| WASHINGTON, March 28, 2007 – Safety is
critical to readiness, the Defense Safety
Oversight Council's executive secretary told
safety officers attending the Voluntary Protection
Program conference here yesterday.
“Every asset we keep in peacetime is an asset
we can apply against the enemy in war,” Joseph
Angello said. “Every person we keep healthy and
fit is a person in our unit who is serving against
the enemy.”
DoD spends more than $3
billion in direct costs associated with aviation
and ground accidents, military injuries, and
civilian worker compensation, Angello told the
audience. “Those are resources we could be using
for systems and people to defend our country.”
Defense officials are pushing for leaders
to better understand the importance of safety and
are aiming for a 75 percent accident reduction
rate throughout the force, Angello said.
For a second year, DoD is participating in
the Voluntary Protection Program, designed by the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration to
improve safety records and readiness of its
civilian and military personnel.
The
program is recognized as an accident reduction
“best practice” for the private sector to improve
safety in industrial operations and has been
adopted by the Defense Safety Oversight Council’s
Installations Task Force, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of the Army for Environment Safety and
Occupational Health Tad Davis said.
Private sector VPP participants have seen
a 60 percent reduction in injuries, 20 percent
reduction in worker’s compensation costs, and a
150 percent return on investments, program
officials said.
“We saw VPP as one of
private industry’s best practices,” Davis said.
“Our needs are similar but unique compared to the
private sector.”
Army safety officials,
with Davis in the lead, created the DoD VPP Center
of Excellence to ensure that 40 new installations
each year work to implement injury reduction
throughout the armed forces.
“If we can
apply lessons learned from the first two years,
then we’ll have insights that will allow us to do
it smarter, quicker and more economically at these
installations down the road,” Davis said.
The focus of the two-day conference is to
acknowledge good work that has been done thus far
on installations and gain insights from the
installations that have already implemented the
program, he said. Participants also came together
to discuss ways to improve the processes
installations are using to prevent injuries and
improve mishap prevention.
Panel members
and speakers repeatedly expressed the importance
of senior military and installation leaders
championing safety efforts and filtering that
information down to each individual. “People don’t
really care what you have to say until you show
you care about them,” Navy Capt. Mike McKinnon,
commander or Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Ga.,
said. “The key to success is the leadership at the
top.”
McKinnon said the key to VPP success
is attitude. “It’s not just eight hours while
you’re at work; it’s 24 hours a day, 365 days a
year,” he said.
To date, four Navy bases
and an Army installation have been recognized by
OSHA as attaining “star status” for their safety
efforts. DoD has set the goal of participating VPP
installations to achieve this status within two
years of joining the program.
By
incorporating leadership and employees into
worksite analysis, hazard prevention, and safety
and health training, officials hope ultimately to
save DoD billions of dollars.
“The
lynchpin has been the tremendous support from
senior leadership,” Davis said. “This has to start
at the top and permeate down to individual
soldiers, civilians and contractors.”
“The
Department of Defense is a world-class
organization,” Angello said. “We’re going to
demonstrate our commitment to this program where
the rubber meets the rank.”
|