The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) recently released its annual scorecard, which evaluates Local Distribution Companies (LDC) across Ontario on nine different performance categories including; customer focus, safety, financial performance, and operational effectiveness. This scorecard gives customers the opportunity to compare their utility’s performance, in a variety of categories, to that of other LDC’s across the province.
While PUC Distribution scored very well in a number of categories, it is especially proud of its performance in the category of safety; both in regards to the general public and its employees. “Safety is something that we take very seriously,” says, PUC President Dominic Parrella. “Over the past several years we’ve made a number of significant changes within our organization to ensure that we continue to foster a culture of safety across our entire organization, and I’m pleased to see those changes have had a positive impact.”
In 2015, PUC Distribution participated in a public electrical safety awareness survey. This survey involved canvassing a representative sample of PUC’s customers in order to gauge the public’s awareness level of key electrical safety concepts related to the electrical distribution system. A third party firm conducted the survey, and the questions were based on a template provided by the Electrical Safety Authority. Of Ontario’s 70 LDC’s, 36 elected to collaborate on the delivery of a common survey within their respective jurisdictions. PUC is pleased to report that of the 36 participating LDC’s, PUC Distribution scored the highest with an awareness score of 86%, which is also one of the highest rankings across the province.
“I believe our strong score in the Safety category is a testament to the value of our longstanding Electrical Safety Awareness program – Caution & Chance,” says PUC Manager of Customer Engagement, Randy Johnson. The Caution & Chance program is an award-winning Electrical Safety Awareness Program that was developed locally by the PUC and Great Lakes Power Ltd. in 1995. Since its inception, the program has been delivered every year to grade 3-5 students across the Algoma District.
“I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who started elementary school in the Algoma District during the 90’s that doesn’t remember taking the Caution & Chance program. It’s that decades-long investment in our elementary school electrical awareness programs, reinforced with general safety campaigns like ‘Give Our Workers A Brake’ and ‘Call Before You Dig’ that played a vital role in PUC scoring as well as we did in that category,” said Johnson.
Customers can find PUC Distribution’s complete 2015 Scorecard here, or by visiting PUC’s website. Additionally, anyone looking for more information on the Utility Scorecard process can find it here, or by visiting the Ontario Energy Board website.
