7 minute read
The editor becomes a DGSA
THROUGH THE MILL
DGSA • HCB’S EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RECENTLY SAT THE DGSA EXAM AND, WITH THE HELP OF GOOD PREPARATION, PASSED. HERE HE REFLECTS ON HOW IT WENT AND WHAT HE LEARNED
IN EARLY MARCH, I did something I hadn’t done in 40 years: I went into a room lined with desks, sat down with my pen and took an examination. I heard recently that I passed and, as a result, I am now qualified to act as a dangerous goods safety adviser (DGSA) for the road transport of dangerous goods anywhere in the EU.
It’s unlikely I shall have the time to practice as a DGSA but the process of qualification has given me a new-found respect for those who do. The exam itself is a real test – three papers totalling more than five hours over the course of a day (closer to seven hours for those who take the rail paper too).
The questions in the exam are designed to test the candidate’s knowledge of the regulations – in this case, the regulations contained in the annexes to the ADR Agreement. So the questions grab the candidate by the scruff of the neck and drag him or her backwards and forwards from the Introduction to Chapter 9.8 and back again, searching for the text to support each answer. And knowing where those references are is just as important as knowing the answer: one cannot pass this exam without giving chapter and verse for each question.
So I am now the proud owner not only of a confirmation from the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) that I have passed the exam but also a well-thumbed copy of the twovolume ADR regulations, extensively tabbed up and annotated to make it easier to remember where everything is.
WHY BOTHER? You may well ask: what’s the point? Why should I put myself through a tough and costly exercise, at my own expense, just to get a certificate for the office wall? Well, to some extent it was to test myself. I have been writing about the transport regulations for around 25 years now and, though I might have thought I knew them pretty well, it would be good to find out.
What I did find out very quickly was that I didn’t know ADR as well as I thought I did. Fortunately, I had taken the precaution of arranging to take the five-day DGSA training course. I paid for a place on the February course run by Peter East Associates, in coordination with other UK training providers. It meant, of course, that the cost of the training had to be supplemented with the cost of staying at a hotel for five nights, and feeding myself in its restaurant, as well as the price of the copy of ADR I needed to buy. And that’s on top of the cost of sitting the exam and another night away from home to ensure I was up bright and early and ready for the test.
Our instructor, Graham Fitzgerald, is clearly an old hand at getting his charges to understand not only how the ADR regulations are organised but also what the SQA examiners would be looking for – and especially the importance of getting all of the references down on the paper (which usually begin with ‘ADR 3.2.1 Table A’).
I am used to going to conferences and exhibitions, where most evenings find a congregation of attendees around the bar, talking about the day or – more likely – gossiping about football or beer or whatever. But not during DGSA training: there is just too much to cram into one’s head. Every evening, while wolfing down a hotel burger in the restaurant, I could spot others from the course, heads down over their laptops, either revising the day’s teaching or catching up with emails and work.
I had wondered, before arriving in Heathrow for the course, how it could possibly take up five whole days – we got off an hour or so early on Friday but otherwise it was a 9 to 5 event. But there was no let-up in the instruction, or at least not until we started practicing with mock exams. This was an extremely valuable aspect of the instruction, as it prepared us for what we would face during the exam itself and also highlighted each candidate’s weak points – as well as the importance of getting all the references right.
INTO THE EXAM ROOM I understand that there are some candidates for the DGSA exam who think that they are so well drilled in the regulations that they do not need to bother taking the course. It’s tempting, certainly, as it comes at a cost and takes them away from work for a week. But I also understand that it is often these same individuals who fail the actual exam. There is a lot to be gained by being taken through the regulations, page by page.
That was certainly true for me. I learned a lot more than I thought I didn’t know, although I was glad to be taken carefully through the exemptions in 1.1.3.6 of ADR – something I knew about but didn’t quite understand. I also now understand the concept of ‘overpack’ rather better than I did, although I was surprised to learn that the maximum capacity of an intermediate bulk container (IBC) is set down in the definitions in 1.2.1 and not, as one might reasonably expect, somewhere in Chapter 4.1.
I sat three papers for the exam: Core, Road and All Classes. Fortunately there was nothing on Class 7 in the last of these as that remains a lacuna in my understanding – though bizarrely I am now qualified to cover it as a DGSA. Taking the mock papers during the course had taught me to be careful with the Road paper, although in the real exam it turned out to be rather easy – so much so that I had to check whether I hadn’t missed a page out in the exam booklet. So thanks for that, SQA, it made the task a lot simpler.
We had also been warned to make sure we chose the right case study of the three options offered in the All Classes paper. Looking back, I realise I picked the wrong one, as it got more complex the further I went with it. But clearly my training worked and I got through it in the end – thanks again, Graham!
PUT IT TO USE So what now? Well, I certainly have a greater respect for those who have already gone through this process, which is certainly a test of the candidate’s knowledge of the regulations as well as something of a test of the candidate’s ability to stick at it through five days of training and a pretty full day of an examination.
But if the training course prepared me for the examination, neither it nor ADR itself actually explains in detail what I would do if I were to be engaged to act as a DGSA – I guess I would have to work that out as I went along. Also, it appears that the pass mark for the exam is around 70 per cent, which means that it’s possible to get 30 per cent of the answers wrong and still qualify. I have spent enough time with trainers, DGSAs and other dangerous goods experts to know that, if you put four of them in a room and give them the same question, quite often you will get four different answers, all of them justifiable but perhaps some righter than others. That makes it clear that it’s not just a matter of knowing the regulations inside out but also about understanding how they are applied in the real world – and also that sometimes there are more ways through the woods than one.
The other thing I am glad about is that I was able to achieve this qualification by using ADR. I have also been writing about the US regulations for the past 25 years but if I had to go through the same process using 49 CFR I don’t think I could have done it in the same time – it is a much more complicated document and, on the face of it, does not appear to have been put together with a view to helping the user. So many thanks to those experts in Geneva who created ADR and made it comparatively easy to use.
For my next project? Maybe it’s the IMDG Code next…
