A Knowledge Transfer Collaboration: iRAP and the Australian Road Research Board have recently signed a partnership agreement to deliver online training worldwide to help meet the UN Road Safety Targets 3 and 4.

Access iRAP’s Training calendar here

In 2018, UN Member States agreed on 12 new Global Road Safety Performance Targets to drive action across the world.  The targets include ensuring all new roads are built to a 3-star or better standard for all road users (Goal 3), and more than 75% of travel is on the equivalent of 3-star or better roads for all road users by 2030 (Goal 4).

As a charity iRAP focuses on building locally led and delivered projects and national Road Assessment Programmes.  iRAP Training Courses have been an important component in building capacity within government and partner organisations, helping countries to achieve the 3-star or better standard for all road users. Since 2009, some 17,000 people have participated in iRAP training and sessions at conferences and workshops. This new partnership will see the global number of people with knowledge about road infrastructure safety and skills to perform iRAP assessments increase significantly.

The associated Accreditation Scheme creates capacity within government and also ensures a market of suppliers able to competitively bid to provide iRAP-specification services. It builds confidence among Governments and Development Banks that iRAP assessments can be undertaken to the same level of quality around the world at an affordable and competitive price.

The creation of a large cohort of well-trained and accredited suppliers is in the interest of regional programs, national governments, mobility clubs, and research and development partners worldwide.

Online training has become an increasingly important platform to reach attendees worldwide, making it a more effective and easier to access way of learning. To help fulfil iRAP’s goal of building capacity worldwide, ARRB and iRAP will partner to deliver webinar training to Road Safety Practitioners.

Combined with both iRAP and ARRB’s Road Safety Experts and ARRB’s state-of-the-art webinar training facilities, this collaboration will allow easy-to-use and low-cost access to the latest international road safety knowledge and best practice (including Star Rating Essentials and Star Rating for Designs).

“Following the creation of the UN Targets 3 & 4, and the release of the WHO Global Status Report on Road Safety last year, it is critical that we rapidly build the skills of engineers, auditors and professionals able to undertake iRAP assessments.  We have to scale up safer road infrastructure for all road users on an unprecedented level if we are going to help the world reduce the 1.35 million road traffic deaths worldwide every year,” iRAP’s CEO Rob McInerney said on this partnership.

“ARRB’s state-of-the-art training facilities and road safety expertise help us provide the ‘how’ for training road engineers, designers and road safety stakeholders in assessing, designing and building a 3-star or better road”, Rob said.

ARRB’s CEO Michael Caltabiano said “At ARRB ‘safety’ is in our DNA. This enhanced partnership with iRAP will take the expert knowledge and skills that are unique to ARRB and provide a new platform to share this knowledge and lift the skills to save lives on a much bigger scale.’

Last year, iRAP and ARRB first collaborated with a Star Rating Essentials webinar series which received excellent feedback. Due to popular demand, this 5-part webinar series is now available as a self-paced online series with videos and assignments to complete along the way. More information on this training and other upcoming training can be found on iRAP’s Training Calendar.

You can also see what upcoming training ARRB is offering here.

iRAP together with its partners have assessed more than 1.3 million kilometres of roads across 96 countries and influenced over US$67 billion of safer roads investment.

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