Burnaby awarded FortisBC Community Safety Award

Last updated: May 25, 2023

The City of Burnaby’s Engineering Department has been honoured by FortisBC with a Community Safety award for leadership in preventing accidental strikes of underground utilities.

This award recognizes the benefits achieved as a result of Burnaby successfully automating the City’s BC 1 Call system (BC1C), which enables residents and contractors to get information about underground schematics within minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

This upgraded system, in combination with a proactive approach, has had an immediate and powerful impact on safety. Despite having the second-highest volume of BC1C requests in the province (over 10,000 per year), Burnaby achieved no gas line damage in 2022. This encouraging statistic is part of a years-long trend by which Burnaby has decreased the frequency of accidental strikes of gas lines by over 40% over the past decade. 

Best of all, Burnaby has increased safety while also improving efficiency. By automating this service, the City has saved over $700,000 since the project began, while also freeing up staff to work on other important projects.

This latest award is not the first time Burnaby’s BC1C project has garnered acclaim. Previous honours include a Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA) Spirit of Innovation award and being shortlisted as a finalist for Linked Organization of Local Authority ICT Societies (LOLA)’s International Project of the Year.

Learn More: 
BC 1 Call

Media Contact:
Chris Bryan
Manager, Public Affairs
Public Affairs Office
604-570-3616 | [email protected]

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