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Tinker has best ground safety in Air Force

  • Published
  • By John Stuart
  • Tinker Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  In a profession where mistakes could mean the difference between life and death, being an overachiever can only be a good thing.

Simply put, the personnel at the Tinker ground safety office have one overarching goal: to make the base so safe they put themselves out of a job.

While it's an impossible notion, you have to commend the 35 men and women in the 72nd Air Base Wing Safety Office for trying. And try they do.

The base safety office won the Air Force Chief of Safety Outstanding Achievement for Ground Safety for 2009, building on their success in the previous year when they won the same award.

The safety office also earned Air Force Materiel Command accolades as they won the Outstanding Ground Safety Program Award for 2009.

These awards come on the heels of a years-long push by safety office personnel, toward improving safety and setting the pace for best practices Air Force wide.

"If we didn't have the type of people we have in the office it would be extremely difficult," said Dennis Kendrick, 72nd ABW ground safety chief at Tinker. "But we do have a great group of folks who are well trained and motivated and willing to do whatever it takes to make sure this is a safe environment out here."

But, if you can imagine, keeping a base of 26,945 working professionals safe in the work place carries significant challenges.

Amid those challenges, the safety office staff raised the bar significantly even in the last year; the proof is in the numbers.

"The total number of injuries for the logistics center was down 11 percent from the previous year," said Lt. Col. Aaron Troxell, chief of the 72nd Air Base Wing Safety Office. "But, more importantly, we had a more than 25 percent reduction in the number of restricted and lost work days due to injury."

These numbers are significant gains for Tinker and came about by several initiatives.

"I think we've been able to do better than any other safety office in the Air Force as far as training our personnel," Mr. Kendrick said of his safety specialists and managers. "We have folks who are better trained than any other office in the Air Force."

Also, part of the improvement in base injury rates can be contributed to leadership and employee involvement in Voluntary Protection Programs. Since implementing VPP here in 2006, the Logistics Center's overall injury rates have dropped 30 percent. Employee generated safety ideas for their work areas along with base safety office campaigns have created a synergy.

Additionally, the safety office revamped the incident reporting system through which employees can quickly report actual or potential risks base-wide. Any employee may submit a report to the safety office through the improved web portal accessible from Tinker's internal home page, or by calling the Safety hotline number 739-SAFE.

Empowering the individual with the responsibility of personal and wingman safety is a major step toward improving safety on a larger scale, Mr. Kendrick said. He also ensured that these reports are analyzed in a timely manner and are very important for bringing about helpful changes.

"We've improved our response times by 70 percent and it's letting them know that someone is looking out for them," Mr. Kendrick said. "It's showing that it's important to the employee when they see that action has been taken and it just builds a better safety culture out here."

So far in fiscal 2010, individuals reported 121 hazards to the safety office, with only eight of those determined to be invalid. The system is working, essentially, and working well as workers are recognizing legitimate concerns.

While investigations do follow mishaps, Colonel Troxell encouraged people to be open about incidents.

"It's important that people know there's no retribution when talking with a safety specialist," Colonel Troxell said. "We're not looking for blame. We're looking how to prevent it from happening again. We're just trying to protect our employees and resources."

The safety office amassed additional accolades last year. The knowledgeable, well-trained staff documented 1,058 new hazards base-wide, and addressed them in a timely fashion, Mr. Kendrick said.

While motorcycle safety remains a rising challenge Air Force wide, Tinker's accident numbers have been impeccable. Better motorcycle safety training is a large part of keeping people safe on motorcycles, Colonel Troxell said, noting 356 riders who took the motorcycle safety course last year.

"We haven't had a major motorcycle accident in two years even though the Air Force trend is a growing number of major motorcycle accidents."

Ultimately safety at Tinker is a job that starts with the individual, then leads to large-scale change. This and other sound principles should continue to keep Tinker safe into the future, buoyed by the unit of safety overachievers leading the way.