By Vicky Falcón
NAVAIR Public Affairs Office

Safety statistics within the Naval Air Systems Command have continued to improve both within and outside of the workplace.

With the conclusion of the Critical Days of Summer, the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day which define the most dangerous time for traffic and off-duty recreational fatalities, NAVAIR has again helped lower the overall level of fatality statistics kept by the Navy.

“We had no traffic or off-duty recreational fatalities within NAVAIR this summer,” said CDR Alan Blackketter, NAVAIR’s Safety Director and head of the Integrated Safety Team. “It has been nearly two years since there has been a traffic fatality for any site within NAVAIR. This does not mean we can relax; it means we have to continue to work hard to ensure that no one is injured or killed in an automobile or an off-duty recreational accident.”

According to Blackketter, the Naval Safety Center has an excellent tool to assist in managing motor vehicle travel risk called the Traffic Risk Planning System (TRiPS). To register for an account and to use the tool, use the link on the Safety Center’s homepage or go to https://crcapps2.crc.army.mil/ASMIS2/navy/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fASMIS…. Military personnel traveling by motor vehicle should use TRiPS to complete a travel risk assessment before going on leave, liberty, TDY or PCS.

“The Safety Center recommends completing a risk assessment when traveling more than three hours or 200 miles,” said Blackketter. “It is also recommended that our civilian teammates take advantage of TRiPS when making travel arrangements.”

“There are three focuses on safety within NAVAIR,” said Blackketter. “I head up the aviation safety department, while safety and occupational health for NAVAIR is headed by Ken Pettersen, and Jim Zidzik oversees system safety (engineering and hazard mitigation).”

According to Blackketter, NAVAIR (and all of DOD) is working toward a Secretary of Defense goal of an overall 75% reduction in mishaps from 2002 rates.

“For the last three years NAVAIR has had no Class A aviation mishaps, which is very good news,” said Blackketter. Class A mishaps occur when there is a fatality, when an aircraft is destroyed or when more than $1 million in damages are accrued.

Blackketter and his team work closely with the safety officers at the Naval Air Warfare Centers, Naval Test Wings (both Atlantic and Pacific), at the Naval Air Depots and with the Defense Contract Management Agency.

The Safety and Occupational Health (SOH) department is also steadily reducing Lost Work Days (LWDs) – absences from work due to workplace injury.

“We started out in FY02 with a LWD rate of 41 LWD per 100 people per year,” said Pettersen, who is NAVAIR SOH Manager. “By the end of FY05 we were down (NAVAIR-wide) to 21.25 and we now stand at 17.18 LWD.”

According to Pettersen, the drop in LWDs can mainly be attributed to the NAVAIR Lost Time Enterprise Team (LTET) comprised of mission safety managers and Injury Compensation Program Administrators (ICPAs).

“ICPAs provide injury case management in bringing employees back to work,” explained Pettersen. “That service, combined with an LTET-drafted Return-to-Work Instruction, and shared safety best practices between sites (such as industrial ergonomics) have all led to significant LWD reductions.”

The System Safety Engineering Division, led by Zidzik, is more of an engineering discipline.

“Although metrics are valuable,” said Zidzik, “it has been difficult to define a set of system safety metrics that accurately reflect the state of affairs for system safety.”

“Counting mishaps and safety action records aren’t enough,” he said. “How do you quantify mishaps that don’t occur? Because that’s what we do – we identify hazards or potentials for mishaps and mitigate them.”

According to Zidzik, his office has a responsibility to identify hazards to either ensure the hazards are designed out of the system, or if that isn’t possible, to engineer safety interlocks into the system. One of the competency’s primary roles is to provide an independent safety review of all NAVAIR aircraft, weapon and target systems over all life-cycle phases.

“For example,” he explained, “an elevator has the potential hazard of falling from a great height. Because it is designed to carry people up heights, we can’t eliminate the hazard of falling, but we can engineer safety interlocks into the elevator that will keep it from free-falling.”

Right now, Zidzik says his office is being very aggressive in training – with a goal of having all of his division safety certified. Two certification avenues that are being pursued are with the Board of Certified Safety Professionals and the University of Southern California Aviation Safety Certification. The office also works closely with the Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization office in the writing of procedures and training manuals.

“We’re also making a lot of progress in the area of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs),” he said. “The population of UAVs is expanding rapidly and breaking new ground – eventually including landing large weaponized UAVs on ships.”

For more information about the NAVAIR Integrated Safety Team and their efforts or for answers to safety questions, contact [email protected].

For more in formation about the Navy Safety Center, go to http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/.