NDOC Spotlight: Ryan Schmaltz

Image of Ryan Schmaltz

Ryan Schmaltz is the One Call Concepts, Inc. (OCC) Director of Public Relations and Education for North Dakota One Call (NDOC). He has a variety of responsibilities, which is one of his favorite aspects of his position. One week, Ryan might be staffing a booth at an educational farm show to help promote damage prevention awareness to the farming community. The following week, he could be giving a presentation to contractors and/or utilities about changes in the ND one call system. Ryan’s goal at these events is always the same: To promote and bring awareness to the 811 system throughout ND. He accomplishes this goal by giving presentations, attending trade shows, engaging in media advertising, coordinating sport sponsorships, etc.

Ryan attended college at the University of North Dakota and earned a degree in Industrial Technology. A couple years after school, he took a position with Nodak Electric Cooperative in Grand Forks as an Operations Technician, where he worked with outage management. He later moved to Nodak’s Energy Services Department and worked with load management and energy efficiency. While at Nodak, Ryan became familiar with North Dakota’s underground damage prevention law and filing locate requests. He estimates to have filed more than 2,000 locate requests with NDOC during his five and a half years with Nodak. OCC was and currently is NDOC’s notification service provider. In September 2013, the OCC public relations position for NDOC opened up, and the rest is history. 

A great resource for ND one call information is the NDOC Handbook. Ryan welcomes stakeholders to reach out to him with any questions that cannot be answered in the NDOC Handbook. NDOC’s top priority is for stakeholders to understand the law and to create safe and accurate locate tickets each and every time.

NDOC values Ryan as an asset who helps to promote the important 811 message, while being a point of contact for stakeholders! Sending an email is the best way to reach him, especially if he is traveling on the road with the NDOC truck. He does his best to respond/return calls in a timely manner. Feel free to contact him by emailing [email protected] or calling 701-751-1019 (office) or 701-610-1057 (cell).