One Standard, Many Interpretations: A Comment of the Latest EORE T&EP

IMAS has just published a new Testing and Evaluation Protocol for EORE practitioners, and that is genuinely good news for the sector. For years, EORE has operated with uneven definitions of competence, definitions that shift from one operator to the next, from one national authority to the next, and sometimes from one donor reporting cycle to the next. A protocol that puts a common language around “what good looks like” does more than tidy up paperwork. It makes training more portable, raises professional expectations, and gives NMAAs and operators a cleaner basis for QA and accreditation. The document’s intent is solid: define minimum competencies, knowledge, skills, and attitudes, across progressive levels, and encourage organizations to assess those competencies through written tests, practical exercises, simulation, and observation in live delivery.

Where I think we should push the protocol, constructively, is in how it will behave once people try to implement it at scale. Competency frameworks only deliver what they promise when they are not just descriptive, but engineered. They need to be hard to misinterpret, easy to assess consistently, and straightforward to audit. That is why I keep coming back to the same question: if we want this TE&P to function like competency systems in other high-reliability professions, aviation, emergency medicine, or even conventional EOD training pathways, does the structure consistently force real progression, observable performance, and clear boundaries? In a few places, it doesn’t yet, and the good news is that the fixes are mostly structural rather than philosophical.

The protocol is explicit that levels are meant to be incremental, and it even makes the hierarchy clear: Level 4 depends on competence in Levels 1 through 3, and each level is associated with a broader role, Level 1 minimum baseline, Level 2 independent delivery, Level 3 supervision and mentoring, Level 4 program leadership, SOP development, and governance. That’s exactly how you would want it framed. The friction shows up inside the competency list itself, where some competencies appear across multiple levels but the difference between “Level 1 competence” and “Level 3 or 4 mastery” isn’t always expressed in a way that produces consistent assessment. In practical terms, that leaves training providers and QA teams filling in the missing scaffolding on their own, which is precisely how divergence creeps in. The sector ends up with everyone nominally “using IMAS,” but not actually measuring the same thing.

In most competency-based systems, progression is anchored to a predictable set of dimensions: scope of work, autonomy, complexity, and accountability. In other words, you can watch someone do the job and ask: are they performing scripted tasks under supervision, working independently and adapting to context, leading others and troubleshooting quality, or setting governance and managing risk? The protocol already hints at this logic in its role descriptions by level. The opportunity is to make that progression logic explicit and mandatory across the competency statements themselves, so that if a competency appears at Levels 1, 2, and 3, the framework forces you to articulate what changes as you move up: what the practitioner is allowed to decide, what complexity they are expected to handle, and what quality and reporting responsibility they carry. That one structural move would do a lot of work. It wouldn’t change the intent of the competencies; it would make them behave like a true professional pathway rather than a list marked “X by level.”

The second implementation challenge is something that every assessor recognizes immediately: some “competencies” read more like curriculum topics or aspirations than observable, scorable performance. The protocol rightly encourages organizations to use assessment tools like practical exercises and observation, but assessment only becomes credible when the competency statement itself can be tested in a defensible way. The simplest rule I use is: can an assessor watch it happen and score it against a standard? If the answer is “not really,” then the entry is probably a topic, not a competency. The practical fix here is to adopt a consistent format that turns a concept into measurable performance, something like Action + Standard + Conditions + Evidence. That approach forces clarity: what the practitioner does, how well they must do it, under what conditions, and what proof is acceptable. The benefit isn’t academic. It reduces argument at the accreditation table, it increases comparability across providers, and it prevents the assessment process from sliding into box-checking.

The third issue is less about what is included and more about how it is organized. The protocol groups competencies into seven categories, contextual, technical EORE, community liaison, information management, quality management, human resources, and safety, and that is a sensible taxonomy. But in operational practice, category boundaries matter because they shape accountability and assessment design. When boundaries are loose, overlap becomes either double counting, testing the same behavior twice under two different headings, or a gap where each unit assumes the other owns it. A likely stress point is the relationship between “Technical EORE” and “Information Management,” where both touch data collection, recording, and use for programming. Overlap is not inherently wrong; EORE delivery and data are intertwined. The problem is when the framework does not clearly signal what belongs where and who owns quality control at each level. A tightening here could be as simple as a boundary statement: Technical EORE covers what data is required to deliver effective EORE and adapt messages responsibly, while Information Management covers validation, protection, reporting, and integration into national systems and minimum data requirements. Where overlap is unavoidable, label it as shared and make ownership explicit by level.

None of these points are a knock on the protocol. If anything, they reflect a belief that the sector should treat this as a foundation we can build on, not a document we quietly work around. The TE&P is already a strong step forward because it acknowledges what many practitioners have known for a long time: professionalism in EORE is not just about good intentions; it is about competence that can be trained, assessed, and verified. The next step is to make the framework easier to implement consistently than to reinterpret. A future edition, or even a companion implementation guide, could deliver outsized value by adding a single progression rubric that applies across competencies, a standardized template for writing assessable performance statements with examples, and a short boundary map that clarifies ownership where categories intersect, especially around data and QA.

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Charles Valentine is Co-Founder of Mine Action News and Founder of EODynamics AB, a company specializing in augmented and virtual reality training solutions for Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and Humanitarian Mine Action (HMA). A former U.S. Marine Corps veteran with extensive experience in explosive ordnance and operational environments,  His work focuses on delivering immersive, cost-effective training tools deployed globally to enhance safety and operational readiness.