Don't overdo metrication training, says BSI man
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• Colonel Jack Vickers, manager of the British Standards Institution planning department, was highly critical of transport firms who made too much of training programmes for metrication when he was speaking at a conference on "Metrication and Road Transport" arranged by Business and Industrial Training Ltd last month.
Referring to a paper given by Mr James Watson, executive director (finance), British Road Services Ltd, and to Mr Watson's reply to a questioner which revealed that BRSL expect metrication training to cost "several hundred thousand pounds, to be met out of current revenue," Colonel Vickers said he thought BRSL . were overdoing the training angle.
"Under union regulations civilian drivers do less than army drivers. How much do any drivers need to understand about Imperial measurements? Nothing at all. How much will drivers need to understand about the new metrication system? Nothing at all.
"It is merely a matter of numbers," said the colonel. "Tyre inflation in kilogrammes per square centimetre (kgf /cm') will present no difficulty because the driver will have a tyre gauge. When garages supply fuel in litres drivers will need to know nothing about litres. Metrication is a comparison of numbers. Let's be sure what sort of training is necessary or there will be a vast number of frustrated people training unnecessarily. How many people know what 1lb per square inch means? It will be just as simple when surface tension is measured in newtons per square metre."
The conference chairman, Mr H. A. Dawson, head of economic sectors division of the Metrication Board, said he understood from Mr Watson that BRSL had an annual turnover of some £55m, so the cost of training in such a large organization must be kept in perspective.