Supervising an operation

[duckman]

Hello all, quick question. What standards are our there in regards to qualifications for supervising dive operations. What type of training and what type of experience is required in your teams, county,state, province, country to quailify as a dive operations supervisor. I am familiar with the Canadaian CSA standards but their seems to be a broad interpretation of them. If anyone has input or specifics on this topic I would greatly appreciate the info.

Regards...Duckman

 

[Boater Dan]

Hello all, quick question. What standards are our there in regards to qualifications for supervising dive operations. Regards...Duckman

Duckman:

I am assuming from your reference to the Canadian Standard, that you are from there. In the US, we have NIMS (National Incident Management System) which replaced the Incident Command System. I am just getting started (yep, I'm way behind) in doing the classes. They are available on line if you do a search. They are the basis for all emergency responses from fire, flooding, terrorism, PD incidents, Haz-Mat, etc.. I am certain that there are career personnel on here who can provide the module which best sets the structure for dive operations.

Basic structure for dive calls on our team is to assign an individual to Incident Commander, Safety Officer, Dive Operations, Boat Operations, Staging, and Logistics. NIMS will provide you the roles for each.

Good luck,

Dan

 

[duckman]

Thanks for the reply, good stuff! I will look into it. I'm really curious as to what level of training and experience one person needs in order to supervise a dive in your world. My agency seems to be spitting guys out with very limited experience. They are great divers beacause we have a fairly good training structure but the are being put into supervisory roles within their first year. Is this normal practice, acceptable standards ? I'm curious to see what others think and experience.

Thanks again, Duckman

 

[Gary D.]

As far as time on the team to supervise an operation that will depend on the individual. Some are ready to go within a year while others will never be ready. But it does take a good diving background and knowledge of the area your working in.

Lane B is a mega level IC that is the #2 IC in our department. He is normally the go to guy on an operation.

But we do things a little differently. Everyone on the team is in a sense a supervisor. Any team member can stop an operation at any time. If that should happen we regroup talk it over and come to a decision as a group. Then it will be the Marine Sgt. and/or Lane B who make the final decision. It has worked very well for a long time.

Gary D.

 

[james croft]

My dive team is a statewide LE unit that is broken up into regions. There is a supervisor for each region. They are chosen for having the most experience and training and have "been there, done that". Each diver may call a dive they do not feel comfortable with, as Gary noted, and we have called dives that the benefit/risk assesment was not safe for our guys. For more challenging dives involving deep, dark dives in flooded timber for example, a team of divers with experience in that type of diving may be drawn from statewide assets. As a rule, most of our supervisors fall into the category of having professional knowlege of scuba in the Divemaster/Instructor category, a lot of training in bad conditions, know a lot about Murphy's Law, and have PSD certifications, not recreational c-cards. Most of our supervisors have gray hair with the exception of one bald guy if that helps.

 

[bridgediver]

duckman - I don't think it would be that hard for your guys to "meet" the standard even after a year. A diver could potentially be a 'trainee' for the 6 month period within the 1st year of reaching 50 dives. Supervising 16 dives and 3 'mock incidents' could probably be done in 2 or 3 normal training days.
Just how we interpret it.

Having said that, most teams don't have the luxury of having a qualified diver to stand as a supervisor (usually have to gear up and dive) for any rapid response ops. What we begin with is usually the senior/primary tender as the supervisor; later on the "dive supervisor" will arrive. We still follow the rules, just bend them a little.

I've actually found that a good tender can be a better supervisor in that they follow the SOG's (and especially safety procedures) to the letter while divers may tend to short-cut. I'm not convinced you need to be a diver to be a good supervisor but of course you need to understand the diving.

Its too bad that the PSD community didn't get on board and help develop the CSA's when they were doing them. The rapid response issue being one of the many holes in the standard - at least IMO.


BTW - I sent you a private message sometime ago introducing myself (since you're just up the road from me) but perhaps you didn't get it?

 

[duckman]

Hey Bridgediver,

Yes I did get the email, and I'm sorry that I forgot to communicate with you, my very bad. I agree with you that some properly trained line tenders can do a great job at supervising a dive but I believe you would be going over the line in regards to CSA, not just bending the rules. Problem here is that these bloody regulations do not take into account the "rescue" aspect of our jobs. Yes, in a recovery there is no excuse to bypass the regulations. You have time to set things up and hand pick your crew but in a rescue you may have to do what needs to be done...but at what cost? Are these decisions that can have severe negative results should things go bad? I simply don't know and I can't get a straight answer from anyone. Seems like these regulations can morph into some grey areas...at least until something happens. Have you ever communicated with OH & S on this? All they care about is dive teams following CSA, but who in CSA can answer these types of questions? If you know, I would like to get a contact. Here's an example:

CSA states that a diver must first have completed a basic SCUBA course with minimum bottom times and dives before being trained occupationnaly. We don't take guys with basic courses, we train them ourselves. The hours it takes to get them to an open water card are then credited towards there necessary hours to become occupational divers. Is this OK? I'm told by my superior that it is, but is it? I don't see any written documents to this fact. When it comes to site supervisors, we credit the guys for the hours they have been diving since they started their open water cert. Yet the standard says that it is 50 dives AFTER initial occupational certification. Therefore our guys are available to become site supervisors after less than 1 year of even blowing their first bubble, is this acceptable? Again, according to my superior, CSA says yes, since the guys have been training in the environment that they will operate in since the beginning (which isn't exactly true). But again, where is the written proof to this. Bet your bottom dollar that if an incident occurs OH & S will simply make sure that CSA documents were followed, where they?

Do you have the same issues and concerns.? Do you feel you guys are CSA compliant?

Sorry it took so long, I don't check email everyday.

Sincere regards....Duckman

 

[duckman]

James Croft.
That's the type of stuff I like to hear. If you look are the response I gave to Bridgediver in regards to our Site Supervisor, I think you would agree that 50 dives including your open water ticket would not make you a rock solid supervisor.

I'm sorry it took so long for me to reply, I appreciate your feedback.

Duckman

 

[bridgediver]

Hi Marc - I thought that could be you...

I should've been more clear that using a tender as a supervisor is just my opinion. You're right in that it doesn't comply with the standards as I understand them. What we do is make sure we have all of the required pieces moving. We almost always have to call in guys to have enough divers, tenders and supervisor. The supervisor may still be onroute while the op begins to set up and may even start the dive if it demands a rapid response.
Its simply the only way we can run the team. We rarely have enough guys always ready to respond. Being tied up on other EMS/fire calls is the biggest factor for us.

I'm no CSA expert but we also count the intial training and dives into the "restricted diver" totals and would use the same towards the supervisory totals if we had other supervisors. I'm the only guy that takes the supervisory role and so I get called in for everything. Not the best model but we're still a pretty small team. We should develop more "supervisors" but you know how change is in a FD...
It says that the 50 dives need to be done in the "category" being supervised. I don't see anything about after certification though...

Having said all of this, As you say, could they become a supervisor in less than a year? According to the CSA's I'd say yes. But is it right? I'd say no. There are a whole host of things that the CSA's don't cover for us that we should be doing. I think its up to the team to set its standards beyond CSA (ie I think 20-25 dives is pretty low to define a restricted diver for PSD). The CSA also doesn't have a minimum amount of annual dives or define what those dives should be.

I share some of your frustrations with the document. It's built for commercial divers and there are quite a few aspects that just don't work for us but we have to comply, right? You always hear talk on the net about the US teams looking for a standard for their PSD and I think that it is wise to have one. A word of caution though. They need to make sure that it will work for PSD.

Does our team comply? How about this: Our SOG's reflect compliance and our ops are expected to comply with the CSA's (period). I'll talk to you later about the "bending" parts...


Have you tried talking to Cam J on the CSA's? (I think he taught you guys?)
Do you have a copy?


take care

mark

 

[duckman]

Thanks for the response...good stuff.

I have spoken to Cam about this issue and I am not satisfied with the response I got. In his opinion having taken the LGS course gives you all the necessary requirements to meet CSA.Having taken the course and having read the standards I have to disagree with that. The LGS course, albeit one if not the best instructor course I have taken, taught me more about how to teach diving ( which is what it's designed to do) than how to cover CSA criterias and their sub-requirements.

Yes I do have a copy of CSA 275.4 but Alberta should be adopting 275.5 as well in the near future...Ray Cislo at OH &S hinted that the provincial requirements will change to reflect the full adoption of all CSA documents. Do you need me to send you what I have? It may be dated by now.

Duckman