The first International Oil Spill Conference and Exhibition to be held in Ireland will take place in the beautiful city of Cork in early April, 2011. The three day event is being organised by the International Spill Accreditation Association at the National Maritime College of Ireland (NMCI), a 14,000m2 facility built on a 10 acre waterside campus. It was purpose built to serve the training requirements of the School of Nautical Studies, Cork Institute of Technology and the Irish Naval Service. At the ISAA meeting held earlier this month John Dawes, Chairman of the event organising committee, said “the college has one of the best conference facilities I have seen in the UK and Ireland”.

The main auditorium has seating for 130 and is fitted out with the very latest audio-visual and other facilities. There are several adjacent meeting rooms that will allow for side meetings. The very large and brightly lit glass-fronted foyer will be used as the exhibition area. The core facility has easy access to the harbour and inland waterway, both providing ideal facilities for live demonstrations of oil spill equipment.

More information about this forthcoming event will be released in later editions of the ISCO Newsletter.
 

The January 2009 meeting of the Steering Group John McMurtrie was pleased to be able to advise that the Working Group established by ISAA, in co-operation with ISCO, is now working on the development of the extension of ISAA Accreditation to Marine HNS and Onshore Chemical Incident Response. The Working Group includes internationally respected experts from USA, Canada, UK and the Netherlands:

•    Dr Merv Fingas, who has more than 25 years of spill response experience with Environment Canada where he was head of the Emergencies Science Division. He was appointed to the United States Academy of Sciences and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Hazardous Materials. Publications include The Handbook of Hazardous Materials Spills Technology and Survey of Chemical Spills Countermeasures.

•    Mr Kevin Miller, who, as Managing Director of HazmatLINK works with industry, emergency services and governments, providing advice and consultancy on planning and managing incidents involving hazardous materials. Prior to this he managed the United Kingdom’s National Chemical Emergency Centre (NCEC). In this role he was responsible for ensuring a rapid and professional response to over 1500 incidents per year. He was a member of the Department for Transport working group that developed the code of practice for security of dangerous goods transported by road and rail, assisted in the development of the European Emergency Response Intervention Cards (ERICards), and peer reviewed the CDC/NIOSH’s emergency response safety and health database.

•    Dr. Manik Sardessai, Vice President of Technical and Environmental Affairs and Director of Training of Detroit, Michigan, USA based Marine Pollution Control (MPC) Corporation, responsible for developing both in-house and client training programs, including 40, 24, and 8 Hour Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HazWoper, CFR 1910.120) courses, DOT, Incident Command Systems (ICS), and Chemistry classes. As a Faculty, he has taught both undergraduate and graduate level courses at Wayne State University, U.S.A. and University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Since 2002, he has been a member of Chemical Transportation Advisory Committee (CTAC) (USCG, USA).

•    Dr Wierd Koops is Professor in Maritime, Marine, Environmental and Safety Management at the Maritime Institute Willem Barentsz. He also is an independent consultant and manager of Accidental Spill Control Consultancy vof with specific expertise on accidental or deliberate marine pollution. He has more than 30 years of professional experience in oil and chemical spill response. He is an experienced project manager, with extensive international experience in all the aspects of emergency management: prevention, preparation, response and evaluation. He has broad experience in international projects (Helcom, Bonn Agreement, Barcelona Convention, IMO and EU).

•    Mr Nick Bailey joined DV Howells in 2003 as a chemicals expert with many years international incident response experience. He also sees to it that the Chemical / HNS spill response units are maintained with the most appropriate and up to date equipment. Nick’s track record of managing chemical response scenarios is impressive. Aside from dealing with a wide range of incidents, he is also heavily involved with chemical, biological and hazardous incident response services worldwide.

•    Mr Bill Atkinson is Head of Emergency Response at the National Chemical Emergency Centre (NCEC), AEA Technology. He is responsible for a team of experts providing chemical emergency response advice worldwide to emergency services, chemical industry and the transport sector.
 

In speaking to people at the International Oil Spill Conference earlier this year it became apparent that the respective functions of the International Spill Control Organization (ISCO) and the International Spill Accreditation Association (ISAA) are often not clearly understood.

ISCO - The International Spill Control Organisation - was incorporated in London in 1984 as a non-profit-making NGO, dedicated to improving worldwide preparedness for response to oil and chemical spills. ISCO’s members are individuals, companies and other entities that are professionally involved with spill response. The organization has membership in over 30 countries and now has consultative status at IMO. This recognition of ISCO means that, at long last, the professionals in the front line of spill combat operations have joined with other organizations at IMO representing oil, shipping and environmental interests. The inclusion of those who provide the essential infrastructure for spill response fills a longstanding gap, allowing direct dialogue between IMO and the spill response community. ISCO is not a trade association and is not a body that awards professional qualifications to its members. ISCO members form a worldwide community of professionals who share a common interest. ISCO disseminates information on the prevention, mitigation and remediation of oil and hazardous material spills into the environment. It provides assistance to members seeking to develop their knowledge base and build expertise in spill control and related disciplines. You can find out more about ISCO at http://www.spillcontrol.org

ISAA – The International Spill Accreditation Association – is the world authority for accreditation of spill response organizations (SROs) and is dedicated to the raising of worldwide standards in spill response. As a not-for-profit NGO, ISAA sets international standards for spill response in all areas including inland and marine spills. Accreditation is not only applicable to privately owned spill contractors but can also be used by governments and others for independently checking their own response capabilities. ISAA accreditation schemes in each participating country or region are controlled by ISAA in partnership with steering groups that include representatives of appropriate government departments and other relevant organizations. ISAA organises training courses and seminars to assist SROs in gaining required levels of competency in ISAA accreditation subjects. In order to gain and maintain accredited status SROs are regularly audited by independent experts. Accreditation may be awarded at one of three levels in spill response disciplines that include marine, shoreline, freshwater, on-land, groundwater, and road/rail tanker spills. ISAA auditors examine every aspect of each candidate’s operations in accordance with a comprehensive accreditation matrix. The objective is not only to determine appropriate levels for award (or otherwise) of accreditation, but to help accredited SROs, over time, to progress towards higher levels of accreditation.