Page 37 - Oil and Energy-February 2013

February 2013 • 37
Fleet Management
FMCSA Reveals Safety
Management Cycle to Public
By Matthew Wrobel, Foley Services
THE FEDERAL MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY
Administration has revealed the signature
tool behind the agency’s investigative pro-
cess for the first time.
The Safety Management Cycle (SMC)
was developed by FMCSA to help its inves-
tigators improve safety by identifying and
correcting the compliance issues that were
most likely to cause problems. The idea
was to get beyond the individual issues and
to identify and correct safety compliance
breakdowns. That is, the root-cause that
allowed the violation in the first place.
SAFETY MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
The SMC is split into six areas – Safety
Management Processes (SMPs) – each
focused on different aspects of a motor
carrier operation. The Safety Management
Processes cover everything from hiring new
drivers to meaningful action once a viola-
tion has been committed.
The six areas are:
1. Policies and Procedures — This covers
the rules and standards that a carrier puts
in place in order to communicate how
carriers and employees should behave.
2. Roles andResponsibilities —This covers
what the employees at a carrier should be
doing to successfully implement the poli-
cies and procedures of SMP 1.
3. Qualification and Hiring — This covers
the recruiting and screening respon-
sibilities of a carrier during the hiring
process.
4. Training and Communication — This
covers how a carrier communicates its
policies, procedures, roles and responsi-
bilities to its employees.
5. Monitoring and Tracking — This covers
the carrier’s system to monitor and track
employee performance in regards to
safety and the regulations.
6. Meaningful Action — This covers the
employee’s attempts to improve safety
and compliance.
THE SMC IN INVESTIGATIONS
The SMC is used by FMCSA during
investigations. Investigators use the SMPs
to assess how a carrier approaches safety
and compliance and the compliance cul-
ture that they attempt to build. Once issues
have been identified, the investigators then
work with the carrier to correct them. This
way the carrier does not just address the
single violation, but the cause behind the
violation.
The idea is that the carrier fixes the
problem long-term, rather than being caught
again immediately when one of its drivers
reoffends. For example, instead of simply
looking at incorrect log books, the SMC
would look at how the carrier was reviewing
log books and how they were working with
drivers to improve compliance.
THE SMC FOR CARRIERS
Why did FMCSA release these tools to
the carriers? The idea is that carriers can
use the information provided (for free)
to develop their own long-term solutions
to improving compliance and lower CSA
scores before an intervention threshold is
crossed.
By putting in long-term solutions, car-
riers will stop small violations (such as log
book issues) from spiraling into Compliance
Review triggering CSA scores.
NYC GETS GREENER WITH BIOHEAT®
In December 2012, New York City
launched its mandate for traditional
home heating oil to be blended with 2
percent biodiesel, also known as Bioheat®.
Already the nation’s largest municipal
user of biodiesel, NYC takes the lead in
sustainable heating, reducing the city’s
carbon footprint and replacing up to 20
million gallons of petroleum annually.
The Bioheat ® bill advances one of the
major goals of the city’s sustainability
agenda, PlaNYC, committed to having
the best air quality of any major city in
the nation by the year 2030.
As a thank you to the city, Bioheat®
recently launched their NYC Proud
2B2 Renewable Warm-up campaign.
This campaign will award three out of
eight nominated charities a grant in the
amounts of $15,000, $10,000 or $5,000.
Between January 28 and February 17,
2013, NYC residents were asked to go to
BioheatOnline.com to vote for the charity
they feel best helps “warm” NYC.
“Our objective with the NYC
Bioheat Proud 2B2 Renewable Warm-up
campaign is twofold. We wanted to
give back to the NYC community in
more need than ever after the impact
of Hurricane Sandy. We also wanted to
do it in a way that would increase the
awareness of Bioheat’s benefits and the
impact it can have on the environment
to other regions,” said Paul Nazzaro,
President of Advanced Fuel Solutions
and advocate for the National Biodiesel
Board’s Bioheat education program.
New York City’s mandate replaces
20 million gallons of petroleum annually
with a local, renewable resource that’s
also cleaner burning. It’s the carbon
equivalent of taking 30,000 cars off the
road in New York City. According to a
National Biodiesel Board study, it has
the economic impact of creating 780+
biodiesel production jobs in the region
and $42 million in household income.
Nazzaro adds, “It is important that the
progress continues. Eighty percent of oil
heat households in the United States are
located in the Northeast region and pur-
chase about 5.1 billion gallons of heating
oil in a year. If the entire Northeast region
switched to Bioheat® , we would replace
100+ million gallons of oil with a local,
greener resource each year.”
News Brief