| The Tennessee
Valley Chapter continues to hold monthly meetings.
On October 22, twenty-seven Chapter members and
six guests attended the meeting at APT Research.
APT graciously furnished lunch as well the facilities
and the guest speaker. Tom Pfitzer’s presentation,
"Promoting System Safety Education —
the APT Initiative," detailed APT’s
efforts to quantify the number of system safety
positions in the area. The presentation provided
basic information such as the number of safety
engineering positions and the typical education
and background of safety engineers in the Huntsville
area. Training plan options, both formal and informal/Web-based,
were offered, which stimulated many attendees
to provide their opinions on which combinations
would best meet the needs for safety engineers
and companies that employ them. It was agreed
that an ad hoc meeting would be held
in December to further define the curriculum.
In response to a suggestion made during the meeting
and in support of the Chapter’s objectives,
Melissa Emery volunteered to prepare a set of
questions on educational development needs and
distributed the questions to Chapter members in
mid-November.
The Chapter also agreed to distribute the survey
to other organizations that employ safety engineers,
such as the TVA, the Anniston Chemical Weapons
Disposal Facility and Fort Rucker. The survey
responses, along with the information presented
by Tom Pfitzer at the October meeting, will be
used to develop a set of recommendations.
The following Chapter meeting, held on November
19, was a regular "brown bag" luncheon
with guest speaker Russ Peusch, the Acting Chief
of the Aviation Safety Branch within the Safety
Office of the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command
(AMCOM) at Redstone Arsenal. Mr. Peusch’s
topic was the Army’s Aviation Safety Investment
Strategy Team (ASIST) program, which focuses on
how to reduce accidents throughout the Army’s
aviation programs by 50% within 10 years.
Twin Cities Chapter
Bill Blake reports that an initial organizational
meeting is planned in January for all local members
who have expressed an interest in helping to re-establish
the Chapter. Following that meeting, nominations
and elections will be held in accordance with
the SSS requirements.
Interested members, and potential new members,
are invited to contact Bill at 763-744-5086 (Bill.Blake@ATK.COM).
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