Working Group Award 2024
EIGA has many experts from Member companies working in 67 Working Groups and Ad Hoc Groups. Each year, the working group that best fulfils the criteria of customer satisfaction, achievement, work process, leadership, teamwork and participation are nominated for the Working Group Award.
The winner of the 2024 Working Group Award is WG-1 Transport
WG-1’s works on the transportation of gases. It assures that EIGA members’ interests are taken into account in international regulations, such as the United Nations Model Regulations, ADR/RID and European Directives, and provide guidance on legislation and codes of good practice for transport operations.
Transport of Dangerous Goods - which all of our gases are classified as - is strictly regulated on a national and global level. Indeed, EIGA members transport their gases across boarders and often ship these overseas. Each mode of transport, by road, rail, inland waterways and overseas, has its own specific rules and restrictions.
It is here that the expertise is required from WG-1 experts: to interpret the legislation and propose those changes which are needed for safer transport, or reply to proposals from authorities which can make transport unnecessarily complex, burdensome, or non-productive.
Each WG-1 member reviews four times a year the many papers for change in regulations and the WG-1 Chair, together with EIGA staff, travel to United Nations buildings in Geneva, to the European and worldwide meetings four times per year to defend the interests of our industry. Each meeting lasts an entire week. This is a long-lasting commitment.
Some examples where WG1 has been effective in their advocacy at UN:
- Aiding the process of approving battery electric and fuel cell electric trucks for dangerous goods transport
- Simplifying import and export of US-DOT cylinders
- Approving battery vehicles for oversea transport
- Preparing Multilateral Agreements between member states for exceptions to ADR/RID
- Protecting the status quo on various industry best practices against unsubstantiated proposed changes
Due to the increase of legislative requirements, WG-2 Cylinders works closely with WG-1 in submitting papers to the ADR/RID Committee on topics related to pressure receptacles.
WG-1 and WG-17 Transport Safety also interact, whereas the latter primarily focuses on all transport safety topics with no regulatory impact. Those with regulatory implications are handled by WG-1.
Finally, often at UN level, WG-1 cooperates with our American colleagues CGA in submitting joint papers guaranteeing a harmonised approach on crucial regulatory topics.