With new procedures looming on the horizon for DMG/AMA racing, along with new risk management ideas seemingly being moved to implementation, it is time to make the whole effort more scientifically objective. The days of "sounds like a good idea, we'll try that" need to be replaced by empirical development.
All - You have detailed a complex set of management problems that needs a viable business model and could benefit greatly from technology support. I couldn't help but notice the parallels in this discussion to my present line of work in Healthcare Management so perhaps there is an opportunity to model another industry in some aspects and not re-invent the wheel.
Scheduling corner workers is not unlike staffing a hospital with skilled healthcare workers, especially areas like the operating room or emergency room where specialized resource competency is essential to safety. Standards in practice (physical assessment, medication administration, documentation, sterile technique) across different care domains (ortho, cardiac, neuro, oncology, OR, nursery) form the basis for good judgment which helps to improve safety and reduce errors. These and other areas of healthcare have seen widespread use of technology to manage the complexities of scheduling and decision support with great benefits to safety and operational management.
I agree with this discussion that standards in flagging would benefit safety in the racing domain however getting buy-in from all the relevant sanctioning bodies to a single standard will be an evolutionary process if it is feasible at all. The cost/benefit of implementing change is always subject to debate when perceived risk and profit are involved. The opinions of this board could be voiced through advocacy and lobbying to influence changes in this regard.
Expanding corner worker education programs and offering advanced training at the local level are great ideas of course because they can be done now and increase the general competency within the pool of trained corner workers. I would imagine standards of corner worker practice would be easier to align across groups, and if agreement could be reached on standard roles and competencies, then a universal certification (basic/advanced/ASD/Control) would be possible which would enable more flexible scheduling of resources across geographic regions.
Event planning and Scheduling is a more complex multi-variable problem. With regard to worker placement, you have considerations such as worker competencies, preferences, availability, motivation, event requirements, logistics, budget, event popularity and interpersonal politics. Technology could help with most of this. Training and certification could mitigate the subjective questions of competency in scheduling. Successful recruitment and retention of trained corner workers needs a balance of monetary and non-monetary incentives and policies that don't necessarily have to be standardized but for each event should be fairly applied to everyone. Just having a central registry would be a good place to start.
Now that we're into the winter months this is a good time to work on this. I am very interested and willing to work on a project to help facilitate the development of a management framework for a "Corner Marshall Safety Alliance" and help to evaluate and/or develop IT tools to help move us forward on this topic.
If you would like me to assist please send me a PM with what you see to be the next steps.
