Task 1 - Project management: project coordination, day to day management, contacts with DG TREN.
Task 2 - Development of a Curriculum for the Road Safety personnel, mainly based on Road Safety Audit and Inspections, foreseeing a specific certification. The first draft of the Curriculum will be prepared by FEHRL, together with its associated institutes (like BAST [BundesAnstalt füt Strassenwesen, DE], BRRC [Belgian Road Research Centre], AIT [Austrian Institute of Technology] and others) involved in the process of training and certification of auditors. It will contain a structured list of items related to RSA and RSI, with details about the number of training hours for each item, teachers, etc. for a total of 160 hours. After an internal discussion, an updated version of the curriculum will be issued for partner’s approval. The final version will take into account the needs of the different regional road authorities.
Task 3 - Further implementation of the deliverables of FP6 Ripcord-Iserest project: “Safety Handbook of secondary roads” and SEROES. Other relevant training materials will be considered. The training material issued from this task will be consistently illustrated with relevant examples, and road situation encountered in the participating regions.
Task 4 - Agreement between the participating Regions about the contents of the training courses and the exchange of road experts between the participating Regions. This agreement will be signed during the third project meeting.
Task 5 - Training of at least two technicians from each participating Region, according to the Curriculum developed in the tasks 2 and 3. The technicians will undergo a 4-week training (one week per month), at FEHRL (Brussels), for a total of 160 hours.
Task 6 - Execution of one Road Safety Audit for a selected project in each Region with a team including at least one expert from another participating Region. Each partner will select, at the beginning of the project, an ongoing project (new road or rehabilitation of an existing one) and will present it during the second project meeting. In the same meeting the time schedule for the Audits and the assignment of the external technicians will be agreed. The audit operations will be performed according to such calendar.
Task 7 - Execution of one Road Safety Inspection for a selected road stretch in each participating Region with a team including at least one expert from another Region (the expert should be different from the one involved in task 6). Each partner will select, during the course of the project, a road stretch and will present it during the third project meeting (see the action plan). A time schedule will be issued and the inspections performed accordingly.
Task 8 - Evaluation of results. The evaluation of the results will be based on the feedback questionnaire filled by:
- The trained technicians at the end of their training and at the end of their participation at the RSA and RSI
- The road managers on the RSA and RSI performed in each region
- The comments of the Reference group
An evaluation report will be issued at the end of the project and will include some external comments collected during the Final Conference (see Action Plan). The report will also contain a certification methodology based on the results of the evaluation.
Task 9 - Dissemination and exploitation plan. The results and evaluation will be disseminated via the project’s web page on the FEHRL web portal. A final conference will be held in Brussels -in month 24. The exploitation plan will contain guidelines for a wider application of the training and certification; it will use the results of the evaluation (Task 8) to build specific recommendations for each partner country.
