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The controlled industrial area of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility is a landscape unlike many others — massive aircraft carriers and stealthy submarines sit in its docks and piers, making headlines for their vital contributions to the Navy’s mission, while shops and buildings buzz with employees working on projects ranging from electroplating to engineering. But, outside of the excitement of the work that is done here, these impressive spaces can be dangerous absent a mindset toward safety and an awareness of hazards.
A quick walk down Farragut Avenue reveals an ecosystem of potential risks around every corner: enormous cranes beep as tons of equipment are hauled around docks and above busy pedestrian walkways; the droning chug of heavy machinery fills the air, and the landscape is peppered with accents of neon orange and yellow, emphasizing the would-be dangers around the waterfront. In an environment like this, safety is a language every employee needs to speak.
Idrese Manning, waterfront safety advocate and 1,000 Steps Mentoring Program instructor, Code 900S, is one of the many voices leading the rallying cry for constant safety awareness at PSNS & IMF. The 1,000 Steps Mentoring Program, a two-week course which Manning enthusiastically leads with a team of instructors and subject matter experts, teaches safety policy, hazard recognition and hazard reporting to help fix deficiencies before they become accidents and injuries.
“The program was created to help employees better understand the environment in which we work and the importance of safety,” Manning said. “We want to help create a better safety culture within the shipyard by exposing the employees not only to waterfront working conditions, but the people who work in safety—from environmental and hazardous controls to production oversight.”
Students in the program receive classroom briefs from safety advocates and experts across the shipyard, but they also have the added opportunity of getting tours from a variety of shops along the waterfront. These tours are a core component to safety on the shipyard. They provide a chance to see what “right” looks like in various shops and codes, and provide employees with insights that enable them to advocate for safety and recognize hazards wherever a job might take them on the shipyard.
While every new employee to the shipyard goes through safety training during the onboarding process, this program takes safety training even further by giving employees a direct look at shipyard operations and face-to-face interactions with safety experts who can point out where risks exist and how employees can navigate these spaces safely. Colin Turner, Shop 56, pipefitter helper, noted that while the baseline safety training all new employees receive is really helpful, this program is especially useful at providing a perspective on what safety looks like at a more granular level.
“You start walking around with the safety mentors here and you start seeing all the small details they pick up on that you didn’t even realize could be a hazard, and they teach you what to look out for,” Turner said.
Manning said the more students who go through the course and become familiar with hazards and risks, the safer the shipyard becomes for everyone. We want everyone to recognize a hazard or an unsafe situation and make an on-the-spot correction to avoid injuries—that’s the ultimate goal.
Taking responsibility for individual safety and the safety of co-workers is one of the shifts in mindset Manning says he most enjoys seeing at the end of the course.
“There is a realization that safety is not a game or a joke—injuries and accidents are real,” Manning said. “Students start to take the safety of themselves and coworkers more seriously and start looking at their daily task with a questioning mindset of “Is this safe?”
This vital question will lead to a safer shipyard and improved mission readiness the more it is asked.
Story was originally published on Pages 6-7 in the Aug. 5, 2021 issue of Salute. It may also be found at https://www.dvidshub.net/publication/issues/58654.
| Date Taken: | 08.05.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 12.17.2021 19:11 |
| Story ID: | 411499 |
| Location: | BREMERTON, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 58 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 1,000 Steps: Safety Mentoring, by Adrienne Burns, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
