In June 2022, ProACTIVE Planning teamed up with Eleven Eleven Consulting to rewrite the City of St. Albert’s Municipal Naming Policy – adopted by Council this week, almost exactly a year later.

The request from the City was for ProACTIVE to produce a Naming Policy unlike any other in Canada – a policy that is not just informed by best practices across the country, but also shaped by feedback from residents, stakeholders, community interest groups, and Indigenous communities. This required a city-wide engagement strategy, replete with a wide range of responsive tactics to effectively share information about the naming policy, and to collect targeted and useable data that could be transformed into new criteria and processes for the policy itself.
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“This project was unlike any other in our professional careers – we had to be flexible and nimble at every turn to accommodate the evolving demands of the project and of the public. We were up against many residents in the City who did not want to see any change in the way the City named municipal assets, we contended with a sub-group of residents who verbally attacked our project team members and members of their own community, and we dealt with continuous safety and security concerns for all engagement events. It was immensely challenging – but we had a job to do. Our job was to uplift and amplify the voices of residents who wanted to see this project go forward, we needed to ensure that space was held for Indigenous and equity-deserving residents to share their voices and speak their truths, and we needed to follow through on our commitment to Council. At the end of the day, we gave Council exactly what they asked for – a modern and progressive Naming Policy that was reflective of the voices of the City’s diverse residents. Looking at this Policy today, ProACTIVE Planning and Eleven Eleven Consulting are so proud of this Policy and everything it will accomplish for St. Albert, for decades to come. Every major municipality in Canada can look at their own Naming Policies now and have a strong precedent for how to transform them to be equitable, inclusive, and consistent with the political and social landscape of Canada today.”

St. Albert Gazette June Article

The people that you work with are, when you get down to it, your very best friends.
​      - Michael Scott, Dunder Mifflin

Grateful, honored, thrilled... so many ways to describe the way we feel to work closely with so many incredible consultants and collaborators. In additon to our core team, we're happy to gloat about some of the people we get to work with regularly. We ensure that we align with people that are moral, ethical, and most of all - awesome!

Check out more here...

Jonathan Schmidt - Bluerock Planning
Teneya Gwin - Eleven Eleven Consulting
Harry Harker - 1st Principles Planning
Kelly Learned - Frank Plans
Lyndsay Francis 

The team made the trip up to Paddle Prairie Métis Settlement and the community was eager to share their views and input on the Land Use Plan that will help shape the future of the Settlement. The community has been actively involved in providing invaluable input into this unique plan. 

This innovative Land Use Plan is the first of a kind for a Métis Settlement in Canada and is helping set the community up to align with their strategic vision of self-reliance and prosperity through the maintenance of culture and community.

How many people? How many dwellings? How can we collaborate better? When is development happening? – ProACTIVE has completed land use and development encroachment studies for our major pipeline operator clients for nearly 4 years.

Some of the highlights include the following:
- Over 22,000 km of infrastructure reports completed
- Spanning one dozen provinces and dozens of states
- Approximately 200 developers engaged and collaborated, and, 
- Over 250 cities, towns, municipalities, and Indigenous communities participated in our studies.

Our goal is to enhance collaboration on development around pipelines with ALL stakeholders, improve capital planning for operators, and promote safe development and the safe operation of pipeline infrastructure in the built environment. We combine our land use planning expertise, GIS and database management processes, and unparalleled engagement practices to ensure all information is obtained. Contact us to find out more about our work around linear infrastructure.

On April 4, 2023, ProACTIVE had the privilege of being invited to present at the 2023 EAPUOC (Edmonton Area Pipeline and Utility Operators' Committee) safety seminar and share our best practices and experience in regard to land use planning in the vicinity of pipeline systems in alignment with the best practices of CSA Z663-18: Land Use Planning in the Vicinity of Pipeline Systems. EAPUOC is a not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder organization that includes companies, municipalities and agencies who are committed to community safety and awareness. Members include Enbridge Pipelines Inc., Pembina Pipelines, TC Energy, Trans Mountain, ATCO, the City of Edmonton, TELUS Communications among others. EAPUOC promotes best practices around buried pipelines and utilities and cables, and act as a communications network during emergencies, in the Capital Region. 

As a former graduate of the University of Calgary Master of Planning Program, Russ Leedham has been happy to return on multiple occasions to share ProACTIVE's unique work that we do for linear infrastructure operators, Indigenous community planning, municipal engagement, and the overall navigation of going from a graduate to starting a business. ProACTIVE is always eager to speak with new grads or prospective students of planning, engagement, and other studious backgrounds! If you would like to connect with us about potential opportunities, always feel free to reach out to our team.

Master of Planning Program

“What’s in a name?”…CBC Edmonton requested an interview with ProACTIVE’s Director of Engagement, Blaise Fontaine, and City of St. Albert’s Planning Manager Kristina Peter (she/her) to learn more about last night’s event at the Arden Theatre and the City of St. Albert’s Municipal Naming Project.

ProACTIVE Planning is serving as the Public Engagement and Planning lead for the City of St.Albert’s Municipal Naming Project since June 2022. Last night, the project team hosted a Town Hall style event with a panel of subject matter experts on topics of renaming and commemorative naming, historical preservation, Indigenous and local history, and community leadership in naming processes.

Thank you CBC Edmonton and Jessica Ng for the invitation and for highlighting this important work happening in the City of St.Albert!

Check out the interview at CBC.

ProACTIVE, with the support Bluerock Planning and Eleven Eleven Consulting, has begun working on the Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement Land Use Plan. The community is defined by diverse environmental features, strong culture, and coping with natural events such as fire and flood in recent years. As with any project of this nature - engagement is the PRIORITY. Understanding what defines and what will shape the community moving forward is critical. The team made the trip up to northern Alberta to engage with the community (and the mosquitos and the black bears) to kick things off. 

When it comes to culture, recreation, agriculture, economic development, forestry, housing, traditional land use, and the environment...  What do we value? What do we need? What do we want? A series of workshops was held with the community, council, administration, and perhaps most importantly - the youth! Incredible and invaluable feedback was provided that will help shape the direction of the plan. 

ProACTIVE Planning’s Russ Leedham, Blaise Fontaine, and Ed Plant will be presenting (virtually) at the Alberta Professional Planners Institute annual conference on October 4th 2021. This year’s conference is all about personal and professional evolution in the planning profession in a challenging pandemic world. ProACTIVE is thrilled for the invitation to share information about the CSA Standard “Z663-18: Land Use Planning in the Vicinity of Pipeline Systems” and some of the feedback we’ve heard during our education sessions across the country.
 
When it comes to pipelines, everybody seems to have an opinion. Often times, those opinions have been founded by inaccurate information, and inflated beyond recognition. The hyperbolic misperception that pipelines are unsafe has dominated the public conscious, but, just like cars and airplanes, pipelines ARE SAFE until a rare incident occurs.
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Many Planners may not want to deal with the topic of pipelines, but the consequences of not adequately considering pipeline infrastructure in the planning profession is leading to persistent planning oversights, fractured relationships between operators and development stakeholders, and decades of issues ahead for long range planning.
 
The integrity and evolution of the professional planner is continuously broadened through understanding stakeholders’ and other industry’s unique priorities. As the pipeline industry is continuously supplying energy to our communities and fueling our lifestyles, it is necessary for municipalities, planners and developers to consider the obligations and responsibilities of such critical stakeholders in our communities.

Register for the conference:
www.albertaplanners.com/events/appi-2021-virtual-conference-evolution
 

Everybody has heard that the real estate sector is hot right now, but what does that have to do with pipelines?

Real estate markets drive the development industry. As the development industry continues to grow at unprecedented rates, this means that the risk of damage and encroachment for pipeline infrastructure is also growing.

We recognize that our clients have an urgent and critical need for Class Location Predictive Assessments to understand how upcoming development will impact their infrastructure or trigger a class upgrade. Operators want to know where and when short and long range development plans within the class assessment area will occur, and need to know when a class upgrade will be needed.

Since 2019, ProACTIVE Planning has completed over 110 Class Location Predictive Assessments, totaling over 10,000 kilometers of infrastructure in urban and rural areas across Canada. Our reporting has caught over 9,000 new and future dwellings within the class assessment area of our clients’ infrastructure. We have also identified over 200 urban development projects and over 100 major transportation and utility projects that may also have damage and class implications.

We are here to help our clients with CER class filing requirements related to new development and to support class location obligations of CSA Z662-19. To learn more about this service or ProACTIVE’s other solutions for pipeline operators, please get in touch with us and we’d be happy to work with you!