front lines
CAA Executive Director's Report Joe Obad CAA Executive Director
“BEING BUSY DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN REAL WORK. THE OBJECT OF ALL WORK IS PRODUCTION OR ACCOMPLISHMENT AND TO EITHER OF THESE ENDS THERE MUST BE FORETHOUGHT, SYSTEM, PLANNING, INTELLIGENCE, AND HONEST PURPOSE, AS WELL AS PERSPIRATION. SEEMING TO DO IS NOT DOING.” - THOMAS EDISON “YEAH, SURE! SORTA! NOT ALWAYS...” - JOE OBAD IN THIS EDITION OF The Avalanche Journal, we draw upon the lessons of planning at different scales. In many ways, these pieces reflect the aspiration Edison lays out in his thoughts above. When planning, skill, experience and luck come together, amazing things happen. And then there are the other days! What would Edison’s wife have made of his thoughts? She likely saw a thousand days where he came back from the lab with his head down because things did not go as planned. The truth is heading into any season we make the best plans we can, and adjust them as reality sets in to devour false assumptions we made, our lack of resources, and other limitations to the planning process. The flipside of good planning is making room for resilience, adaption and faith that one’s skills and experience will be enough to address all the curveballs planning could not. These traits helped Edison head back into the lab the next day. The same qualities animate CAA members facing a very tricky snowpack in Western Canada with cold clear spells rotting out the early snowpack, followed by very late rain events and crusts setting up what may be a very nervous season. At the CAA, we have fielded challenges on behalf of members in the same spirit. Through 2013 we were asked by
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WorkSafeBC to comment on versions of OHS Regulations 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 to replace the previous version of 4.1.1 which was never enforced. The saga of these regulations for avalanche safety plans are a good stick in the eye to any pat aphorism about planning. The CAA and its members planned hard and gave a great deal of foresight to working in the environment the previous version of 4.1.1 offered, in terms of creating the QAP matrix, designing and implementing ITP’s Applied Avalanche Risk Management Level 3 course, and adapting to a culture of Avalanche Safety Plan requirements. From Edison’s view, much of this work might be for naught given the implosion of the earlier version of 4.1.1 and the QAP matrix. Certainly many members expressed this view to me and the board when the road ahead was unclear. But much of that “busy work” of our “plan gone wrong” has become core to avalanche practice in Canada. The Level 3 course remains in high demand with both Canadian and international practitioners—not because WSBC demands it, but because it helps practitioners embrace and adapt globally recognized best practices to their work environments. Similarly, avalanche safety plans have been widely adapted as a industry best practice, even without the force of WSBC enforcement. In October 2014, the WSBC board passed the new version of 4.1.1 and a new regulation 4.1.2. Learning from what worked and couldn’t work in the earlier 4.1.1 , WSBC, the CAA and like-minded stakeholders have wrestled this new regulation into something applicable and workable for all avalanche environments, working closely on input to the guideline. A huge development is the shift from the QAP to the “qualified person.” This shift makes avalanche practice less of an outlier and more inline with other workplaces where expert judgment is required. Of course the regulation is not perfect. We need a longterm answer to the question of who is a qualified person in the context of avalanche work. WSBC defines a qualified person as someone who is “ knowledgeable of the work, the hazards involved and the means to control the hazards, by reason of education, training, experience or a combination thereof.” But what does that mean in terms of avalanche practice? President Beardmore’s articles on competency continue to lay out the picture of how the CAA intends to shape competency for its members. The development of the competency profile concept will be talked about a lot heading into this year’s spring meetings. Like regulations 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 it has gone
the avalanche journal winter // 2014-15
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