How to Change the World. Clare Feeney
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There is more on such recognition of training in Chapter 5.
Industry capacity and recruitment
Capacity-building is a huge topic, encompassing personal, intra- and inter-agency capacity, among other things. As such, it’s much wider than the usual narrow focus on skills. It also refers to the numbers of people in the workforce as a whole or in particular sectors, especially those in areas like engineering where there is a global shortage of qualified people.
You will grapple with all these things as you develop your training program and the wider program of which it is part, and will need to involve all your internal and external partners and stakeholders.
I touch on this further in Chapter 8.
Step 7: Program resourcing and support
Later chapters go into program resourcing in more detail, so here I will simply say that developing and sustaining an environmental training program is a big job and you will need help. This means you will have to make a good, strong case to get your budget.
Even if you run only half a dozen workshops a year, the organisational logistics can be daunting. With its steadily expanding suite of environmental workshops, the Auckland Council has had to allocate a staff member to do the work, and it now has a full-time Stormwater Education and Community Programs Advisor. As well as the training program, the annual field days demand considerable commitment from this person, and other staff, for many weeks before the event.
Not all environmental managers have a personal assistant, or even an administrative support person, who could help with this work. Moreover, especially in difficult times, government and other agencies may find it difficult to increase the complement of permanent staff, so you may need to consider other ways of getting help.
 | Partnering can extend to every element shown in Figure 3 – all the steps we’ve just looked at. Use Action Sheets 2.3 and 2.4 to consider how it could work for you. Remember to consider both internal and external partnerships. |
 | Red flag |
| It’s better not to start at all than to be unrealistically ambitious and start a program that falls over, as this can engender disappointment and cynicism both in your organization and among your stakeholders. | |
| On the other hand, demonstrating the value of your program to stakeholders will help you capture the resources you need to sustain it. | |
| Okay, we do learn from our failures, so maybe we can fail – and in so doing hope we’ve encouraged others to join us in resuscitating it! |
Case Studies of Different Environmental Training Programs
There are three kinds of men: ones that learn by reading, a few who learn by observation and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.
Will Rogers
In this chapter I give an extended review of a US erosion and sediment control training program, followed by a series of summaries that indicate the diversity of environmental training programs. You will find case studies on the Internet from every sector. There will be plenty for your sector or sectors of interest.
Erosion and sediment control in the City of Charlotte, North Carolina
At the 2011 conference of the International Erosion Control Association, Jay Wilson (a Certified Professional in Erosion and Sediment Control (CPESC) for the City of Charlotte in North Carolina, USA) presented a paper40 about his eight years of experience developing and delivering an erosion and sediment control training program for the City. There are many parallels with the Auckland experience and much to be learned from Jay by anyone setting up a new environmental training program.
Jay identified a number of steps in this process and, as with the Auckland experience, they really only became apparent over time as the program evolved.
Briefly, people who attend the training become Charlotte-Mecklenburg Certified Site Inspectors (CMCSIs). Key aspects of the training are:
The first class was held in March 2002, and to date, over 3,000 people have attended – though as Jay ruefully acknowledged (and as we also found in Auckland), the importance of keeping good records was not initially recognized. As a result, while there are some multiple attendees, as many as 4,500 people may have attended the classes.
The trigger for the program was two ‘giant’ developments of over 3,000 acres (over 1200 hectares) proposed in the City near a river with multiple uses, including drinking water supply, recreation and power generation. The threat posed to these waters by sediment runoff was a focus of the permitting process, so when the land was rezoned to allow the development, the permits required the contractors to be trained in erosion and sediment control and other water quality protection measures, such as dealing with paint and concrete.
Today – and I see this as a measure of the success of Jay’s program – local ordinances specify this training as a requirement for the permitting of development proposals, and anyone on a site who cannot produce evidence of a relevant qualification must attend a class. Failure to comply can result in fines of up to $US5,000 a day.
In the early phases, City staff were actively using the violation (legal enforcement) system, but penalties could be halved if development staff attended