UP FRONT
07
Again, there’s some merit to that view, but I contend it’s not as big a difference as you might initially believe. Consider some of the following examples of DG trainees who thought that what they needed to learn was much less than what they actually need to learn. A pharmaceutical product customer thought they only needed to learn how to ship proper shipping names beginning with “Medicine…”, but they have aerosol asthma inhalers, dermal patches containing an explosive, a self-heating antibiotic ingredient, and zit medicine containing unique formulations of an organic peroxide. An alternative energy company thought they only had pieces of metals and plastics, with an occasional DG paint or lubricant, but they had radioactive materials in the smoke detectors in some of their products. A customer supplying a proprietary polish to the electronic manufacturing industry had only one regulated product, and that Class 9 in small amounts, but had to re-ship some incoming IBCs of Class 8 raw materials that failed their QA/QC standards. A drum manufacturer puts a lithium battery powered RF communicator on a float inside a 208-litre steel drum, which allows accurate determination of the remaining volume of whichever liquid is inside the drum, but which also makes them an offeror of HazMat as well as a manufacturer of HazMat packaging … well you get the idea.
Or perhaps I can make the point differently. How many of IATA’s ‘yellow pages’ of Packing Instructions will a DG trainer have to cover in a public class to have introduced packaging/ packing/filling concepts for: aerosols, UN-specification cylinders, OP methods for 5.2 (and some 4.1) materials, Category A packaging (a 9-metre drop test!) and Category B triple packaging, liquids in combination packaging that do require absorbent and liquids in combination packaging that don’t require absorbent, drums marked for solids versus drums marked for liquids, PG II packaging for certain PG III materials, ID8000 packaging, and on and on?
And then there’s the Dr Valet factor (name changed to protect the guilty). My worst
professor merely read the textbook out loud, monotone, one time through, head down without even looking at his audience. We got no benefit of instructional techniques, such as reading information one way and hearing it reworded slightly differently, repetition, instructor-student interaction, demonstration, or just a chance to ask a question. Oh yeah, sometimes we got out of class a few minutes early because a day’s material had been covered, which even as a teenager I had mixed feelings about.
Fortunately, I had a lot of great professors who utilized a lot of great instructional techniques. Dr Dresdner drew chalk drawings to accompany everything he said, sometimes with such speed and enthusiasm that his entire upper body would be covered with chalk dust at the end of a lecture. Dr Horton would look students in the eye, one by one, to see if we were lying when he asked if we were ‘getting’ what he was teaching. Dr Knopp would ask us questions if we didn’t ask him any. Dr Ryschkewitsch had demonstrations in each and every class. And, please forgive me for forgetting his name, but a professor got me through P-chem (with an A, no less) by explaining everything twice, using different words the second time through. And the good techniques worked, because I learned and retained.
How much emphasis do we put on instructional quality in a five-day multimodal course or a one-day on-line multimodal training? Do we demand our instructors have a CDGT? No, we don’t. We don’t demand face-to-face training nor even insist on the possibility of trainer- trainee interaction. Do we insist on full coverage of the necessary information? Not if we as industry consuming such training allow a full-scope, non-customized, one-day initial multimodal. Have we an appreciation for the importance of repetition in learning? Probably not, if we claim we’re training thousands of pages of regulations in just 40 hours.
I once suggested to an employer that a certain trainee didn’t ‘get it’ enough to work safely with HazMat yet, only to be told that
productivity was too important to allow the employee to re-take the course with the next batch of students. Pass or fail is usually an employer decision, as is scope of training, but had it been an air class I think I would have notified HR/Legal/CEO in writing that the employee was unqualified and thus potentially unsafe. Still, based on conversations with other instructors, many employers are very resistant to allowing any employee to be in a single minute of training above the absolute minimum.
Extensive pondering hasn’t led me to any reasonable regulatory solutions to the problem of inadequate training, regardless of whether the inadequacy is from lack of time, poor instructor skills, lack of repetition, limited scope, or failure to use multiple instructional techniques. If the solution isn’t in changed regulations, where is it?
Might it start with the knowledgeable consumers of DG training? Might it be best to informally develop higher industry standards by selecting a highly qualified instructor, giving adequate (more than minimal) time for training, and letting chemistry develop? No, not the bonds, molecules and ions type of chemistry, but trainer-trainee chemistry and consumer-service provider chemistry. Wouldn’t this chemistry foster more effective learning, greater long-term retention, a more compliant workplace, and a safer world? I think so.
I’ve got some chemistry. But so do lots of CDGTs, and so do lots of members of DGTA, and so do some others. Choose a highly qualified instructor, not just qualified as a subject matter expert but also as a deliverer of information, and then give her/him the time necessary to be maximally effective. Especially since the topic is Dangerous Goods, not chemistry.
This is the latest in a series of musings from the porch swing of Gene Sanders, principal of Tampa-based WE Train Consulting; telephone: (+1 813) 855 3855; email
gene@wetrainconsulting.com.
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