A longtime Hawaii Gas employee’s experience elevates a driver training course
Alot has changed in the 45 years since Mel Andrade began working at Hawaii Gas, but one thing never did—his commitment to expecting excellence from himself and his colleagues.
“After a while, it’s easy to fall into complacency, so I challenged my team to always look for ways to better themselves—that’s a skill that serves them on the job and in life,” said Andrade, who moved his way up the ranks at Hawaii Gas, eventually becoming superintendent of the Maui Division.
Andrade retired recently, but one of his last projects was working with the utility’s compliance team to design a Driver Improvement Program training series that was implemented in five locations involving some 100 Hawaii Gas employees statewide.
Drivers are required to periodically take refresher safe-driving courses, but the challenge Andrade faced was elevating the course from a chore to a valuable exercise that actually engaged his students.
“I drove a tanker for 28 years, so I know what it’s like out on the road. I’ve come through some near misses, but attention to the little things saved me,” Andrade told American Gas. “That’s what I wanted to demonstrate.”
Key word: Demonstrate.
For his training, Andrade decided to spend half of the full-day session in the classroom, drawing lessons from materials he learned at the Smith System Driver Improvement Institute, and the other half out on the road, showing the real-life situations that demand quick reflexes based on experience.
“I went out with five people at a time, and as I drove, I explained what I saw and what I anticipated,” he said. “When you’re driving around the coastline, you should remember that we have a lot of tourists who have never seen a whale. If you don’t want to rear-end a tourist, you should anticipate maybe they will be stopped on the road.”
He encourages drivers, who are often focused on their next delivery, to take time to think about what they might encounter. Is it summer? If yes, there may be children on the road in search of a runaway ball. At an intersection, are there pedestrians, motorcycles or stray dogs that might impact ability to move forward?
At the end of training days, Andrade often went home hoarse, but his reward was affirmation from his students, who told him he really knew what he was talking about and they learned a lot—a fitting legacy that Hawaii Gas says it is happy will be passed on to future generations of drivers.
