CSA, IRT, and a Tradition of Security [Commentary] – Security & Compliance

How do you measure security? It’s a query the Federal Motor Provider Security Administration has struggled with for greater than a decade. 

When CSA 2010 was rolled out, the acronym stood for Complete Security Evaluation. Someplace alongside the road, it turned Compliance, Security, Accountability. The company didn’t precisely put out a press launch about why it modified. Maybe it had one thing to do with the truth that security and compliance usually are not essentially the identical factor.  

The core of CSA 2010 was a brand new Security Measurement System (SMS), which FMCSA described as “a software to determine high-risk motor carriers requiring interventions with the intention to enhance security on the nation’s roads.” 

From the start, whereas applauding the idea normally, the trucking trade had main issues about how the SMS measured motor service security. A few of these points led to lawsuits and lobbying, and in 2017, Congress demanded the company fee an unbiased research of SMS. The ensuing research by the Nationwide Academy of Sciences (NAS) really helpful utilizing a greater statistical mannequin: Merchandise Response Concept, or IRT. 

Self-described knowledge geek Steve Bryan, founding father of Vigillo (now a part of Samba Security), had attended each public assembly of the NAS panel because it developed its suggestions. In a 2018 presentation, he defined that one of many issues the NAS panel was tasked with was taking a look at whether or not CSA scores truly predict future crash danger.  

“The prevailing CSA program is about predicting crash danger,” Bryan stated. “None of us imagine that ever labored. It does a horrible job.” 

As an alternative, he stated the IRT mannequin meant, “We’re transferring away from pretending we are able to predict future crashes and towards evaluating security tradition.” The brand new IRT methodology, he defined, would transfer past the seven BASICs and create a single security tradition rating. 

OK, that looks as if a good suggestion. However how do you measure security tradition?  

A Virginia Tech Transportation Institute research discovered that fleets that reported constructing a powerful security tradition, with administration and driver buy-in, elevated security outcomes. However the precise methods diverse broadly.  

As VTTI’s Matt Camden defined in a 2019 visitor article, “security tradition has been a preferred subject within the security literature because the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986; nevertheless, the precise definition of security tradition has been broadly debated. 

“Maybe security tradition can finest be considered a ‘lens’ via which workers see how a company feels about security. In different phrases, a fleet’s security tradition might be assessed by the shared beliefs, values, and attitudes all their workers have towards security.” 

If the protection specialists can’t provide you with a very good definition of security tradition, maybe it’s not shocking that the FMCSA determined to reject the IRT suggestion in its February announcement of proposed adjustments to the SMS. 

“It is simple to consider the time period security tradition and take into account that to be sort of meaningless business-speak,” stated Brandon Wiseman, proprietor and president of Trucksafe Consulting, in a 2021 HDT webinar. 

FMCSA rules don’t use the time period, however as a substitute seek advice from “security administration controls.” Nonetheless, he stated, a tradition of security “is the why behind the steps {that a} motor service takes to bolster their security program. And it’s the muse on which all of these insurance policies and procedures sit, and it’s that basis that the FMCSA expects to see after they are available and have a look at all of your recordsdata.” 

Probably the most passionate advocates I do know for constructing a tradition of security is Chris Woody, security supervisor at M&W Logistics in Nashville, Tennessee, a 2020 HDT Truck Fleet Innovator.  

In that very same webinar, he stated, “I feel all people’s obtained a security tradition. The query is, is it a very good security tradition or a nasty security tradition?” 

That are you?