Vol. 4.2 Fall 1997

SYSTEM SAFETY SOCIETY

Florida Chapter News

Meeting Notice:

The next meeting of the Florida Chapter is a joint meeting with the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society's Space Coast Chapter at the Cocoa Beach Hilton, 1550 North Atlantic Avenue, Cocoa Beach on Tuesday, September 30 at 6:00p.m.

The topic is the status of the OSHA Ergonomics standard and the speaker is Dr. David Cochran, Special Assistant for Ergonomics OSHA, Washington, D.C. Dr. Cochran has 25 years of teaching, research, and consulting in Ergonomics. He will review the magnitude of the Work Related Musculoskeletal Disorder (WMSD) problem and talk about OSHA's latest strategy to address the problem.

Cost: $15, Seating is limited, RSVP Now: Mike Kochmann (407) 384-5491 (days) 366-2097 (eves) or Faith Chandler (407) 267-3406, fchandle@digital.net.

President's Report

Several of the members from our Florida chapter attended the 15th International System Safety Conference in Washington, D.C., 13-17 August. For those of you that couldn't make it and are curious about what took place, let me begin by saying that the event was a monumental success. Last year, the New Mexico chapter set a lofty standard for our annual conference and I will first to admit that they hit the mark. Seven members were there representing the Florida chapter and any one of them will agree that it was a fine event.

Besides the excellent speakers, useful and informative tutorials, and the wide cadre of presentations, there were some other goings on that were not a part of the official program. Mike Kochmann and I sat in on two Executive Council meetings and can say there is a lot going on with the society. Perry D'Antonio, the SSS president, has some high expectations of what can be accomplished. These goals look to be attainable as he has a strategic plan on paper and a staff that has made a commitment to help get these things done.

The strategic plan for the SSS includes a vision of the SSS being the recognized leader in the system safety discipline. Major goals for the SSS fall in three main areas: Information, Science & Technology, and Education.

Information goals include: - Have a seamless archiving and distribution system for system safety information - Create an electronic communication environment for remote information exchange meetings; - Work in partnerships with major industries, universities, national laboratories, and related professional organizations to disseminate system safety knowledge;

Science and Technology goals include: - Create an international system safety network that will focus on bringing the latest technology into the system safety knowledge base; - Diversify the membership into system safety areas beyond defense and aerospace; - Be a leader in defining system safety principles, standards, and approaches;

Education goals include: - Create a national infrastructure to conduct annual conferences; - Work towards professional certification for all the members; - Develop a system safety education partnership with universities;

SSS Executive Council members have developed personal performance plans for their terms of office that will support the objectives listed above. The SSS Vice President, Paige Ripani, will track and monitor their progress and report to the membership. Perry has heard the cry to build accountability with the members, and has initiated an effort to do so.

Next years conference will be in Seattle, WA during September. Since there is not a chapter located there, next year's conference will be an exercise in virtual planning. Chapters from other parts of the country sign up to help out (this essentially happens now with some areas of the conferences). The SSS has members in Seattle, but they are not organized to put on a conference on their own, so we all need to see what we can do to help out. Charles Hoes is heading up the effort and is looking for more volunteers to help create the virtual planning team. He has a good start but much more is needed.

In addition, let me announce some other news from the conference. SSS Headquarters will be moving towards a virtual office environment. This will be accomplished through the use of upgrade computer and telecommunications capability. Russ Mitchell has been named OVP for Communications and will lead this activity. Russ will report to Charles Hoes.

There is a new chapter in the San Jose, CA, area. They will be called the Bay Area chapter.

Our proposal to host the 1999 ISSC in Orlando was accepted. Mike Kochmann presented our proposal to the Executive Council and it was accepted unanimously. There was quite a bit of enthusiasm throughout the DC conference about looking forward to 1999. The ball is rolling and everyone is excited about what we can do here in Florida. But Mike Kochmann will discuss more about that later.....

There were several initiatives announced that the SSS is involved in with other organizations. For example, the National Safety Council has begun an Institute for Safety Through Design. The SSS has pledged to be a player in this effort. Perry D'Antonio has been invited to attend their planning meeting. With the NSC's broad spectrum of public appeal, this will be a real bonus to the society in its efforts to promote system safety. Bennie Smith, a member of the Washington D.C. Chapter, has arranged for the SSS to get a free booth at the next NSC conference and has developed a SSS relationship with the NSC president. Another partnership is with the Joint Council for Health Safety, and Environment Education of Professionals. This is a group of organizations that gets together to lobby institutions of higher learning into injecting appropriate safety courses into college curriculums. The SSS is represented on the council. An finally, the ASSE has approached SSS to help market the System Safety Analysis Handbook. Detailed are still be worked out, but it looks like ASSE may add the SSS System Safety Analysis Handbook to their catalog or resources available for purchase by ASSE members and the public. The cooperative effort would benefit both ASSE and SSS.

As you can tell, the many SSS members are active in numerous projects and initiatives. Only with their participation can the SSS fulfill the strategic plan. What is our chapter doing to support the strategic plan you ask? Good question. Our short term plan is to support the education goals by hosting the 1999 ISSC.

Please contact me at willougm@stricom.army.mil or (407) 384-3923 any time you have any questions about the SSS or any ideas about how our chapter can best support the SSS strategic plan.

Mike Willoughby

President FL SSS

OSHA INFO

Did you know that OSHA has made it's database of past inspection records available through the World Wide Web? You can search by establishment name or by SIC code. Just go to the statistics page from the main OSHA.gov page, and from there go to the establishment search page. A little exploration reveals that the most common citation seems to be, you guessed it, hazard communication. The site might be useful for safety consultants evaluating potential clients and safety professionals interested in the safety record of potential employers or maybe the competition. Will employers take safety more seriously now that OSHA citations are easily accessible public record? Time will tell.

BOOK REVIEW

Risk Assessment and Management Handbook for Environmental Health and Safety Professionals Rao V. Kolluru, Dr.P.H. Editor in Chief, Steven M. Bartell, Ph.D., Robin M. Pitblado, Ph.D., R. Scott Stricoff. McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1996.

This is not an easy book to review; what can you say about a book that attempts to cover all aspects of risk assessment but does not even mention System Safety? It is useful because it shows some of the other technical areas where people are doing essentially the same job that System Safety engineers do, and it is definitely presented from a different perspective. The authors are scientists as opposed to engineers and have backgrounds in environmental risk assessment, health risks, ecology and other related medical and biological fields. Chapters address Health Risk Assessment, Public Health and Safety Risks.

Another chapter of interest is Risk Communication which gives some guidelines for dealing with the media and public in crisis and non-crisis situations. Chapter 15 includes some Do's and Don'ts for establishing trust and getting your message across - things like Listening, Nonverbal Messages, Clarity etc. This chapter could be very valuable to people likely to be drawn into a situation of presenting information at a hostile public meeting or media situation.

The chapter on safety myths and reality in safety is also interesting. This includes a few of the typical rationalizations people use to avoid investing in safety or taking prescribed safety actions: "we never had a serious accident before", "It had operated safely for years, so we thought we didn't need to worry", "It just broke, we could not have anticipated it.", "It was human error - our operations are inherently safe" and other excuses that all safety people have heard at one time or another.

In conclusion, if you want a book covering other areas where our experience might be useful, with practically no overlap with system safety references you may already own, this book is interesting. If you want to see the danger of a too-narrow technical focus; it provides a prime example by completely ignoring the success of System Safety in aviation/aerospace. If you want a good reference on System Safety with some examples and case histories as well as application outside aviation/aerospace, Nancy Levenson's Safeware is a much better choice.

Election Results

The results of the Florida Chapter election of offices are: President - Mike Willoughby, President Elect - Mike Kochmann, Secretary and Newsletter Editor - John Wolf, Treasurer - Fred Wachsman

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