The Oak Ridge Business Safety Partnership will hold its last community safety forum of 2013 on Wednesday at the American Museum of Science and Energy.
The program is titled “Safety in Commercial and Nuclear Facilities: Programs that Work.” It’s scheduled from 8 to 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Speakers include Shane Strickland, Alcoa safety manager; Paul Wasilko, safety culture program manager at the Y-12 National Security Complex; Chris Patton, safety services division director at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Doug Giles, plant protection safety area manager at Eastman. Each will make a 15-minute presentation about the safety program at his facility, followed by a panel discussion at the end with audience questions and answers.
“We’re interested in exploring the differences and similarities in safety programs that are used in both commercial and nuclear facilities,” said Jenny Freeman, ORBSP member. “We want to identify the areas in which we have common challenges and how we tackle those issues from a safety standpoint.”
In 2014, the ORBSP will celebrate 10 years of holding community safety forums that focus on safety from many perspectives. The ORBSP was formed to educate workers new to U.S. Department of Energy sites about the safety culture required on DOE projects.
“We wanted the Oak Ridge Reservation to be the safest site in the DOE Complex, so we decided back in 2004 to focus workers’ attention on safety from a grassroots basis,” Freeman said.
Over the years, speakers at the 30-plus forums have made presentations on issues such as electrical safety, traffic safety, lessons learned from fatalities at the Savannah River Site and the Hanford Site, safety for effective leaders, and hoisting and rigging safety. The forums are free and open to the public.
In 2012 and 2013, the ORBSP hosted Safety Fest, a week-long series that had more than 40 safety classes, each free of charge to anyone who registered. In 2013, more than 300 people received training. Safety Fest in 2014 will be held September 8-12.
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