Taking Part in the BC Provincial CVSA Challenge

In June of this year, I was invited to participate in the Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement (CVSE) Inspectors Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) Challenge in Surrey, BC, Canada as a judge. I know it doesn’t sound fun but honestly, it was awesome.The challenge was over a 3-day period and the competitors were seven (7) very qualified CVSE inspectors from all over BC to test their skills and knowledge. The winner from this competition would go on to compete in the North American Inspectors Championship (NAIC) in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. The NAIC includes the best of the best inspectors from Canada, the United States and Mexico competing for the title of Grand Champion. This is some serious stuff and of course, comes with bragging rights!For the provincial competition, the competitors first have to write a series of qualifying exams, which advances them to the provincial competition. This year’s competition consisted of driver interview, dangerous goods cargo tank inspection, coach bus inspection, and dangerous goods packaging inspection.I came in as a judge for the dangerous goods inspections. We provided some of the dangerous goods packaging with “compliance issues”. That was fun for me. I got to make dangerous goods stuff incorrect on purpose for once.A few incompliance issues that I added:

• put primary and subsidiary hazard labels on opposite sides of the package,
• left out the telephone number on the lithium battery mark,
• put a slightly ripped hazard class label on the package,
• applied incorrect UN# on the package vs. what would be shown on the DG document.

The competitors had to find the non-compliance issues with the scenario set-up for the dangerous goods packaging and the propane cargo tank. They were judged in all aspects relating to a “real life” inspection from personal protective equipment (PPE), approach to the vehicle, DG documents, examining packages/tank and inspection of the actual vehicle. The competitors had to document the non-compliance issues, write the corrective action and conclude whether the finding is considered out of service.At the end, it was a very “American Idol” scene for me. The person who won the competition deserved to win and for the first very time in 25 years of competing in the NAIC challenge, it is a Female CVSE inspector who represented CVSE!!! Ms. Brittany Linde.The NAIC competition was held in August and although she didn’t win the Grand Champion, she definitely made CVSE proud. Check out her awards. https://www.cvsa.org/eventpage/events/north-american-inspectors-championship/award-winners/Way to go Brittany!!!