If you have an issue with planning standards.....

[RFM]

Time to stick my head above the parapet again! This time as Chair of the BOF Event Operations Committee which, as its terms of reference state, is “responsible to Management Committee and Council for the operational running of the sport of orienteering in the United Kingdom”.

I’m afraid this will be rather long as I didn’t pick up on this discussion until last night. There are many points I’d like to address in this and other recent postings but I’ll have to concentrate on a few.

Firstly, though, I’d like to point out that, like all BOF Officers, I am still an active local orienteer as Development Officer (and previous Chair) for my club as well as being a coach, controller and planner. And, whilst Melons’ comment that ‘establishments run by a distinct aging group of stalwarts are usually very uneasy about change and radical ideas’ may ring true for some, even though I am the wrong side of fifty I got involved with ‘BOF’ to bring about change not to foster inertia. However, I’ve increasingly found that orienteers fit the analogy we use in my University when trying to change academics’ practices – ‘herding cats’.

I do follow the discussions on Nopesport with interest but there is a narrow dividing line between lively debate and ridiculing/insulting hardworking volunteers and paid officers. Nopesport provides a useful forum for floating ideas before taking them back to Clubs, Associations and even BOF Committees with well thought out proposals. As many have said in this and other threads, there are proper channels for raising issues and we are trying to refine these through the new committee structures within BOF. So, whilst Andrew has posted my name and email address on Nopesport as the start of this topic, there is a proper process if you are unhappy about any aspect of an event, which I checked up on by going to the Orienteering Regulations section of the BOF website. It reads as follows:

“There is a well established procedure which all competitors should follow if they feel that the Rules or Guidelines are not being followed.
Any non-trivial complaints should initially be addressed to the Planner or Organiser dependent on the nature of the complaint. However any approach should bear in mind that Event Officials are volunteers who have given up their valuable time to lay on the event, often under circumstances which are not ideal.

If it is not resolved satisfactorily then raise a protest with the Controller (At this stage a charge may be imposed which will be returned if the protest is upheld).

Rules Group is the final arbiter should an appeal against the Controllers decision be deemed necessary. “

Event Operations is concerned about the issues raised about recent events by Andrew and others. I am also conscious that approaching the planner or controller may appear to be leading into a dead end and that we need to find mechanisms for evaluating the quality of events, learning the lessons and feeding forward into future events. This will involve the six groups which work closely with Event Operations – Elite, Senior and Junior Competitions Groups; Rules, Fixtures and Mapping Groups – discussing how best to manage the flow of information into them, between them and into further guidance and training for event officials. All this without placing additional burden on already stretched volunteers.

I want my orienteering to be fun, challenging and rewarding – as a competitor and a club/BOF official. Like many on this list I devote huge amounts of time to the sport and I wouldn’t be the first to ask whether it’s worth it in the face of constant back-biting. So, if criticism is fair then make it; but please make it constructive. My senior managers tell me not to bring them problems, only solutions, recognizing that someone then has to make choices from amongst possibly conflicting proposals.

“You can please some of the people some of the time but you can’t please all of the people all the time” – though we’d like to try!

Ranald

[grossltu]

“There is a well established procedure which all competitors should follow if they feel that the Rules or Guidelines are not being followed.
Any non-trivial complaints should initially be addressed to the Planner or Organiser dependent on the nature of the complaint. However any approach should bear in mind that Event Officials are volunteers who have given up their valuable time to lay on the event, often under circumstances which are not ideal.

If it is not resolved satisfactorily then raise a protest with the Controller (At this stage a charge may be imposed which will be returned if the protest is upheld).

Rules Group is the final arbiter should an appeal against the Controllers decision be deemed necessary. “

Ranald

Quoting the above is kind of mis representing the facts. The BOF Rules & Guidelines apply to individual events so a discussion of this nature on nopesport is outwith the scope of BOF Guidelines.

Individual events and there positive & negitive sides should only get a brief covering on a nopesport discussion but any principle that comes out of those brief discussions deserves far much great airing.

To my mind AWK was right in airing this issue here... it is NOT an individual issue for planners, controllers & organisers - it is a 'sport' issue.

But I do agree with Ranald.... keep positive and come up with solutions

[awk]

Thanks Ranald - very useful. I put your contact details up, because I was told that you were the appropriate contact once the planner/controller route was done with.

I think your post highlights the very problem I'm concerned with. The concerns I've raise are, to my mind, very non-trivial, but what's the point of following the procedure you suggest? Speaking to individual planners/controllers gets nowhere, as the next event will do exactly the same thing (and often does!); putting in a formal protest can only result in a limited number of options, e.g. voiding the course, none of which does anything to improve standards, or indeed satisfy the pissed off competitor.

The issues are far more generic, and as Gross says, sport-wide.

I was perhaps harsh on the planner/controller at Wharnecliff in language and brought it up too early in the procedure cycle, for which I have apologised, but the principle of the argument still holds - that planning standards at prestige events are just not good enough too often.

Anyway, you wanted solutions. Here are some:

Controllers to receive proper training and to be assessed properly, rather than just tick boxes.

Planners of prestige events to receive proper training.

It to be recognised that controllers need to play a more qualitative role, rather than the 'it's fair' approach. (The approach to this varies enormously from controller to controller)

Planning standards at these events to be monitored by an independent assessor (all too often the controller loses their sense of independence in endeavouring to help the organising club/officials. An independent assessor would, if nothing else, encourage that objectivity).

Events where courses cannot be planned to requisite standard, to advertise this fact beforehand (and what standard is it at?).

Far more rigorous assessment of National Event areas.

Course distances and classes etc. to be advertised in preliminary details, not after everyone has entered (and certainly not just state 'BOF classes', given that that isn't the case in some instances!

Annual review of planning standards. The last chairman of Technical started something like this at the last technical conference I was at, and it was a positive step forward.

In other words - greater transparency, more formal reviewing procedures, and better education of the key officials. It may well lead to fewer prestige events - so be it - but they should be better quality.

Incidentally, I think there's also been a reduction in controllers because of the requirement to organise an appropriate grade event in the previous X years. Maybe there's a need to separate organising and planning controllers out? I know it might be cumbersome, but a good planner doesn't necessarily make a good organiser and vice-versa, and quite a few I know (including me!) are happy to do one or other but not both.

[graeme]

but what's the point of following the procedure you suggest? Speaking to individual planners/controllers gets nowhere, as the next event will do exactly the same thing (and often does!);

I agree. At best a problem gets fixed, but there's no feedback of "common errors" to future organisers and it happens again.

We had a protest at the chasing sprint this year resulting from an SI malfunction (doesn't matter what, but the important thing is it could happen again). The controller stuck with the letter of the law, while the planner/organiser followed what they felt the spirit of the law. It was all very amicable, and eventually went to an appeals committee of Grade 1 controllers who ruled in favour of the competitor. I sent all the documentation to BOF (actually, to Simon Errington who I suspect wasn't on rules committee any more but was the contact designated on the website) but as far as I know nothing has happened either to prevent a recurrence or pass on the precedent to future organisers.

The issue of controllers is becoming pressing - SOA has scarcely any grade 1 or 2s under 40 and most are no longer physically able to do the whole controlling job on larger or more physical areas. It's all very well demanding "they" go on courses and get trained, but it wont help if there aren't any controllers left.

Increasingly the jobs of "ensuring the flags are in the right place" and "maintaining technical standards" are done by separate people. Maybe we could formalise this division?

Graeme

[awk]

SOA has scarcely any grade 1 or 2s under 40 and most are no longer physically able to do the whole controlling job on larger or more physical areas. It's all very well demanding "they" go on courses and get trained, but it wont help if there aren't any controllers left.

Although over 40, I was a grade 2 controller, and it was suggested I should go to Grade 1. In fact I asked to be downgraded to Grade 3. The reasons were that (a) I was not prepared to do the event organisation required to even maintain my grade 2 status, let alone up it to 1, and (b) I felt that the training and assessment had, to put it mildly, been inadequate at grade 2, something I had become increasingly aware of when doing other sports qualifications (including O-coaching) and I wasn't prepared to take on the responsibility of something going wrong at Grade 1. Given the line of responsibility if something major does go wrong, and the inadequacy of the education, I'm surprised anybody takes the role on. At least at Grade 3, my coaching training/qualifications means that I can point to an assessment of my planning abilities.

[gross2004]

Agree entirely with Andy here. I have been a grade 1 controller for 10 years maybe (not sure) and during that time I have had zero offers of further training or assessment. Indeed I don't think I was even sent a copy of the requirements for maintain qualifications... although I seem to recall Brian Parker resigning over the issue a few years back....

The development of our quality assurance systems is very poor indeed.

[graeme]

Disagree again.

Who are these people that should be training? Who knows most about controlling? There isn't a super-informed orienteering priesthood to disseminate that knowledge, there's just us controllers. We can only educate ourselves.

Gross and Andy are as good as controllers get

The rules can't cover every eventuality, and pretty much every event bends or breaks them in some way, so there's a strong case for making controllers aware of various protests and appeals, the outcomes, and the explanation for the outcome. The should be seen in a non-adversarial way - making mistakes is inevitable and therefore perfectly acceptable, failing to learn from them is not.

A while ago there was a controllers newsletter which I felt was sufficient
to keep abreast of developments. It stopped just when e-punching brought in a whole raft of new controlling issues. Perhaps it should start again.

Graeme

PS I agree with Andy that some of the hurdles to maintaining status were not helpful - "you have to plan and organise some events - they dont have to be any good"
A controller should be able to retain that status simply by good controlling.

[gross2004]

Disagree again.

There isn't a super-informed orienteering priesthood to disseminate that knowledge, there's just us controllers. We can only educate ourselves.
.

No there isn't but there is a vast pool of experience out there which could become much bigger if it worked together.

Why doesn't BOF introduce a bi-annual controllers conferance like there used to be. Here the issues could be discussed and debated & issues raised.

Scotland used to have one as well.... but not for years. The old argument that there are only 52 weekends in a year & I'd much rather be outside orienteering than inside discussing it keeps setting us back

[awk]

Disagree again.
Who are these people that should be training? Who knows most about controlling? There isn't a super-informed orienteering priesthood to disseminate that knowledge, there's just us controllers. We can only educate ourselves.

I agree that it's the experienced controllers who can be training. the problem as I see it at present is that there is NO training or assessment, even by peer group. I may know a fair bit about controlling now, but when I "qualified" as a grade 2 nobody actually ever checked up whether I did. There are significant number of controllers who have no understanding of the requirements of planning to a standard, mainly because nobody has trained them and nobody has assessed them For instance, when we had the consultation over Junior Badge courses, at least 3 Grade 2+ controllers told me in no uncertain terms that Light Green was not an absolute standard, but relative to Green (so if the area is TD4, and Green is TD4, then Light Green should be easier??!). Having a family that has until recently run TD3, 4 and 5 courses, it's amazing how often they don't match those standards. Just look at the mistakes happening now over something as simple as whether there is a JW5M class or not.

You're right, Graeme, mistakes should be allowed (God knows we all make them!), but my concern is that we are not learning from them, and there's no system to ensure that planners/controllers learn from them. The current requirements confuse experience with ability, and never check whether the controller can actually do the job properly. That's not good for the controller concerned, nor the people running on their courses. And the planning situation is even worse.

[Barry E]

Graeme is right in stating that the Controller's Newsletter was the way of disseminating information to at least one of the event officials. Unfortunately it disappeared when Technical Committee lost its Chairman. It also had the disadvantage of never getting to the Planners and Organisers (unless they happened to be Controllers as well).

In the the February edition of Focus there will be a page aimed at all event officials - effectively an 'Event Officials Newsletter' - looking at some of the problems encountered at recent events and lessons learnt from them. If this is well received then it may become a regular feature.

[SIman]

In the the February edition of Focus there will be a page aimed at all event officials - effectively an 'Event Officials Newsletter' - looking at some of the problems encountered at recent events and lessons learnt from them. If this is well received then it may become a regular feature.

This sounds like a step in the right direction, but it would be excellent if there was an electronic forum to encourage discussion of issues raised. (Perhaps a well known web site could be used.)

[graeme]

In the the February edition of Focus there will be a page aimed at all event officials - effectively an 'Event Officials Newsletter' - looking at some of the problems encountered at recent events and lessons learnt from them.

Good, maybe Andy will be able to contribute? I've only had good experiences with controlling at events I've been to recently.

The light green thing is a source of confusion: the rules are clear in an ideal forest, but often an area is so lacking in detail that a given section offers only one TD4 (no TD5/5*) option, any small changes will make it easier. If numbers dictate that all courses can't have the identical leg it seems to me that giving the TD3 leg to LG and the TD4 to Green etc. is correct. There is also the idea that the TD of a course is that of its hardest leg.

White courses where the walk to the start is tougher than the course have annoyed us, but usually its pretty clear why it ended up that way.

Graeme

[awk]

Don't disagree Graeme, but this is where I was told positively that Light Green is meant to be easier than Green, and therefore on easier terrain, the lower TD courses should be made easier than when on TD5 terrain. I still get that from some controllers, even now.

Barry - great idea. Highlighting examples of good practice would also be good - particularly where and how planners etc. solved potential problems (e.g. SROC's recent Beacon Fell event was a really well planned course on a small area with some real planning challenges).