When sea meets the road – Hazardous Cargo Bulletin

When dangerous goods are moved into or out of Europe by sea under the IMDG Code, certain requirements imposed by ADR (or equivalent national regulations) must be met during the leg road to of from the port.  Compliance with the IMDG Code alone is not enough; ADR provisions relating to matters such as driver training, safety equipment, documentation and vehicle and trailer markings all need to be addressed.

In response to this issue and the needs of many of its customers, Exis Technologies has enhanced its Hazcheck compliance systems to cover additional provisions and/or variations which apply during the road legs of a combined road/sea journey.  The company has been designing and selling computer-based compliance systems for shipping dangerous goods by sea for 26 years.  Hazcheck systems are used by every link in the sea transport chain – from shippers to deep sea container lines – to ensure regulatory compliance, efficiency and safety in their global operations.

The online subscription service, Hazcheck Online currently allows a consignor shipping a dangerous goods cargo transport unit to Europe to check the shipment against the IMDG Code.  The new version also provides for the creation of a validation report highlighting ADR requirements for the road journey, including:

• tunnel restriction codes
• additional ADR documentation provisions
• transport unit marking and placarding

ADR’s Dangerous Goods List is available as a ‘toolkit‘ which can be integrated into customers’ software systems (alongside the IMDG Code data).

Exis has also added an ADR module to its IMDG Code e-learning package, an online training course which meets the mandatory training requirements in Chapter 1.3 of the IMDG Code.

Students taking the IMDG Code course can now opt to include additional road transport elements covering the general provisions of ADR, additional documentation requirements, ADR carriage requirements and ADR exemptions.

The ADR module is intended for students already familiar with the international rules for the carriage of dangerous goods by sea and is designed to provide a means of extending knowledge of the sea regulations to cover European road regulations.  It can be added to any of the courses – general awareness, function specific, advanced, freight forwarder or refresher.

Both the Hazcheck compliance systems and IMDG Code e-learning are regularly updated to reflect the latest editions of the IMDG Code and ADR Agreement.