CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Far East District (FED), safety office is actively working to implement the USACE Safety and Occupational Health Management System (CE-SOHMS) in an effort to align with the processes throughout the Corps.
USACE is merging from a compliance-based safety program toward a performance-based safety management system.
“Across the board it [safety systems] will all look the same,” said L. Winston Clement, USACE FED safety and occupational health chief. “If you come here to FED, or to Jacksonville, or Wyoming, or Michigan, they’ll all have the same CE-SOHMS which will include the basics. The employees will get an introduction into CE-SOHMS.”
CE-SOHMS is set to provide a structured process for improving safety performance. It also provides provisions for proactive goal setting, planning, improving and measuring performance.
The new system improves upon lessons learned from the past. Previously, many organizations were reactive rather than proactive, and the goal was to just merely comply with safety requirements.
“By having a standardized system everyone can input their data into a portal, and see the safety operations of different offices,” said Clement.
The district was recently evaluated based on its implementation process. Andrea Skilinski, a safety and occupational health specialist, led her team when the safety office presented the information to an assessment team and scored a 75%.
“As of that date our organization had scored the best in POD [Pacific Ocean Division] and they’d already inspected three other agencies,” said Clement. “Across the spectrum we are in the top 10% to have a program already established. Once we clean up the discrepancies they identified, we should be at around 99%.”