The answer is just a click away

Mech, Fall, 2004 by Cheryl Poirier

I've seen one problem on surveys: a lack of knowledge about the Naval Safety Center website. Whether it's reading our favorite funnies, checking out the sports scores, looking for the latest and greatest in electronics and cars, or finding the symptoms for a common cold, the web helps us to find answers. Kick back and relax; I'm going to show you a few things you can find about safety on our website at www.safetycenter.navy.mil.

Aviation Program Guides: The aviation maintenance-division web page contains several self-assessment tools for supervisors and maintainers. These guides are an example, and maintenance analysts have written them to detail fleetwide discrepancies, areas of concern, and program elements that the team looks for during surveys. These tools are great aids for quality assurance, program managers, and workcenter supervisors. They allow each shop to fine-tune their respective programs.

Survey Checklists: Our teams use I- and O-level checklists to do safety surveys. This site also provides examples of ORM checklists that have been discovered on various visits and are offered to help your command to develop similar ones.

Process Observation Evaluation Checklists: These self-assessment tools enable squadrons to do a self-evaluation during the execution phase of a process and can be incorporated into any ORM program. They cover 31 areas considered to be "basic" to all aviation-maintenance activities and enable activities to get a feel for program effectiveness.

Aviation-Maintenance FAQs: We field a lot of questions, and this section was developed to provide answers. What is the 18-inch rule? What cordless drills are authorized for aircraft maintenance? Is there an instruction on wearing jewelry near aircraft? The answers are just a few mouse clicks away.

Maintenance Mishap Summary: The aviation maintenance division's answer to the Friday Funnies. Our goal is to raise awareness about maintenance-safety practices and to share the consequences for not following procedures.

Our website contains a treasure trove of safety information, with separate sections for shore, afloat, OSH, and Marine safety. Here are a few other good web pages to check out.

Safety Magazines: Approach, Mech and Sea&Shore are online. These sites include sections with clip art, safety posters, video clips, mishap photos, more stories, and art work that can be downloaded for your briefs or training sessions.

Traffic-Safety Toolbox: A web page full of great information and checklists that all hands can use. This information just might help to prevent a motor-vehicle mishap in your command.

The Safetyline e-Newsletter: Published electronically on a weekly basis for 16 weeks during the critical days of summer, it addresses a specific summer safety-related topic each week.

50-Percent Mishap-Reduction Information: Navy and Marine Corps commands are working hard to comply with the Secretary of Defense's challenge to reduce mishaps by 50 percent over the next two years. It contains news, policy, tools, and data on the effort.

Make a pit stop at the Naval Safety Center website the next time you're surfing the web, and check out the tools you can use and answers you can get. We're just a mouse click away.

Senior Chief Poirier is a maintenance analyst at the Naval Safety Center.