September October 2017

12 American Traffic Safety Services Association TRAINING & MIDYEAR MEETING ATSSA Trained: Every Job. Every Day. Every Time. Training instructors gather for annual meeting at Midyear This year’s Annual Instructor Meeting was held in conjunction with ATSSA’s Midyear Meeting in Kentucky on Aug. 22–23. Instructors were among the first groups of attendees to arrive in Louisville to kick off their annual meeting with a welcome and yearly recap session, led by ATSSA’s Director of Training Jessica Scheyder. “While we stay in touch with the instructors throughout the year, it’s always great to meet with them in person,” Scheyder said. “This year, because we met in conjunction with the Midyear Meeting, it allowed the instructors to get even more involved in all the great work that ATSSA does.” The President of JM Morales & Associates and ATSSA’s Chief Instructor Juan M. Morales, P.E., provided the roughly 40 attending instructors with an overview of updates that recently were made to the exams and workshops of both the Traffic Control Technician and Traffic Control Supervisor courses. Morales also discussed issues related to the administration of the courses and exams, the best practices and design for loading and unloading traffic control devices from trucks as well as his work conducting safety audits in New York City. “There are a lot of challenges implementing the standards in work zones set in urban areas so it was good for the other instructors to hear about how New York City deals with its extreme conditions where they have a lot of pedestrians and heavy traffic volumes at night,” Morales said. “One of the biggest challenges is dealing with how to make these pedestrian detours and diversions detectable and at the same time compliant with the American Disabilities Act (ADA).” Morales said he works with Scheyder to prepare the topics that will be discussed at each year’s meeting but they also reach out to the instructors for feedback and suggestions. Additionally, with the meeting being held in Kentucky versus its usual location in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Morales said the instructors were able to attend the Temporary Traffic Control Committee meeting in addition to hearing from new guest speakers, which included: • The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Statewide Construction Safety Liaison Rob Hecker, who provided an update on the department’s training initiative; • Road Systems, Inc’s Vice President of Technical Support and Marketing John Durkos, who provided an update on the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH); • ATSSA’s Vice President of Government Relations Nate Smith, who provided an overview on current transportation- and infrastructure-related legislation; • ATSSA’s President and CEO Roger Wentz, who provided an update on the MUTCD; and • ATSSA’s Director of Member Engagement Rita Rose, who provided an update on the association’s membership types and benefits. Next year’s Annual Instructor Meeting will again be held in conjunction with the Midyear Meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia.   About 40 instructors attended ATSSA’s Annual Instructor Meeting, which was held in conjunction with ATSSA’s Midyear Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky on Aug. 22 to 23.