The best from Labelmaster’s event

SECOND CITY SIGHTS

CONFERFENCE REPORT • NOW IN ITS 15TH YEAR, LABELMASTER’S DANGEROUS GOODS SYMPOSIUM HAS BECOME A MUST-ATTEND EVENT FOR ALL INVOLVED IN THE HAZMAT BUSINESS

LABELMASTER’S 2019 DANGEROUS Goods Symposium drew a big crowd to Chicago this past 4 to 6 September, with a varied programme of presentations and networking events. It was a welcome return to the downtown area, with its many attractions and distractions, after last year’s trip out to the airport, and the hundreds of attendees were certainly well fed and watered.

Labelmaster’s aim is, through its competitively priced event, to help its customers and other players in the dangerous goods (DG) supply chain to keep up with ever-changing regulations and the many other challenges they face. “We have brought together the most prominent industry thought leaders, regulators and trainers to provide insights and practical advice that will help you navigate the DG issues you face most often,” said Alan Schoen, president of Labelmaster, in his introduction.

WHAT THE PROS SAY The first matter to be dealt with, as it has in recent years, was the annual Global DG Confidence Outlook Survey, undertaken by Labelmaster with the help of HCB and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) for the fourth year running. The survey looks at how DG professionals see their role in their organisation and among their supply chain partners and each year has highlighted some of the most intractable problems they face.

A relatively brief report on the results of the survey was given by Rob Finn (left), vice-president of Labelmaster, HCB’s editorin-chief Peter Mackay, and Nick Carlone, assistant director of cargo publications at IATA. That presentation was summarised in an earlier article (HCB October 2019, page 110) but there are some salient points that deserve highlighting.

Firstly, it is generally accepted by DG professionals that responded to the survey that the supply chain has a positive commercial impact on their company. On the other hand, only 20 per cent said they were confident of their capabilities to handle the growing sector of reverse logistics, which is being fed by the rise in e-commerce.

The survey had also defined what Rob Finn described as three ‘tribes’ within the DG community: those who are confident of their ability to handle future demands; those who are up to speed at the moment but wary of the future; and those who cannot even cope right now. One of the defining features of this situation is the level of use of digital and other IT systems: those who are most confident tend to be those with the most IT at their disposal. Interestingly, the survey showed that use of IT is lower among North American DG professionals than those in other parts of the world; it is not clear why this should be but it is one topic that will be interrogated in more detail in the 2020 survey.

Labelmaster has made the full survey results freely available on its website, and the document is well worth a read. It can be found at www.labelmaster.com/dgconfidence-outlook/.

GOOD BUSINESS An interesting take on DG compliance came later in the Symposium from Frank McGuigan, CEO of Transplace. “Managing DG transport takes a lot of information and

involves numerous rules and agencies,” he remarked, pointing out that around 20 per cent of all road freight in the US is dangerous goods. “It’s good business to ensure safety in DG transport,” he said.

McGuigan praised the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) Responsible Care programme which, he said, has helped to improve the image of those companies that use it. He then turned to the hot topic of digitisation.

Track-and-trace has been around in various forms since the mid-1990s, initially to monitor hours of service and to locate goods during transport. However, McGuigan said, it can now do a lot more. “The more visibility you have, the more opportunity there is to improve efficiency and compliance,” he said.

This is where Transplace comes in. It is now applying MacroPoint in its systems and is also looking at Blockchain technology which, McGuigan said, is showing a lot of early promise. For DG shippers, access to the appropriate standard of transport capacity helps them meet their service requirements and their service promises to their customers. IT systems such as those used by Transplace can automate the carrier selection process so that invitations to tender are submitted to the right carriers; closing the feedback loop, these systems can also monitor service levels.

In general, such an approach avoids and plans for disruptions in the supply chain through the use of predictive analytics and taking into account factors such as the weather and road congestion. This leads to optimisation of the transport function.

RULES TO COME After a lengthy but inspirational speech from David Ritchie, corporate safety director at Great Dane Trailers, who explained how the company had improved its safety performance by 74 per cent in just three years by embedding safety as a core principle, the conference sessions moved on to three presentations that provided an update on North American DG transport(ation) regulations.

Matt Nickels, senior regulations officer at the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), had more to say than might have been expected, given the relatively low number of regulatory rulemakings emanating from the Administration since the arrival of President Trump in the White House.

Nickels explained that 99.99 per cent of all hazmat gets to its destination in good condition and without causing an incident; PHMSA’s target is to get that figure up to 100 per cent. In its 2018-2022 strategic plan, the US Department for Transporation’s (DOT) aims are: • Ensuring safety in transport (always the number one issue) • Improving the national transport infrastructure • Promoting innovation (especially in the area of autonomous vehicles), and • Accountability (to Congress and to the US public).

On a day-to-day level, though, PHMSA is currently working under a mandate for regulatory reform – at least 80 per cent of its rulemakings are currently seen as being deregulatory – and is taking a systematic approach. Notably, this has resulted in hundreds of existing special provisions being rolled into the Hazardous Materials Regulations. PHMSA is also experiencing a lot of requests for interpretation, especially in the area of lithium batteries, Nickels said.

Nickels also listed the current and planned rulemaking activities of PHMSA. Of particular interest was that the biennial international harmonisation rule, HM-215O, which was due out at the end of 2018 to keep the US in step with the modal rulebooks that took effect from the start of 2019, was now expected “in the fall”. As this issue of HCB went to press, that final rule had not yet appeared. He also mentioned that the team drawing up the next version, HM-215P, has already started work.

SOME OLD FRIENDS As the issue of reverse logistics had already been mentioned, it was gratifying to be able to hear from Vinnie Desiderio, hazardous materials program specialist with the US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), who spoke about hazmat threats in the mail. The ‘bomb in a box’ scenario is very rare but a massive threat, and something that USPIS keeps a close eye on. But there are much more mundane threats: drugs in the mail

REPUTABLE SHIPPERS ARE GENERALLY NOT A PROBLEM

BUT THE INCREASING USE OF ONLINE SALES MEANS

THAT THERE IS A GROWING THREAT FROM INDIVIDUALS

CONSIGNING A ‘BOMB IN A BOX’ BY MAIL

can cause problems and are fairly common, while DG is frequently shipped and perfectly legal but again can present difficulties when it is mis- or undeclared.

“Individuals are the most dangerous people,” Desiderio said. There have been a lot more corrosives found in domestic mail; these are prohibited substances such as hydrochloric acid and mercury. They are generally coming from online sellers to hobbyists (such as people making their own soap) or drug makers, or just to people setting up a little business in their basement.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest issue for USPIS is lithium batteries; this is getting worse, though – some such batteries are now so big they are getting into the realms of potentially being that ‘bomb in a box’ that so worries Desiderio.

Talk then moved on to developments in Canada, with a presentation from an old hand at these events, Dave Evans, formerly with Purolator and now representing the Air Transport Association of Canada.

Again, Evans had quite a lengthy list of rulemaking activity to report on, with both Transport Canada and the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) working on various parts of the Transportation of Dangerous Goods (TDG) Regulations.

Of particular interest, especially to the trainers in the room, was news that CGSB has created a committee to look at the development of competency-based training standards. This is involving a broad-based group of government agencies, industry, trainers and other interested organisations. A draft of the standard has already been drawn up and is available online for public comments.

Transport Canada, like its counterparts elsewhere in the world, is also looking at the use of electronic documentation in the DG supply chain and has formed a ‘sandbox’ that will run to 2022 to evaluate the feasibility of e-documentation through the use of volunteer companies. The aim is to create a paperless environment that will play a part in improving compliance and enhancing efficiency in the supply chain.

GET LIVELY There was a whole lot more to see and hear during the three days of the Labelmaster DG Symposium, including an entire morning devoted to lithium batteries. For example, Geoff Leach and Ross McLachlan from The Dangerous Goods Office (pictured) talked about training in the air mode and, while noting that ‘training’ is not the same as ‘competence’, felt that the introduction of competency-based training does not really change things very much. Nonetheless, in a lively and interactive workshop they illustrated some of the pitfalls in traditional teaching methods.

Also causing a stir was a workshop led by Nick Carlone and Kim Wee from IATA, showing off the new RampVR virtual reality training system for ground operations, and another immersive experience from Labelmaster’s Rhonda Jessop, who showed some prototype training aids using online and 3D virtual reality systems. As ever, Mike Hoysler from FedEx challenged the trainers in the audience with a selection of photos showing the mistakes he finds in packages – if people can’t pack and label these correctly, he argued, it’s down to poor training. Hoysler also moderated a panel session looking at the importance or otherwise of the safety data sheet in the acceptance of dangerous goods in the air mode, something that, as illustrated elsewhere in this issue, is also bothering intermodal carriers.

This article has just scratched the surface of all the information and insights that were provided in Chicago this September. Those who want to see the whole thing are invited to attend the 2020 Labelmaster DG Symposium which will take place once more in downtown Chicago on 9 to 11 September. Full details will be available soon at www.labelmaster.com/symposium.