January 20, 2010 | December 9, 2009
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
The meeting was held in the Fort Nelson Town office Bear Pit
The meeting commenced at 1300hrs.
Chairperson, Paul Gould
Vice Chair, Greg Herman
Scribe, Brian Fertuck
At 1300 hrs the meeting was called to order the first topic on the agenda was a review and approval of the minutes of the December 9, 2009 meeting , carried unanimously.
Paul Gould and Brian Fertuck gave an update on the RRSC meeting held in Prince George on January 14th, 10. This was a very positive meeting with input both from the Ministry of Forests and Industry reps from each of the Forest Districts within the Prince George Forest Region.
Paul Gould stated since the inception of the RRSC group in the Prince George Forest District there have been zero fatalities in the last four years, compared to 3-4 deaths per year before the creation of the Prince George RRSC.
Bud Phillips of Works Safe BC stated we need to measure where we are at in order to identify a common goal , in order to do this we need to develop the tools to identify safety issues as well as be cognizant of the perceptions of those using the roads.
Work safe will develop a web page similar to the WEYSAFE web- page created by Weyerhaeuser
The web page information will be by geographical area. Work safe may be contracting or sourcing out the web page.
The web page will be piloted out in the Peace district.
David Vince the Sierra Yoyo Desan used to have an average of 7 fatalities per year. This has now dropped to zero and may be attributed to more frequent multi agency road blocks.
The Fort Nelson municipality will be dedicating two full time highway RCMP officers to policing the SYD.
There has been some resistance from the oil companies to provide additional monies to fund the two RCMP positions as the oil & gas companies to provide funding for two full time RCMP officers to monitor the SYD road network.
Kurt Peat the RCMP traffic division staff sergeant from Dawson Creek will be the individual responsible for the two positions dedicated to the SYD.
The RCMP staff sergeant in charge of the traffic division for the Peace area is willing to come to Fort Nelson to do a presentation to the group, Bud Phillips will arrange this.
Paul Gould provided a power point presentation of Devon's PDR signage.
The signage showed the name of the road UP/Down and the KM.
WCB will be discussing with the Federal Canada the idea of placing RR signage with the Highway right of ways in order to have the signs in a highly visible location.
It was also mentioned by Bud Phillips the South Peace, drivers are starting to use "UP" and "Down"
In minimal time as opposed to loaded and empty.
This is a directive issued by The Ministry of Forests and Range to be implemented by May 1st 2010.
This seems to have gained easy acceptance.
Existing signage will remain in place with additional placards attached giving the required information
As time goes by and signs need to changed then the new signage protocol will be used
The goal is to have all signs in the Peace and Fort Nelson and the rest of the Province use the same standard format in order to minimize confusion and guarantee that all signage conforms to the new policies.
Each company will continue to use the sign supplier of their choice.
There was some discussion around the fact that the South Peace has set a dead line date of October 1st to have all new signage in place.
There was some concerns voiced there may be resistance from some companies to change or update their signage to align with the directive handed down from the Ministry of Forests to the district Manager's with a deadline of May 1st, 2010.
David Vince will contact OGC to ensure they will push the directive handed down by the MOF.
The topic of the SYD group and their function was also discussed the SYD group is basically group that monitors the condition of the road manages the maintenance and provided the funding to do so.
The FNRRSC's mandate is to collectively set standards and create policy's related to road issues and road safety.
Ken Brown of Shell Canada communicated to the group he is willing to liaise with transport companies in and around Calgary that haul into the Fort Nelson area.
The subject of a committee logo was discussed, Brian Fertuck volunteered to approach Northern Lights and the Fort Nelson High School to see if either group would be interested in creating a logo with the participants of the winning group each receiving a road safety kit from the committee members.
The web site logo will be similar to the one from the Peace with a theme consisting of Trees, Rig,Road,load , driver and vehicle.
The group decided on conducting a "Perception Survey" for the SYD Bud Phillips suggested all companies conduct the survey on February 15 and 16th which is the Monday and Tuesday prior to the meeting.
The first day the survey will be conducted at Km 112 on the Liard and the second day Km 65 on the Poco Komie.
The perception survey will be used as a benchmark and will be balanced by driver perception, as well as well as an audit of the road user training and orientation .
The terms of reference (TOR) for the FNRRSC were adopted from the Peace District committee's TOR and were reviewed, edited and accepted by the group.
The Road Safety Committee Role documentation was review and some of the wording revised.
Section 2. The wording was changed from "exert influence over" to "influence other user groups".
There was also discussion around the responsibility of the committee as specified by WSBC that the committee and its members who act in good faith will not be held responsible.
Some of the terminology was also defined:
- Road Users Group: Manage and develop policies for specific road groups.
- Safe Use Plan: I need help with this one
Paul Gould will be extending an invitation to Doreen McAlister with the ministry of Transport to
Join the FNRRSC .
Bud Phillips will forward to Paul and Greg a copy of the FNRRSC documents professionally edited
Paul suggested in order to expedite the progress of the next meeting the committee members take the time to pre read the material to be discussed and come prepared with comments, solutions and suggestions.
The next meeting will be held in the same location at the Fort Nelson town office in the "Bear Pit" on February 17th starting at 1300 hrs.
Reminder: Fort Nelson is one hour behind Alberta.
Scribe: Brian Fertuck
Brian.Fertuck@gov.bc.ca
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
This meeting was held at the Encana Fort Nelson Office boardroom.
The meeting served to establish the committee formally and chair positions were voluntarily established as follows;
Chairperson, Paul Gould
Vice Chair, Greg Herman,
Scribe (interim) Lane LeClerc
Attendance - to be acquired from Joy (WSBC)
Action item for next meeting - Members should review and become familiar with the SPRSC documentation (guidelines, procedures and best management practices) for discussion at the next meeting
Don Dahr, Joy Phiel and Bud Phillips from WSBC (WorkSafe BC) were in attendance as resource persons.
The members in attendance will need to be acquired from Joy Phiel with WorkSafe BC
A committee name was agreed upon and currently to stand as the Fort Nelson Resource Road Safety Committee (FNRSC)
It was recommended that the meetings be held monthly with established reoccurrences
Next meeting of the FNRSC is scheduled Wednesday January 20th @1300 hours, location TBA, future dates have not yet been established.
The location of the next meeting is yet to be determined and Terry Cavaliere looking into the use of the Encana boardroom for future use - determined it would only be available Wednesdays.
Greg Herman will check into the Bear Pit at the City Hall for availability.
Recommendation was made to consider review of section "C's" of the existing road user agreements.
Paul suggested that the FNRSC establish it's own specific terms of reference (TOR)
Paul then lead a review of the SPRSC (South Peace Road Safety Committee) terms of reference as a initial action for the newly established committee.
Quorum was agreed upon by the attending members to be 7.
Bud Phillips with WSBC shared some background on the SPRSC terms of reference being modelled after the WSBC PAC (Public Advisory Committee) which was established to conform with CSA requirements.
Don Dahr recommended inclusion of the MOE and OGC within the term owner as identified in the TOR.
Paul shared that the importance of keeping the end user in mind was essential towards gaining buy-in from the end users of the policies and procedures.
Greg shared his support of the plain language format.
John Paul Joiner cautions about the yes / no rules being implemented without background information to support the committees decisions being available to the members and end users.
Don Dahr recommends reference to Workers Compensation act to specific BC to prevent conflict from arising with other jurisdictions Acts.
Paul recommended adding "to reduce injury and fatality on resource roads " onto the Purpose statement as contained in the SPRSC TOR
Joy Phiel has a professionally edited draft version of the SPRSC TOR and will distribute for review to minimize the committee having to scrutinize the document for editorial issues. She did indicate that the document contains markups.
Bud shared that the document can be printed without markup for ease of review.
Dan shared that the SPRSC had requested WSBC supply assistance in the development of the logo. The SPRSC logo contains representation from the 3 key industry stakeholders on the SP resource roads (mining, forestry and oil and gas) and was uncertain if there were an IP (Intellectual Property) or copyright issues related to the logo.
Bud indicated, Prince George RSC has their own logo as there is not the same level of oil and gas activity within their resource road district.
?? Do we want to consider developing our own logo ??
Don - MOF (ministry of forests) has an initiative to standardize all their signage which has a huge coat associated with it.
Discussion occurred about pushback to signage standards from Drilling, Completions and Construction groups.
Lane- noted that the SPRSC has signage guidelines in their documentation.
Bud - asked if there were any concerns regarding the liability statement at the bottom of page 1 of the SPRSC TOR with no response from the committee members present.
Paul - shared that the October 1st deadline initiated by the SPRSC may have been a little optimistic. Cautions that FNRSC be certain to be clear in communicating pending change and providing background to the decisions of the committee related to the changes to be implemented.
Bud - be realistic in the guidelines
Paul - SPRSC expecting October 2011 for their program to fully implemented.
Don - Forestry in Prince George holds townhall meetings to communicate major projects and changes to the area resource roads
Paul - asked if stats were available regarding public fatality on resource roads
Greg- suggested that we need a baseline to work from in order to gauge the success of the FNRSC activities.
Bud- unsure if there has been any tracking as these would not be reported to WSBC unless a worker was injured in the event, does not account for public single vehicle events as a result of actions related to industry users and industry related events resulting from public user activities would not likely be able to be drilled down / sorted easily.
Dan- suggested inquire with / invite ICBC as they may be able to provide stats related to public MVA on resource roads.
Paul - can we ID (identify) what degree of public activity occurs on our resource roads?
- He was involved with WSBC (Bud) poll the resource road users and get information out about the pilot project to the users.
Don - the initial intent of the FN project was to engage the players in the Horn River activity to provide opportunity to establish policies / practices at the front end for consideration in development and maintenance of access to the field but we have to consider all the potential users of the access roads such as forestry if it returns to the area.
Discussion occurred regarding the existing RUGS such as the SYD and it was determined that it would be good not to duplicate process and that consideration should be given to a split of the Users Group maintenance meeting and the FRRSC established RUG tom mange safety specific items. Some of the issue are common as maintenance relates to safety. Too well maintained may contribute to unsafe activity such as increased speeds and additional use.
Bud - the producers etc not wanting to participate should consider that if there is a standard to be measured against compliance to that standard can become the measure in determining diligence and it's better to set the standard than to be compared to the standard.
Paul - origin of SPRSC procedures were derived from the PGRSC
Paul will be away until January 4th effective this Friday.
Greg will field any communication that is required to occur before the 4th.
Bud- MOT may be valuable reference - RCMP is willing to participate regarding patrol of resource roads
Paul - will contact Craig at Enform to determine if Enform will serve as the host for the communication of FNRSC information. SPRSC posting is provided by the MOF website.
Review of dispute resolution policy occurred -
Greg - recommends
2) Technical Issues
c) change word "compromise" to "solutions"
Bud - SPRSC had collected some baseline data
It was discussed that local producers shared road use stats and perhaps a perception poll could work to establish a baseline for the FNRSC.
Terry- asked if the SYD road check data could be used for a baseline
Bud - indicated the data would be inconclusive and it was intended to serve a different function (enforcement) than the SPRSC information sharing / gathering activities he and Paul had participated in.
Bud - WSBC resource road orientation video -5-7 minutes in length is expected to begin production Jan 24th 2010.
Shawn - recommends a review of 2 or 3 schedule "C"s
Meeting unofficially adjourned @ ~ 1600