Insight 04: Electric Vehicle and Battery Safety Skills for Emergency Services, Vehicle Repair, and Auto Retailers
This insight was first published in November 2019, with minor updates made in May 2021.
Summary
Fire, police, ambulance, and service personnel will need new skills to handle EV accidents and repair to ensure the safety of themselves and others. The number of those workers who need reskilling is substantial and resources are needed to support sector skills councils and providers for regional delivery of accredited courses.
Focus of the Insight
This Faraday Insight will explore the standards by profession and the relevant professional bodies responsible for providing training and skills for employees to reach a level of competency on an ongoing basis. It will also identify best practices and make recommendations on how best to ensure the UK protects its frontline responders and service workers.
Conclusion
The expected growth of EVs on UK roads provides both an opportunity and a necessity for reskilling workers. While some national professional bodies have taken ownership of the challenge—notably the NFDA and its EVA scheme, the IMI’s TechSafe programme for vehicle mechanics, both best practices—emergency services lag behind in training. These models, in particular the IMI approach to a establishing an ongoing “currency of competency” and professional registry could well be adapted for use by emergency services.
We recommend a national campaign led by appropriate government departments, coordinated through professional bodies and skills councils, and directed to the emergency service personnel to ensure that resources are appropriately directed toward this skills effort. Learning interventions, too, should be identified in order to scale reskilling efforts quickly—such as scaling the Fire Service College’s Road Traffic Collision Instructor Course to ensure it measurably reaches all frontline FRS personnel. Relevant technology, such as crash recovery systems in mobile tech units, which are already available to most FRS, should be made available to other emergency services such as police and ambulance personnel so they are provided with up-to-date vehicle data.