American Coatings Association

Last week, the Dangerous Goods Advisory Council (DGAC) conducted its 33^rd Annual Conference and Hazardous Materials Exposition in Tampa, Fla., drawing leaders from the transportation community, including former regulators from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) and the United Nations Subcommittee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods. The annual conference marked ACA senior counsel Heidi McAuliffe’s final event as Chair of the Dangerous Goods Advisory Council. 

Highlights of the conference program included scheduling the DGAC regulatory committees, NARLA and INTEREC, immediately after the “Regulator’s Updates” for both domestic regulations (49 CFR) and international regulations (ADR/RIN, Model UN Regulations, ICAO and IMDG). This new format allowed DGAC members, indeed all conference attendees, to discuss the regulations in a comprehensive fashion and formulate thoughtful comments where appropriate. The new format also allowed for a more efficient discussion as the regulators were invited to stay for the committee meetings and there was no need to repeat the content of the proposals. As a result, attendees of the international meeting, INTEREC, included the current Chair of the United Nations Subcommittee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods (Jeff Hart from the UK), two former Chairs of the UN SubCommittee of Experts (Al Roberts of DGAC and Bob Richards, LabelMaster Services, Inc., both formerly PHMSA administrators) along with a former Vice Chair of the UN SubCommittee of Experts  (Frits Wybenga, DGAC staff and former PHMSA staff).

The Dangerous Goods Advisory Council (DGAC), also known as the Hazardous Materials Advisory Council, is an international, educational, nonprofit membership organization representing shippers of varying sizes, carriers of all modes, container manufacturers and reconditioners, as well as emergency response and waste clean-up companies. ACA has a long history with DGAC: ACA (formerly National Paint & Coatings Association, Inc., or NPCA) was one of the founding members of DGAC and Bruce Hamill, a former General Counsel at NPCA, served as one of the first Chairs; Andy Doyle, ACA’s current president, also served as Chair of DGAC (then HMAC) from 1987-1988. 

Heidi McAuliffe’s tenure as Chair of the organization was marked by two accomplishments — completing an executive search and selecting the next President of DGAC, and the aforementioned, updated and revised Annual Conference format that included several first-time events designed to make the meeting more interactive, informative and fun. 

DGAC’s current President Mike Morrissette announced his retirement shortly after McAuliffe assumed the Chair position. McAuliffe led an Executive Search Team through a review of resumes and interviews for the successor president, which resulted in a unanimous decision to elect Vaughn Arthur, a 19-year veteran at DGAC to the leadership position. 

The 33^rd Annual Conference and Hazardous Materials Exposition began with a networking reception on Nov. 6 and ended with training classes on multi-modal transportation, European road regulations and classifying dangerous goods. The substantive program began with an interactive workshop on the topic of the upcoming regulatory changes to the requirements for consumer commodities and limited quantities  —  two exceptions to the dangerous goods regulations used heavily by the paint industry.  This workshop was facilitated by McAuliffe and The Sherwin-Williams Company’s Sandra Chapman.  A highpoint of the workshop was the announcement by PHMSA staff that, in response to an ACA request for interpretation on the application of 49 CFR 172.300(c), the sunset date for the current Limited Quantity mark was extended to Jan. 1, 2013. This was previously unclear and many believed the sunset date to be Jan. 1, 2012.  The presentation at this workshop is available to ACA corporate members on ACA’s Transportation & Distribution Committee webpage.

In addition, there was also the opportunity for attendees to interact directly with regulators at the “Speed-date a Government Regulator” session.  In this session, round tables of 10 were each staffed by a government regulator and attendees were invited to visit any table they wished.  During 15-minute intervals, each table was engaged in very lively discussions which appeared to benefit both the regulators —  by providing them some “real world” examples of how the regulations impact transportation  — and the attendees as they found solutions to problems and were able to benchmark their activities with colleagues in the same field. 

The coatings industry benefits from McAuliffe’s participation in DGAC in many ways.  As indicated earlier, ACA was able to obtain a very swift answer to a request for interpretation at the CC/LQ Workshop.  In addition, McAuliffe was able to discuss Special Permit concerns with Don Burger, a longtime staff of the Special Permits Division of PHMSA, several enforcement issues with PHMSA field staff, and the upcoming proposals for the UN SubCommittee meeting and IMO meetings with the decision-makers of those organizations.  The opportunity to discuss these issues in an informal setting is tremendous; face-to-face interaction is invaluable and is extremely helpful to our members when it is necessary to intervene on matters on their behalf. 

McAuliffe will remain active with DGAC as the Immediate Past Chair remains on the Board of Directors for a period of three years.