Managing hazardous materials training at the Federal, State, and local levels is a complex task. The challenge is to conduct training with limited resources that meets the public sector response training requirements of OSHA 1910.120 (q) and EPA 311, as well as the prevailing industry standards including NFPA 471 and 472. This challenge is compounded by the additional responsibility to ensure that all public sector employees involved in planning and prevention are properly trained to perform their roles.

GBK assists our clients in:

• Ensuring that proper hazard and vulnerability analyses are conducted to determine response and planning needs;
• Determining public sector employee roles and competency requirements in planning and response;
• Conducting training needs assessments to establish and prioritize employee needs for competency and refresher training;
• Developing short-term and long-term training plans that address the training needs for compliance with OSHA 1910.120(q) and EPA 311;
• Managing the jurisdiction's training curriculum for planning and response, including assessing courses for proper objectives, content, and methodology, and revising, updating, and developing courses to meet training requirements not presently addressed; and
• Ensuring that the training delivery is effective.

We assist our clients in conforming with FEMA and The US Fire Administration's Hazardous Materials and Terrorist Incident Response Curriculum Guidelines and Hazardous Materials and Terrorist Incident Response Curriculum Guidelines.

Reference Project:

US Air Force Firefighter Certification Hazardous Materials Emergency Response Training (IFSAC)

Department of Defense Center for Environmental Initiatives and Hands-on Training (CEIHOT)

By regulation, US DoD Firefighters must receive training certified by the International Fire Service Accreditation Congress (IFSAC). The DoD Center for Environmental Initiatives and Hands-on Training (CEIHOT) selected GBK to design, develop, and deploy the required training for client DoD Fire Service Agencies from around the world. GBK developed a series of curricula (over 160 hours of training) to meet the NFPA competency standards (NFPA 472/471). GBK's IFSAC-certified instructors delivered the intensive, hands-on training at onsite locations around the world as well as to firefighters from numerous defense activities at the CEIHOT facililty.

Some milestones and deliverables included:

1. Developed IFSAC-conforming curriculum for First Responder qualification through Incident Commander qualification;
2. Coordinated 3rd-party evaluators to verify demonstrated competencies;
3. Administered "Cert-test" with 94% pass rate;
4. Provided the training on-site at multiple locations inlcuding US Army's Yuma Proving Ground; Naval Air Station Rota (Spain); NATO's Caserme Ederle (Italy); and the US DoD Center for Environmental Initiatives and Hands-on Training