ATSSA Signal July/August 2020

The Signal | July/August 2020 37 Training When the nation went into a near shutdown in themiddle of March, Cindy Williams of Time Striping Inc. wasn’t sure what she was going to do to keep her team rolling. She’s president of the Van Buren, Ark., company and said work there never stopped. She neededher teamequipped but travel for training was no longer an option. Dave Waldo, the T2/LTAPmanager with theAlaskaDepartment of Transportation in Fairbanks, faced a similar quandary when contractors in his area could no longer travel for training. The window for roadwork is short in his area and he didn’t have time to wait for the global pandemic to end. “We had to cancel all of our spring work zone courses,” Waldo said. “We were concerned how we would meet requirements.” When he looked into other options, he discovered that virtual training would meet Alaska’s certification requirements as long as it covered the same material as the regular classroom course. “We contacted ATSSA and they were already working on the problem,” Waldo said. Within two weeks of President Donald Trump’s initial 15-day guidelines to “slow the spread” of the novel coronavi- rus, ATSSA announced it had modified two of its courses to a virtual format so members could keep their employ- ees equipped for their essential duties. ATSSA modified delivery of the Traf- fic Control Technician (TCT) and Traf - fic Control Supervisor (TCS) courses and worked with states, as needed, to meet their individual needs. The train- ing started with a handful of states authorizing the virtual format, but by late-May, 24 states were on board and more were expected to join them. Those 24 states were Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecti- cut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Indi- ana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. Virtual training option meets need in shutdown Instructor-led, live training takes lessons nationwide without travel