A great panel discussion today. I thought that Sandy Gregory Did a great job of keeping us on crack. …. sorry, AI… “on track” We were able to get a lot of different perspectives on the blessings and curse of dangerous goods. The two DG trainers up there, Jennifer Kirkland and I had many similar perspectives (except she also runs a packaging business). And I think our presence speaks to the truth that the DG trainers who are involved in professional outreach, are the ones that show up at these things and contribute. WiseTech Global was there though they weren’t speaking… my point is that like the other members of DGTA we want to make a difference, and we want an even / level playing field when it comes to DG training, and not a race to the bottom with the quickest, cheapest training. I know this kind of thought is on the minds of pretty much everybody at the Airforwarders Conference. “Value Add” can be a tough sell in a commoditized world.
Whether it’s the freight business or trucking as a vendor, you have to ask the question: “Hey, can we get the cargo from point A to point B, on time, without crashing into something?” So there’s a pretty visible metric there. If you hire a trucker or a forwarder for a “transaction” the feedback happens pretty quickly.
But with dangerous goods training, there’s a delayed reaction… There may never be a reaction. The nature of things is that you won’t hear about the problems that didn’t happen because you did it properly.
The challenge with DG training is that you don’t know what you don’t know if you are the receiver of the training. If you don’t have metrics (and the employer buy-in) and post-training assessments, you’re really never going to know that there’s a gap there, until there’s a problem. I wanted to emphasise that we needed “holistic” DG training where people not only understand the parts but understand the system of how this all fits together.
Today has great because my instructional designer was in the audience and she got to talk to folks after the session about the DG Masters Program we created for all modes — honestly it hasn’t caught on the way we’d hoped because of this rather narrow focus in the DG training world (people get IATA training, or IMDG, or DOT) this course is a foundation for people who need to understand how this all fits together.
Anyway, it was great contributions from everyone, it was fascinating to learn more about the lithium-battery sniffing dogs, and the FAA’s work to help keep DG shippers, forwarders and carriers safe.