In 2011 the government introduced the Adventure Activity Regulations. The Activity Safety Guidelines (ASGs) aim to provide practical guidance for commercial operators offering specific adventure activities to manage the safety of those activities. The guidance is based on industry’s current recommendations for good practice safety management.

Since 2011 ten ASGs have been written and can be viewed on the Supportadventure website. These ten completed ASGs do not cover the range of all activities considered to be adventure activities under the legislation and therefore there are a number of activity groups (outdoor industries) where the operating standard is still unclear for operators and auditors.

There is demand from industry groups to complete ASG development for those activities not yet serviced by an ASG document. TIA and NZRA have worked to secure more funding from WorksafeNZ for this work but Worksafe currently has higher priorities in other areas such as forestry and farming. NZRA and EONZ have taken the initiative to develop some standards specifically for schools and service groups (e.g. scouts, girl guides, cadets) in non-adventure activity areas.

With no funding coming from Worksafe for further ASG development, and lack of funding from activity specific industry groups to carry out such development work, creative new ways need to be found to produce the missing ASG documents.

Skills Active and NZOIA have been working closely with industry experts including the NZ Professional Mountain Bike Association to develop new mountain biking qualifications. During this process the advisory group indicated a need for a MTB ASG. From these discussions the idea arose, that if activity-specific expert groups were being convened to develop qualifications for a particular activity, it would be cost effective and efficient to piggy-back on this process to develop draft ASG documents that could be circulated to the wider industry for consultation and feedback. This process could produce a quality ASG outcome in a very cost-effective manner.

Skills Active have offered to pilot a new approach to ASG development using mountain biking as a case study. This pilot would see the development of two new draft documents for consultation with industry:

• A generic core ASG called the NZ Adventure Activity Safety Guideline - Core. The Core document would contain much of the generic material already presented in the current ASG’s and echo much of the content of the Core Australian Activity Standard.

• A targeted ASG to cover industry agreed good practice specific to mountain biking – including a specific section for mountain bike parks which are a growing feature of the NZ mountain bike industry.

Skills Active will follow the intent of the published “Development and Review Process for ASG's” on the supportadventure website , but will look at ways to make these processes more efficient while retaining the key intent of allowing all stakeholders to input into the draft documents before they are finalised; and ensuring a quality, fit-for-purpose ASG for industry use.

WorksafeNZ, TIA and NZRA have all been consulted on this pilot approach for the mountain bike ASG development. TIA have expressed some concerns which can be explored in the review phase once this pilot has been completed.

The intention is to establish two working groups: one for the core ASG; and one for the specific mountain biking specific ASG. The core group will include members from the Skills Active Outdoor Recreation Industry Advisory Group, NZRA Outdoor Recreation Subcommittee, WorksafeNZ and industry representatives from the previous ASG development groups.

The Mountain bike working group will be a subset of the individuals attending the NZOIA / Skills Active Senior Assessor workshop, with additional members added to ensure representation across MTB user groups. This group will meet for a day after the Senior Assessor workshop to begin work on this guide. Once a draft has been agreed on it will be circulated to the wider mountain bike industry for comment. We hope to collate a database of commercial and educational operators that will act as a wider consultation group that the NZPMBA can grow and maintain as the central industry body for this activity.

Following this pilot approach for mountain biking, we will review how effective the two document approach: core and activity-specific ASGs has been. We will also gauge feedback on how a revised structure, more closely aligned to the SAS is viewed. If there is wide industry acceptance of this approach then we will look at how this can inform future ASG development and the review/maintenance of existing ASGs.

We are interested in gathering feedback on the documents that we develop during this pilot. If you wish to be contacted directly during the consultation rounds for comment on either or both of these documents (Core and MTB specific), please contact Sue Gemmell at Skills Active (sueg@skillsactive.org.nz) clearly indicating where you would like to add value.