4 minute read
Unique Challenges Require Unique Safety Program
from America's Engineers: The People, Programs, and Projects of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers '24-'25
BY JOE MACRI
TRANSATLANTIC DIVISION Transatlantic Middle East District
Over its 70 years of history in the Middle East, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Transatlantic Middle East District (TAM) has witnessed progress incrementally and in leaps and bounds. This is especially true when it comes to safety standards. Things that were considered good practice years ago would now be considered malpractice today.
While safety standards aren’t constant, the need to continuously improve them is. For the district, it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s critical to maintaining USACE’s reputation as the go-to construction organization for U.S. military and allied nation mission partners in one of the most dynamic construction environments in the world.
Tom Waters, the district’s former chief of safety and director of programs, said that he’s seen a direct correlation between site safety and the quality of the projects on which the district works.
“I know that when I go to a construction site and see that the contractor is focused on safety, we’re getting a good product from that contractor. Conversely, I know that if they cut corners on safety, they’re probably cutting corners on construction.”
advertisement
With an almost $3 billion construction program spread across nine different countries, keeping safety at the forefront of everything USACE does is especially important. The district became one of the earliest in USACE to reach Corps of Engineers Safety and Occupational Health Management System (CE-SOHMS) stage 3, a designation that indicates a priority on safety across the workforce.
Vanessa Matheny, the district’s current chief of safety, has now set her sights on the Army’s Safety and Occupational Health Star Award, and is focused on ensuring a continued emphasis on the safety program. “With nine different countries, we’ve got nine different sets of local standards, language barriers, and a host of other issues that other USACE districts may not face. It sounds complicated, but at its core, it’s about educating everyone involved in the construction process on those standards and then making sure they follow them. This is true whether we’re executing a routine maintenance contract or building a multimillion [-dollar] aircraft or missile defense infrastructure projects.”
Matheny also noted that for the Middle East District, creating a safety culture often involves factoring culture into safety practices. “On a given construction site, contractors have translators speaking Arabic, English, and Tagalog to conduct safety briefs in different languages. During Ramadan, we monitor sites more closely and might add more breaks due to people fasting during the summer. We emphasized the importance of contractors scheduling night shifts to avoid the extreme daytime temperatures, which can exceed 100 degrees. And when we see contractors celebrating a million hours or more without a reportable incident, we see their workers celebrating with them, everyone is taking ownership.”
According to the district’s commander, Col. Christopher Klein, one of the district’s best safety accomplishments is something that in years past would have been a negative. “We’ve seen an uptick in contractors and employees reporting ‘near misses;’ incidents that could have resulted in a serious injury or fatality but luckily didn’t. Previously, we didn’t want to see those and people would avoid reporting them. Now, folks are recognizing dangerous situations, intervening, and reporting them, so we can share the situations and mitigations measures across the district. This is a fundamentally new way of doing business,” said Klein.
The district aims to uphold the mindset that “when you know better, you do better,” as it works to make safety a fundamental part of its culture and mission. AE
–
Visit www.Americas-Engineers.com to sign up for a free print edition of our annual publication and to join our weekly newsletter.
