With more than 7,000 natural gas powered vehicles in its fleet, Waste Management is the largest NGV fleet operator in the U.S. Managing a fleet of that size is no small task—it requires a team of more than 7,000 drivers and 1,200 technicians who maintain, repair and inspect natural gas vehicles every day.
But in addition to operating the largest NGV fleet in the country, Waste Management is also an NGV industry champion for safety. And for Waste Management, a huge part of safety is training.
“Waste Management prides itself on being a lean, efficient organization,” said Marty Tufte, Corporate Fleet Director for the company, “but we also are committed to training every employee who interacts with NGVs in our fleet to help ensure their safety, as well as the safety of our customers and the general public. That’s why we chose NGVi to help us with the daunting task of training Waste Management NGV drivers and technicians.”
Waste Management’s large number of employees to be trained, their diverse locations and their differing language groups presented unique challenges to implementing training programs that would meet the company’s unique needs. Traditional, classroom-based training with a live instructor could be effective, but would be costly and time consuming for that number of learners. In addition, Waste Management has specific safety procedures and protocols that needed to be incorporated into the training.
“Customized e-learning was the perfect solution for Waste Management,” commented Annalloyd Thomason, General Manager of NGVi. “We were able to take the existing curricula for our online NGV driver and NGV technician training courses and customize them to meet Waste Management’s specific needs.”
In addition to customizing the training with Waste Management-specific content, the courses were also translated into English, French and Spanish. They are available through NGVi’s Learning Management System on demand 24/7 so employees can take training when it’s most convenient for them.
“To ensure our employees are thoroughly prepared to safely work with NGVs, we require every driver and technician to take this training annually,” said John Tiquet, Natural Gas Fleet Manager for Waste Management. “The technician training process includes a final exam, also developed by NGVi, which is administered through our internal Learning Management System, so the company has a record of each learner’s performance. This gives us maximum assurance that our technicians are able to safely work on and around CNG and LNG vehicles.”
The NGVi training solution includes annual (or more frequent when necessary) updates to the curriculum whenever codes or processes change.
“With NGVi taking responsibility for ensuring the training content is both accurate and up-to-date, our team is freed up to focus on managing the Waste Management fleet. We truly consider NGVi to be our partner in this process.”
Training is part of Waste Management’s comprehensive safety program for CNG and LNG vehicles, and the company holds an excellent safety record for employees who drive and service them. Marty Tufte concluded…
