Safety and Occupational Health

Capabilities

LMI works with government and other public-sector organizations to fulfill their safety and occupational health (SOH) management responsibilities. We develop and implement practical, cost-effective solutions that enable organizations to protect human health as they pursue their missions.

Our specific SOH capabilities are as follows:

• Policy analysis and program management
• Regulatory analysis and compliance support
• SOH management systems
• Performance benchmarking
• Staffing standards and organizational analysis and design
• Lean Six Sigma coaching and project implementation
• Information management systems
• Industrial hygiene
• Preventive medicine
• Emergency preparedness—homeland security.

CLIENTS AND SOLUTIONS

USPS—Enhancing Personnel Safety and Health

LMI’s environment, safety, and occupational health (ESOH) experts have been working closely with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to enhance the safety and health of USPS personnel and protect postal facilities’ environment for over a decade. Our functional ESOH staff, working closely with our information management experts, have helped the USPS develop, deploy, and enhance a safety management system nationwide. We have helped train more than 700 USPS safety personnel in the use of hand-held tools for efficiently conducting inspections and safety program evaluations, greatly improving safety performance: injury and illness rates have been cut in half since we started supporting USPS. During and after the anthrax attacks, our experts worked alongside USPS managers on the response and recovery from the unprecedented health threats and associated environmental and business risks resulting from the incidents. We continue to support mitigation and preparedness efforts with training, technical advice, and management support to protect the USPS workforce from the next emergency or disaster.

USPS—Reducing Injury and Illness

With LMI's assistance, USPS was accepted as a charter member of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's corporate Voluntary Protection Program (VPP). Our functional SOH staff performs VPP gap analysis, training, and site evaluation. In conjunction with our information management staff, we have developed an online VPP application, evaluation, and program monitoring module for USPS. With only 5 years experience in VPP, USPS now has more sites participating than any private-sector company and more than the rest of the federal government combined. USPS VPP sites experience injury and illness rates that are 10 percent lower than other USPS sites and 60 percent lower than comparable industry.

DoD—Supporting the CIP Health Sector

For the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, we created, developed, and characterized the preventive medicine and public health capability area for the Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Health Sector. We identified hundreds of assets, adding them to the Primary Health Asset Staging Tool (PHAST) database, and created criteria, capability, and capacity structure and tools to prioritize and integrate assets in relation to other capability areas and CIP sectors.

Army—Improving Soldiers' Occupational Health

We support the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Environment, Safety and Occupational Health (DASA-ESOH) and Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (CHPPM) with ESOH analysis and implementation services. Our functional experts worked with our systems developers to create mobile data collection tools for the facility safety inspections used in the Army ASPIRE application, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations Environment of Care survey tools, and ergonomic survey applications. We recently improved the Health Hazard Assessment medical cost avoidance tool used to perform and record recommendations on hazard assessments on major Army systems.

Through CHPPM, we reviewed and analyzed preventive medicine capabilities documents and organized, prepared materials for, and facilitated work group meetings for the Joint Environmental Surveillance Working Group (JESWG). The JESWG used our analysis of preventive medicine capabilities to propose new policy and practices to enhance cradle-to-grave surveillance of service members’ potentially hazardous environmental and occupational exposures. We support the JESWG in the development of a Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum that provides standardized procedures for conducting health surveillance in support of all U.S. military deployments.

Army—Defending Against Chemical and Biological Warfare Agents

We supported CHPPM and a multinational task force working group in developing a risk-ranking method for identifying industrial chemicals of military, terrorist, and homeland security concern. We helped provide implementing guidance and recommendations pertaining to the use and interpretation of the December 2001 Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense Chemical and Biological (Warfare Agent) Defense interim-certified acute toxicity values for the chemical warfare agents GA, GB, GD, GF, VX, and HD. We are preparing a white paper that describes the rationale for recommended detection limit exposure criteria for acquisition and development of real-time chemical warfare agent and toxic industrial chemical detection equipment for vapor hazards. This effort supports the Joint Staff and Joint Requirements Office mandate for consistent service detection criteria and clearance decontamination goals for deployment applications. 

Navy—Helping with Safety and Occupational Health Management and Policy

LMI supports the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Safety), DASN(S), with a variety of safety and occupational health (SOH) services, all aimed at continual program improvement, effective management of health and safety risks, and improved readiness. This support comprises SOH program gap analyses, SOH policy updates, and reviews of organizational SOH mission priorities. We continue to help the DASN(S) with analyses of American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Z10 management system implications and private motor vehicle safety issues.

IMF—Crafting a Comprehensive HSE Management System

When the International Monetary Fund (IMF) wanted a comprehensive health, safety, and environmental (HSE) management system, it turned to LMI. To help the IMF prioritize its HSE aspects, we developed custom tools for risk assessments, program gap assessments, stakeholder priorities, peer benchmarking, and cost-benefit analyses to help identify HSE program priorities. We then worked with IMF managers to craft an ISO 14000-based management system, focusing on the HSE priorities identified earlier. As the IMF looks to the future, LMI continues to assist with program development strategies, information technology planning, and HSE program management support.