UTD Books and Manuals Preview of Student & Diver Procedures Manual v2.0 | Page 7

tion team called Woodeville Karst Plain Project (WKPP). Their project director at that time, George Irvine III, started to instill the configuration into his team and diving protocols. His passion for exploration, his extreme dedication to WKPP, and his personality led him to become very ridged in his approach to applying the Hogarthian configuration and demanding a team approach to exploration of the Wakulla Springs cave system. In an article published in the late 1990‘s in Aquanaut magazine, a technical dive magazine, Irvine coined the term “DIR,” or “Doing It Right.” In this article he pushed the idea of not only utilizing a consistent, scalable, streamlined and minimalist configuration mimicked after the “Hogarthian” configuration, but drove the idea that DIR was a complete team approach to conducting a dive. That included everything from a consistent equipment configuration, to the consistent selection of the gases, decompression strategy, skill set and so on. DIR was born. As the scope of the WKPP cave pushes became more and more complicated, the need for the team to all be on the same page and also be the source of backup equipment became more obvious. This drew national and then international attention. WKPP was achieving what others could not by utilizing a “DIR” approach to the project and/or dives. At the same time, some of the upper level WKPP members, together with lead push diver Jarrod Jablonski and UTD founder Andrew Georgitsis, developed a training organization to teach and solidify the “DIR” approach. This teaching methodology would consist of an equipment configuration (modeled after the Hogarthian style), a “foundational diving skill set” taken from cave diving, and “procedures and protocols” culled from the WKPP methodology. Ultimately this is what became taught as the “DIR” approach. For 10 years, UTD founder Andrew Georgitsis, was the training director for this organization, developing the standards and procedures, training protocols and the senior instructors. In 2006 Georgitsis broke away to develop and pursue his vision of the “Unified Team.” Although “DIR” has many tenants that are excellent and make a great foundation of which to build your diving skills, the extreme rigidity and lack of
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UTD Student and Diver Procedures Manual