The TACOM Safety and Occupational Health Office received two prestigious Department of the Army level awards and three Army Materiel Command awards for their work in promoting safe and productive workplace environments. The awards, according to Adam Crafard, TACOM's Director of Safety and Occupational Health, were in three different categories, including an individual award, a brigade-level depot award and a two-star command-level award.
Clayton Nagel won the Individual Award for Excellence in Safety in the Junior Department of the Army category for his work as collateral duty safety officer from October 2017 to September 2018 at the DA and AMC levels. Nagel worked at TACOM's Integrated Logistics Support Center's Fleet Maintenance Exchange (FMX) at Fort Leonard Wood at the time of the award.
TACOM achieved the Exceptional Organization Safety Award at the two-star level of command at the DA and AMC levels and Red River Army Depot garnered AMC's Exceptional Organizational Safety Award at the brigade level of competition for the same period of performance.
"We've changed how we look at safety here at TACOM," Crafard said, citing the adoption and expansion of the Safety Incident Automated Reporting System, or SIARS, as key to an increased ability to promote safety best practices and the resultant recognition.
"It's feeding us a very clear picture of what's going on in the industrial base," Crafard said, adding that the program allows for highly targeted data collection and presents a much better picture of safety issues in the field, especially considering a recent influx of new employees across the depots. SIARS, he said, is utilized at all TACOM depots and arsenals.
"We can't go out and directly supervise everybody," Crafard said. "We have to direct resources to where we'll have the best effect, and SIARS helps us do that. It helps guide us to where we put targeted communications, how we do training, how we engage leadership and tell them these are the things to keep an eye out for."
In addition to SIARS, the TACOM Safety and Occupational Health Office also has more than 350 Collateral Duty Safety Officers who support the safety program as an additional duty, acting as safety force-multipliers within their smaller organizations.
The awards, Crafard said, directly reflect an increased emphasis on safety at all levels of TACOM command with the tangible results being the safety, morale and wellbeing of employees and their families.
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