have multi-pronged approach to communication and behind that, then we got to go out and do all the things that we have to do in the legal world that we can do in the legal world to ensure that people know that we're taking the appropriate precautions and the appropriate legal opportunity to make sure that we protect and promote these standards. And that if you invest heavily in building product for them and time spent in the TSC, that your investment's going to pay off and be protected.

Mike Sullivan (33:19):

I mean, at the end of the day, really, if you're a training provider, you can promote ground disturbance training. It doesn't have to be endorsed by Utility Safety Partners, but if the contractor requires a person to take ground disturbance training that's endorsed by USP, they should be able to ask, is this USP endorsed and be answered? Yes or no? It's a very simple process. It means that when you're taking endorsed training, it has been vetted period, and it meets a standard. And that's what the employers want to make sure that their contract staff working near their assets are aware of that. This has been, you've taken standardized training and endorsed training, so that to me going forward is going to go hand in hand. It's just going to become more prevalent and more important to maintain the brand and maintain the standard process. It doesn't, like I said earlier, it doesn't mean another training provider can't provide locating and marketing training. Of course you can, but if you're required to take endorse training, then you better ask. You better be able to say that this is endorsed.

Jeff Mulligan (34:35):

When you walk into A TSC meeting virtually or physically and into a USP meeting and you know that you have a more direct access and relationship with thousands, literally thousands of infrastructure owners and thousands of damage prevention professionals and the largest national and multinational companies in the business, you have opened a door that wouldn't otherwise be open to you. You've opened a discussion that you would never be able to create on your own trying to do it as a singular entity. The attraction to being part of USB and committing the kind of time and hours that I do on behalf of our company to the TSC is that we have instant dialogue with a representative group in the damage prevention sector that matters. And that's what the USP delivers to us as a private company involved. And the excitement for me is that when you make progress, while it might take us a little bit longer to make the progress, when you make that progress, it's upon a foundation which is broad, vast, and strong.

Mike Sullivan (35:38):

I think the perfect example of that was again, going back to last week's conference and the sessions that you had on the alternate locate provider standing room only, and then the sessions on the damage prevention professional creating that content or really what would be the content. And there's a lot of engagement and not just people sitting in bums and seats from what you're telling me. There was a lot of meaningful engagement, which is exactly what you want at the end of the conference. And this is after the Tuesday night eighties party, which let's face it, there was a lot of fun going on there and there may have been some imbibing, but it was to have that happen. And that does tell me that we're on the right track and moving forward with this. So thanks so much for being with me today to talk about this.

(36:26):

To wrap it up, the alternate locate provider training is going to be available here very soon. I know we're fielding a lot of questions and probably going right back to you guys, and that's a good thing. You can go to utility safety.ca and find the information on the alternate Locator all Locate provider program. And if you have any questions, just send an email to info@utilitysafety.ca and with put alternate locate provider in the subject line, and we'll field your questions to the right people. Debbie and Jeff, once again, thanks for being with me today. Sincerely appreciate it. And I think we'll be doing this a lot more going forward because the Training Standards Committee is just getting started. I see a lot coming down the pipe.

Jeff Mulligan (37:15):

That's excellent. Thanks for having us. The publicly offered locating one-to-one courses will be up on both our calendars at both Global and Aztec. We hope to have that start publishing those and putting those out on the calendars. And any course we offer anywhere will be on both calendars, so we'll be taking care of that. And they can call us if they want to start, particularly if they want to book a client specific session where it's their own company wanting to do 10 or 12 or 14 or God love them, 40 people to go through the locating 1 0 1 or the locating marking standard USP endorse program. And Deb and I and our teams are eager to get going, and we look forward to celebrating an excellent digging season this year with the new program.

Debbie Shelley (38:02):

Absolutely.

Mike Sullivan (38:05):

That's going to wrap things up on the podcast. I want to thank our producers stories and strategies, and I hope you choose to follow this podcast on any director you're listening on, and please do leave a rating. I want to thank our guest as well, Debbie Shelley and Jeff Mulligan for joining us today. You can follow us on Twitter X actually at Utility Safety and also on Instagram and Facebook. And we're on LinkedIn too. If you'd like to send us a note, maybe you have an episode idea, email us at info@utilitysafety.ca and put podcast in the subject header. I'm Mike Sullivan, I'm the president of Utility Safety Partners. Click to know what's above and below. One click costs you nothing. Not clicking could cost you everything.