Notice of Proposed Procurement

The Transportation of Dangerous Goods (TDG) Directorate of Transport Canada (TC) is the focal point for the national program to promote public safety during the transportation of dangerous goods. The TDG Directorate serves as the major source of regulatory development, information, and guidance on dangerous goods transport for the public, industry, and government employees in Canada. The Safety Research and Analysis branch of TDG supports this mandate by studying various aspects of the transportation system to inform decision-making processes. The TDG Directorate is undertaking a project to determine the human factors issues in TDG training requirements. The project aims to determine the human factors issues relating to TDG training, with an aim at reducing human error leading to TDG non-compliances, to support the work of the Regulatory Frameworks and International Engagement branch and the Compliance and Response branch. These groups have mandates to ensure that regulatory requirements (e.g. training) are current and sufficient, to monitor compliance with requirements, and to ensure safety by addressing potential issues. They must adapt requirements as necessary as industry practices and technologies evolve. A proposed regulatory amendment to the TDG Regulations was published in the Canada Gazette Part I on December 11, 2021, for feedback regarding changes to better align TDG training requirements with those of other international regulatory frameworks (e.g. United Nations Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods – Model Regulations, International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code). The proposal incorporates into the TDG Regulations a reference to the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) standard 192.3, “Transportation of dangerous goods - training, assessment and competency”, which details the requirements pertaining to competency, including general awareness and function-specific training and assessment benchmarks. The standard lists the knowledge elements that are to be assessed for a person to be considered competent in each of the relevant subtasks for handling, offering for transport, and transporting of dangerous goods. Following on from these proposed amendments, the TDG Directorate has developed draft guidance documents for determining training requirements under Part 6 of the TDG Regulations. With the advent of more advanced technologies since the original requirements for TDG training were established, many providers are offering various options to trainees wishing to complete training courses. For example, some providers offer online training and assessment for the satisfaction of training requirements. Some of the training modalities being offered, however, may not be properly suited to adequately train and evaluate the human capabilities required to perform certain subtasks. The human capabilities that are required to perform subtasks related to TDG, as detailed in the CGSB standard, will be determined. Additionally, possible human errors associated with each subtask will be determined to identify the subtasks for which unrecoverable (i.e. critical) errors that will directly lead to an unsafe outcome such as fatalities, injury, or loss may occur within the current requirements. Then, the best training and assessment methods for each subtask associated with critical errors will be identified, and solutions for improvements to the current training and assessment requirements will be proposed. This is a proactive approach to the prevention of human errors. After establishing the above framework, recent TDG non-compliance data will be examined to identify current recurring issues correlated to those addressed by the framework. The latter is a reactive approach in that it ensures that past human errors are not repeated in the future. The combination of proactive and reactive approaches leads to a comprehensive and systematic strategy for improving human performance in the transportation of dangerous goods. Following the analysis of non-compliance data and completion of the project, possible future projects could endeavour to determine how incident data could be used to look for additional correlations using the same framework to address human factors issues related to TDG incidents. The TDG Directorate requires the services of a contractor to perform a literature review and analysis to determine human factors issues relevant to TDG training. This determination shall be supported by a human error analysis of the subtasks listed in the CGSB 192.3 standard relative to the current best practices in the areas of human performance and learning. The current project will examine the literature and previous knowledge in human performance and training to determine the most appropriate training and assessment methods to develop and evaluate human capabilities related to the transportation of dangerous goods. An analysis of non-compliance data will be used to ensure that human errors from past experiences have been included and will help to prioritise any proposed path(s) forward.