Voluntary Protection Program teams coming to Dyess

  • Published
DYESS AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  Secretary of the Air Force Engagement team will be here July 8 for the leadership engagement phase of the Voluntary Protection Program.

Created by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, VPP is a program design to help to reduce the number of preventable work-related injuries and illnesses by focusing on developing and caring for the safety of Airmen, civilians and their families.

The engagement phase will initially expose the military and civilian senior leadership to VPP, but "It's a program all of us should know about and understand," said Mr. Jack Wylie, 7th Bomb Wing Deputy Chief of Safety.

According to the National Safety Council, preventable injuries and illnesses cost the Department of Defense an estimated $10 to $21 billion annually.

The program recognizes organizations with superior performance in safety and health management. The initiative to implement the OSHA VPP began in 2005 with the Defense Department's Safety Oversight Council's goal of decreasing mishaps by 75 percent by the end of fiscal year 2008.

"Dyess is the only ACC base to begin implementing the program during 2008," said Mr. Wylie. "Dyess will also be the first base with ACC and AMC teaming together to implement the program."

The team will return July 21 for the Assessment Phase.

The DoD VPP safety representatives will look at people, places and paperwork. The teams will interview senior and civilian leadership including union leadership and members.

"A great deal of focus will be on selected military members and civilian employees they encounter while visiting work centers across Dyess," explained Mr. Wylie.

During the week, the assessment team will tour Dyess to look at safety practices already in place at various locations, such as medical, maintenance and civil engineering, to see what needs to be changed or added.

"After the assessment, the team will release a gap analysis to show where the base currently is with safety requirements, where the base needs to be to meet the OSHA VPP standards and what the Dyess team needs to do to get to that point," he said.

While the assessment team will only spend a week looking at the safety practices of Dyess personnel, it will take two to three years for Dyess to work through the recommendations made in the gap analysis Also, toward the end of implementation of the recommendations, air staff, ACC and AMC officials will visit the base again to conduct a mock audit to see how far the base has progressed in meeting VPP standards.

The assessment will provide a snapshot of the safety and health culture, which "identifies strength and areas for improvement via the gap analysis so the base can focus our resources to improve those areas," said Mr. Wylie.

When a base is found to be prepared, it request the federal-level OSHA to verify that it has met the criteria for the VPP. If they have, the base will then receive star recognition -- the highest level bestowed by OSHA on a base for safety practices.

"Presently the Air Force operates under a compliance-based system," Mr. Wylie said. "We comply with the levels directed to meet current standards. We typically investigate mishaps that occur, searching for indicators we can use after-the-fact to keep the mishap from recurring. We also provide many proactive programs to prevent mishaps, but VPP will greatly improve our proactive efforts."

The goal of VPP is for Airmen to identify safety hazards in work centers and correct them so they can take ownership in the safety and health program and prevent mishaps before they occur.

"Under the VPP principles, we will operate more under a performance-based system where we meet and exceed the minimum standards and actively look for ways to continuously improve our safety and health management," explained Mr. Wylie. "Team Dyess possess a strong safety and health culture, which generally carries over into a person's off-duty time and their families. With VPP we hope to use it blended with the wingman concept and our established culture to further preserve Airmen, equipment and our families for another day of service." 

For more information, you can visit the U.S. Department of Labor Occupations Safety and Health Administration's VPP page at http://www.osha.gov/dcsp/vpp/index.html or the Air Force Safety Center Web site at http://www.afsc.af.mil/.