Meeting Minutes

October 8, 2009 | November 4, 2009

 Thursday October 8th, 2009 at Enform in Fort St. John, BC

In attendance:	Secondary	Company	Regrets	Company
Ken Brown		Shell	Steve Amonson	Ministry of Forests
Sam Beggs		Suncor	L Leclerc	Suncor
Randy Fenton	Cal Jarrat	CNRL	Kurt Peats
Darin Peterson		Progress	Calvin Jarrat	CNRL
Lance Fuson		PennWest	Jolene Carter
Dale Hillman	Brian Davies	Spectra Energy	Jim Schilling
Evan Hawk	Jim Schilling	Canfor	Paul Gould	Devon
Laurie Hubley		Unocal	Kevin Hanna
Chris Klein	Randy Morrow	Imperial Oil	Steve Unruh	Enform
Joy Piehl		WorkSafeBC	Bill Cassidy	Pengrowth
Budd Phillips	David Vince	WorkSafeBC
Craig Bennett	Steve Unruh	Enform
Rob Kopecky	Steve Amonson	Ministry of Forests
Don Dahr		WorkSafeBC

Meeting was called to order at 1:00pm by interim chair Ken Brown.

Agenda: 1. Round table introductions
2. Voting of the Chair and Vice-chair committee members (and any other positions deemed
necessary, i.e. - Meeting Scribe/Secretary)
3. Review/discussion of the South Peace Road Safety Committee documents (TOR, Safety
Bulletin, Procedures, Guidelines, and Best Management Practices).
4. Develop the NPRSC's TOR (create own or adopt SPRSC's with slight changes)
5. Membership driven additional items - time permitting

Old Business: As this is the first formal meeting for this committee there is no old business at this time.

New Business:

Introductions were made.

Ken suggested that the group determine who the Chair, Vice Chair, and Minute Taker would be on a go forward basis. The group agreed Ken would remain as Chair of the committee, Sam Beggs would be Vice Chair, and that WorkSafeBC would provide one of their administrative staff for minute taking provided the meeting was held at their offices on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday. Craig Bennett volunteered to take the minutes for the current meeting. The dates for future meetings were also discussed and the consensus was that the next meeting would be held on Wednesday November 4th at the WorkSafeBC offices in Fort St. John from 1:00pm to 4:00pm, and the first Wednesday of every month after that as required.

Ken suggested the group begin by going through the work that the South Peace Road Safety Committee had already done and adopt whatever the North Peace Group thought was appropriate for their region. The group agreed and looked at the following from the South Peace Road Safety Committee:

Terms of Reference:
The group agreed to adopt the Terms of reference; however some minor adjustments will be required to tailor it to the needs of the North Peace, for example updating the road user group list, and committee member list, as well changing any reference of the South Peace to the North Peace, and adding more terminology to the glossary (such as Best Management Practice, Formal Road User Group [note: Road User Group already included in the South Peace glossary], and Suspect Authority).

Best Management Practice #1 (Co-ordination on Multiple User Worksites):
The group agreed to adopt this Best Management Practice, however with a few minor adjustments:

• The word "policy" must be changed to Best Management Practice to ensure consistency throughout the document and to avoid confusion with the government's definition of a policy (this is applicable to all of the Best Management Practices reviewed).
• In number 5, the group agreed to change "them" to "all user groups".
• In number 6, the group agreed to changes "workers" to "users".
• Any reference to the South Peace must be updated to the North Peace, and the formal road user groups must be updated to reflect those active in the North, not the South (i.e. Tommy Lake must be included. Ojay and Sukunka removed)

Action: Ken Brown to make adjustments and distribute to the group.

Best Management Practice #2 (Compliance and Enforcement):
The group had varying opinions on this particular issue and was not as quick to adopt this for the North Peace. It was agreed that the group should take this back and reflect on how they would like to see the North Peace Group proceed on this issue. It was also suggested to seek feedback from the South Peace to gauge how they felt about their Best Management Practice. The group thought it might be too soon to have any tangible results from the South Peace and agreed to take back, review, and discuss at the next meeting.

Action: Group to take back and review the South Peace Best Management Practice #2 and think about potential options for adoption by the North Peace group. To be discussed at the next meeting (Nov 4/09).

The group however did agree that some minor changes would have to be made to the current version:

• The word "policy" must be changed to Best Management Practice to ensure consistency throughout the document and to avoid confusion with the government's definition of a policy.
• The first three bullets within the table should be removed and replaced with a suggestion from Chris Klein (input Chris's suggestion here).
• All references to the South Peace must be updated to the North Peace.
• In the third paragraph from the bottom on page 2 of 4 the word "minimised" must be spelled
  correctly (minimized). The word "the" must be removed from between "recommended" and "demerit".
• In the third paragraph on page 3 of 4 the word system must be removed from between "following" and "is".
• The bolded sentence halfway down page 4 of 4 must be edited to read "The following are criteria to determine the responsible party or agency to manage a resource road safely, issued under a specific authority.
• In bullet "c", "authorisation" must be spelled correctly (authorization).

Action: Ken Brown to make adjustments and distribute to the group.

Best Management Practice #3 (Accident/Incident Reporting):
The group agreed to adopt this Best Management Practice with some minor changes:

• In the first bullet within the table the word "in" must be replaced with "is"
• On page 2 of 2, bullet 2 should be updated to include a vehicle description.
• On page 2 of 2, bullet 3 should include "i.e." immediately after the first bracket.
• On page 2 of 2, bullet 7 should be expanded to include "i.) Wildlife".

Action: Ken Brown to make adjustments and distribute to the group.

Best Management Practice #4 (Informational Road Signs):
The group agreed to take this Best Management Practice away to review and discuss at the next meeting.

Some committee members would like more clarification around what signage is supposed to look like for class 2 and 3 roads.

The group thought that further discussion is required around radio frequencies.

WorkSafeBC explained the change in call direction from Loaded/Unloaded to Up/Down, and explained that any vehicle travelling down has the right of way.

Rob Kopecky suggested that the North Peace Group consult with Industry Canada as Radio frequencies and signage for resource roads are issues on their radar.

Action: The group is to take away Best Management Practice #4, and review for discussion at the next meeting (Nov 4/09).

Best Management Practice #5 (Road Design and Construction):
The group agreed this issue would probably cause much disagreement among the group, and thought it best to review section 3.6.2 of the April 19th, 2009 version of the Forest Road Engineering Manual before deciding whether to adopt this Best Management Practice for the North Peace Region.

Action: The group is to review section 3.6.2 of the April 19th, 2009 version of the Forest Road Engineering Manual for discussion on whether to adopt the Best Management Practice #5 from the South Peace.

Best Management Practice #6 (Emergency Response):
The group agreed to adopt this Best Management Practice from the South Peace Group with minor changes.

• Anywhere where there is an abbreviation or an acronym in the South Peace documents, the North Peace has agreed to utilize the full word in an effort to avoid confusing the reader.

Other notes:
For the benefit of the group WorkSafeBC explained why the Peace Region was split into two groups rather than one group for the entire region, as well as reiterating that this group is completely voluntary as there is currently no legislation motivating this movement, and that WorkSafeBC is involved as a mentor/guide and to provide insight into regulations. The ultimate goal is to have one set of practices/procedures/standards/guidelines for the entire province.

Don Dahr alerted the group to the fact the Ministry of Energy and Mines is interested in working with the group as well.

It was suggested/advised that The North Peace Road Safety Management Group ensure that any Road User Groups become sub-committees, and do not counteract the work done by the original committee, in order to maintain consistency.

Discussion around communication of the implementation of the South Peace Road Management System took place, and the issue around the one year grace period for users to become compliant was addressed. The North Peace Group seemed to agree that the decision not to communicate that there is a one year grace period would be a good idea, as by alerting users to this, they may procrastinate in meeting the standard; however, the group was aware that certain considerations such as budgeting, making necessary changes, temporary measures, must be accounted for when determining an implementation date.

Future Meetings:
Items stemming from this meeting required as agenda items for future meetings are as follows:

• Enforcement strategies
• Signage expectations for class 2, 3, and 4 roads.
• Radio frequencies

Meeting adjourned at 4:10pm

Next meeting: November 4th, 2009 at WorkSafeBC (9924 - 107th Ave. Fort St. John, BC) from 1pm - 4pm.

---

 November 4, 2009 1:00 pm

Attendees: Budd Phillips, WorkSafeBC; Jim Schilling, Canfor; Steve Amonson, MoFR; Lane LeClare, Suncor; Laurie Hubley, Unocal; Darin Peterson, Progress; Paul Gould, Devon; Mike Burzek, OGC; Craig Bennett, Enform; Chris Klein, Imperial Oil; Lance Fusion, PennWest; Randy Fenton, CNRL; Ken Brown, Shell; Joy Piehl, WorkSafeBC; Don Dahr, WorkSafeBC; Jennifer Banga, WorkSafeBC (recorder).

Chair: Ken Brown

Agenda Review: 

• South Peace Initiative
• Guidelines and Procedures for North Peace Resource Road Management Group

(Review of South Peace Resource Road Safety Committee Procedures, Best Management Practices and Guidelines).

General Discussion

- Steve Amonson mentioned the desire for the North Peace group to join with the South Peace, to discuss changes of intent and/or meaning to any of the documents.

- WorkSafeBC Editor is going to be reviewing the south peace procedures, BMP's and Guidelines strictly from a readability perspective.

- Ministry of Forest intends to change legislation for Forest Service Roads that will outline standardized radio calling procedures either, by April of 2010.

- Circulated Letters of Concern that were received from the CAODC and PSAC (sent to the chairs of both Committee's). The North Peace Resource committee talked about posting minutes of both committee's on the Peace Forest District Website to help provide transparency with the activities of the committee's.

- Discussed creating a shared email mailbox so that letters or concerns could be directed to the webpage rather than being directed to committee chairs.

- It is the Primary/Tenure Holder's obligation to ensure communication to all contractor road users.

- Concerns about the road rules, procedures, BMP's etc from contractors needs to be processed through their road safety committee (Road User Group) and directed to the Tenure Holder on the resource road management user committee.

- It has been agreed unanimously by both committee's (South and North Peace) that membership in the committee's would remain as it is (limited to Prime Operators/Tenure Holders) and that the Chairs of both committees would send a joint letter to PSAC and the CAODC to express this.

Compliance and Enforcement of BMP # 2

- Compliance and Enforcement discussion; One idea from the South Peace about compliance/enforcement is to have Road Marshalls posted in some areas, as well as privately hiring the RCMP. North Peace on board? Discussed funding process? The RCMP is more than willing to help strategize.

- Steve Amonson indicated that the Point Rating Policy Enforcement system devised by a Road User Group in Burns Lake had worked well.

- Discussion regarding enforcement of road rules with contractors, indications were that companies with larger workforces and well established safety rules and programs were usually less of a problem than some of the smaller contractors and small Producers.

- Discussion of possible funding for compliance/enforcement

- Question of the effectiveness self policing (do it yourself) a possibility when it comes to compliance/enforcement

- Canfor has designated road safety hotline numbers posted on signs on their resource roads in the north peace. Do we do the same?

- Discussion of Vehicle ID numbers - Possibly not for all vehicles but for big trucks like Vac's etc.?

- Overview of Shell's Life Saving Rules Program, failure to follow these rules when driving results in immediate disciplinary action, including termination.

Guidelines

- The four Guidelines were introduced and the review initiated; road maintenance #1 variances etc.

- Question was discussed of what constitutes a road Risk Assessment? When is it required etc (See Procedure 4)?

- Referred to the Ministry of Forests Forest Eng. Guide Book (aka Info Guidebook) link found in Procedures for resource road construction standards

- Having different posted speed limits for different road classes was discussed. Need to clarify or does it make sense?

- Proper verbiage needed for legal protection (stopping distances/road surface conditions/visibility).

Action Item; look at the road maintenance standard criteria (classes 1-4) and assign certain speed limits or remove records.

- Discussion of " Who is qualified to make a Road Hazard Assessment?" They would need to have knowledge of risks, appropriate skills, some training, but no certification required. Risk Assessment guideline is a good starting point

Action item; evaluate whether there is a need to set a template in place for Road Risk Assessment.

 

- A Road Hazard Assessment Checklist was handed out.

Procedure # 4

- Procedure 4 Reviewed; Managing Road Hazards, minimum standards.

- Discussion of what additional information might need to be posted on road entrance signage? Should there be a safety hotline number, a prime contact number? Left up to individual company? Switch to frequency name or number?

- Discussion of commercial advertising within the right of way of resource roads (different from information signs) is prohibited. It's the responsibility of the Tenure Holder to enforce this rule and remove signs as necessary.

- Question; should a basic map of the resource road system be provided to all who service the area, rather than putting up a bunch of location or direction signs like rig signs.

Parking Lot

- Road Hazard Checklist Review; is there a need to change the terminology from frozen vs. non frozen to winter/ all season (weather conditions)? Add estimated peak activity to the bottom of section? Type of road...another category for road class?

- This item should be differed to later once a decision has been made regarding the merger with South Peace Committee, as we don't want to change intent/meaning of the document.

Next Meeting:

December 16/2009   1pm- 4pm  

WorkSafeBC Office

9924-107 Ave

Fort St John