Voluntary Protection Program helps keep Seymour safe Published Sept. 24, 2008 By The 4th Fighter Wing Safety Office SEYMOUR JOHNSON AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. -- The Secretary of the Air Force Engagement Team will be here Oct. 7 for the leadership-engagement phase of the voluntary protection program. Created by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, VPP is a program designed to help 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 expose military and civilian senior leadership to VPP, but the final audience is much greater. "It's a program all of us should know about and understand," said Tim Edwards, 4th Fighter Wing ground safety manager. 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 goal of decreasing mishaps by 75 percent by the end of fiscal year 2008. "Seymour Johnson will be the second Air Combat Command base to begin implementing the program during 2008," Mr. Edwards said. The team will return Oct. 20 to 24 for the assessment phase. Visiting 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 Seymour," Mr. Edwards said. During the visit, the assessment team will look at existing safety practices 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 within safety requirements, where the base needs to be to meet the OSHA VPP standards and what the Seymour 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 base personnel, it will take two to three years to work through the recommendations made in the gap analysis. Also, toward the end of implementation of the recommendations, air staff, ACC and Air Mobility Command officials will visit the base again to conduct a mock audit to evaluate the base's progress toward meeting VPP standards. The assessment will provide a snapshot of the safety and health culture, which "identifies strengths and areas for improvement via the gap analysis so the base can focus our resources to improve those areas," Mr. Edwards said. "Once the base passes the assessment, it can 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, which is the highest level bestowed by OSHA on a base for safety practices." "Presently the Air Force operates under a compliance-based system," Mr. Edwards 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 of 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," Mr. Edwards said. "Team Seymour possesses a strong safety and health culture, which generally carries over into a person's off-duty time and to their families. With VPP we hope to blend it with the wingman concept and our established culture to further preserve Airmen, equipment and our families for another day of service." For more information, 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/.