Courtesy Photo | Col. John Hall (far right), U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center (ATC) Commander, John...... read more read more
By Deirdre S. Cascardo, Public Affairs
U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center
Don your mask, a squirt of hand sanitizer and keep your distance. A routine familiar to us all now, but when the COVID-19 pandemic shut things down in March, the U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center (ATC) faced a unique challenge—how to safely continue the testing mission in support of warfighters.
“I was trying to figure out how we were going to handle this as a command,” Earl Whitley, a member of ATC’s Safety Process Improvement Division COVID SOP Team said. “Not necessarily just how to get everyone back to work, but how we were going to do it and still protect everybody.”
Earl Whitley, Mike Stefanick, Erik Wright and Travis Tracey, all assigned to ATC’s Safety Process Improvement Division, were instrumental in helping the ATC workforce safely return to work and keeping both the ATC and Army testing mission on track through the creation and implementation of COVID-19 Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).
This effort earned the team the Director of Army Safety Risk Management Award, a Department of the Army award presented to an individual or organization that has demonstrated exemplary leadership or made a significant contribution to Army readiness through risk management. The U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center administers the Army Safety Awards program to encourage risk management and loss prevention.
The team received the award for their plan to mitigate COVID-19 risks across ATC, applying their broad risk management experience and emerging CDC guidelines to the specific jobs and tasks required for employees to complete the testing mission.
“This award is a testament to this command’s proactive approach to safety,” Col. John Hall, ATC Commander said. “We have risky operations here every day. Prior to COVID, at the end of the day, the risk stayed here, and we didn’t bring anything to our families. COVID changed all of that, so thank you for helping keep our workforce and their families safe.”
For Travis Tracey, the team’s work to manage the risk of COVID-19 was their way to support the mission.
“[This] was our way of contributing to getting our folks back to work so we can deliver on our mission and minimize the risk to our personnel,” Tracey said. “To be a part of that and play a role meant a lot to us.”
| Date Taken: | 11.25.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 11.25.2020 09:03 |
| Story ID: | 383773 |
| Location: | ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 233 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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