The United States Army Technical Center for Explosives Safety, a directorate within the Defense Ammunition Center helps provide a safe and healthy environment for Soldiers, civilians, contractors, and the public through execution and management of the U.S. Army Explosives and Chemical Agent Safety Programs.
USATCES personnel serve as the Army's Approval Authority for explosives safety site plan submissions, hazard classifications, Munitions and Explosives of Concern and Chemical Agent safety site plan submissions.
To assist with this mission, the Department of Defense Explosives Safety Board and the Military Services are developing software called the Explosives Safety Siting system to automate the explosives safety site planning process. This software will augment the installation's geographic information system map and real property inventory with explosives safety data. This data will allow ESS to perform quantity distance analysis and place the appropriate QD arcs on a map. It will also develop QD tables and a memo that can be used to submit the site plan through command channels.
"This software will reduce the time that safety professionals spend on developing and reviewing explosives safety site plans, thus giving them more time to perform mission-critical duties," said Lyn Little, Logistics Management Specialist with USATCES.
ESS requires that data be formatted in accordance with the Department of Defense Spatial Data Standard for Facilities, Infrastructure, and Environment. Often a "data cleansing" effort is required to implement ESS since GIS data for many installations is not SDSFIE compliant. The software consists of two distinct programs, ESS Toolkit and ESS Site planner. ESS Toolkit assists the installation in the process of getting their data ready to run site plans by ensuring the data is SDSFIE compliant and linking the data from the GIS map with the data from the installation's real property inventory and the explosives safety data. ESS site planner actually performs the QD analysis and assembles the site plan packages.
DDESB has established a goal that all site plan submissions must be automated by the year 2011. In an effort to help the Joint Munitions Command meet this goal, USATCES sought and received funding from JMC to facilitate installation of ESS at all JMC plants and depots and at Military Ocean Terminal, Sunny Point, N.C. USATCES is also seeking Army funding to implement ESS at all remaining Army installations in time to meet the 2011 goal established by DDESB.
The DAC-led project to implement the software at all JMC plants and depots is partially completed. The first year's effort involved gathering all the required data from all the installations and performing the required data cleansing and analysis. The second year will focus on installation of the ESS software for each installation as well as training personnel from each installation on how to run the software. The main effort on this project is being performed by personnel from the Naval Facilities Engineering Command's Engineering Service Center who serve as the DoD program managers for the ESS program, with support from personnel from JMC installations.
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