Jeff Mulligan, chief operating officer of Astec Safety, helped facilitate a well-attended breakfast meeting on Click Before You Dig safety protocols on Tuesday morning at the Nissan Hall. Roughly 150 contractors turned up for food and a safety video on digging. Geoff Lee Meridian Source
About 150 local contractors turned up for a hard hat breakfast at Nissan Hall to promote safe digging awareness as spring construction ramps up.
The Tuesday morning gathering in Lloyd is one of 22 breakfasts held in April by the Saskatchewan Common Ground Alliance (SCGA) safety advocate to celebrate Safe Dig Month.
“It’s a fabulous turnout. We have representatives from anyone that digs in the community,” said Shannon Doka, executive director of SCGA.
Doka says SCGA aims to ensure all Saskatchewan residents respect and understand the danger of contacting public infrastructure when they are building and digging.
There were 599 damages to services like water, power, and natural gas lines in Saskatchewan in 2022. That’s about 2.4 for every workday in the province.
The free breakfasts included a 20-minute Dig Safe video safety refresher for attendees.
“When it comes to digging safely, we really want to get those live locates done and be educated on how to dig safely,” said Lisa Kosolofski, director of Saskatchewan 1st Call.
“Before you dig you need to click or call.”
Kosolofski says failure to click before you dig could result in injury.
“You could hit a gas sign or a power line which could result in serious injury or death, but also just the disturbance to things like our fibre optics, our internet, our phone lines,” she said.
“We live in such a technology-driven world, if we disrupt those services, it’s kind of a pain in the butt.”
Astec Safety was one of the breakfast sponsors with its chief operating officer, Jeff Mulligan, pleased to see attendance was up from last year.
“We’re building momentum,” he said.
Mulligan says the breakfast is a great way to kick off summer and celebrate Dig Safe Month proclaimed by both the Saskatchewan and Alberta governments.
“There’s a lot of dollars in the infrastructure that we’ve got to protect as well as the people doing that work,” he said.
