In March, the industry celebrated it’s first-ever Damage Prevention Week. Designed as a week where everyone can celebrate both locally and on a larger scale through events and gatherings designed to educate, inform, and find ways to improve damage prevention efforts. Infrastructure Resources worked with some of our partners to develop a schedule of events throughout the week (See page 30 to learn more about these unique experiences). This year, the highly successful event was moved online to accommodate COVID-19 restrictions, but we are already at work developing next year’s Damage Prevention Week (February 28 – March 6, 2022) scheduled LIVE in Phoenix.
Many of our partners are returning in 2022 with new agendas, and we continue to add additional events. We are pleased to announce the recent addition of the FNCA (Facility Notification Center Association).
What is FNCA? Good question! FNCA is the evolution in the One Call Industry from One Call to Notification Centers. OCOA (One Calls of America) and OCSI (One Call Systems International) have served the industry in the past. OCOA as a group buy model for Not-for-Profit centers, OCSI for best practices and issues affecting all stakeholders that touch the One Call industry. The leaders of One Call (Notification) centers decided to perform a SWOT analysis to address what best serves the industry today. The results showed the industry needed an international organization, open to all Notification Centers regardless of operation model (self-managed not-for-profit, vendor run, or state run); an organization to provide support and training for all facets of business for the modern-day Notification Center.
FNCA is a 501(c)(3) Trade Organization with a Board of Directors to oversee the governance of the organization. Currently, there are five Board members but this can expand to 15 if needed. Five Committees are currently in the organizational phase: Membership, Budget, Marketing, Education, and Meeting/ Conference, but they expect to add additional Committees including IT, HR, Accounting/Business Ops, Operations (Call Center, Web Ticket), Member Services/Relations, GIS/Mapping, and Data/Trends.
FNCA’s stated mission is “to evolve our industry by facilitating collaboration among One Call Notification Centers.” Membership in FNCA is open to notification centers, center executive leadership and center staff.
The organization is an education-based association, expanding upon value-added services including networking forums for executive leaders and functional staff, in-person and video conferencing, virtual education, training on a broad array of topics (from leadership development, board development and succession planning to IT assessments, cybersecurity, and disaster recovery), and the development and maintenance of a member resource and data library. An example of what has been accomplished already is leadership in the Covid-19 response across the industry. Members shared response plans, actions being taken to ensure organizations were deemed essential services, and activities to ensure the safety of staff, stakeholders and those on a dig site.
Throughout 2021, FNCA will hold several meetings designed to review foundational goals and objectives, establish Committee Co-Chairs and ask for participation in proposed committees, solidify Committees and expand the Board. In March 2022, as part of Damage Prevention Week, FNCA will present their first “fully functional” FNCA gathering.
Want to learn more, or find out how to get involved? Contact one of the current Board Members: Bruce Campbell, bcampbell@missdig811.org; Roger Lipscomb, RogerL@oups.org; Bill Kiger, wgkiger@pa1call. org; Susan Bohl, sbohl@okie811.org; or Paul Huntsman, PaulH@bluestakes.org; or email membership@ fncainc.org. Look for the article in the fall issue of dp-PRO offering additional details on this exciting new industry initiative.
Do you have an association meeting, training initiative, or industry event you believe could benefit by being a part of this international gathering of industry professionals? Visit DamagePreventionWeek. com for more information. We’d love to talk to you about how we can partner together for the benefit of the industry!
