The safety office achieves this purpose by providing a safe, secure and reliable operating environment to the entire installation and preserving resources by using them efficiently, which is no easy feat. This ultimately results in enhancing the readiness of the wing as well as its many tenants.
“Safety is all about preserving resources, not wasting them,” said William Neitzke, 88 ABW Safety Office director. “If resources are wasted or not available due to Airmen being injured or property being damaged, capacity to do the mission is lost.”
One way the safety office is able to elevate a major part of the second line of effort, delivering necessary operational and mission support, is by understanding the customer’s mission and responding to the customer’s need.
“By understanding the customer’s mission we can tailor safety and risk management to help them to more effectively accomplish the mission while still protecting Airmen and preserving assets,” Neitzke said.
In addition to providing a safe, secure and reliable operating environment to the installation, the safety office makes the most of their team’s intellectual capital and diversity to troubleshoot and create new ways of tackling issues that arise.
“The COVID environment has given us an opportunity to use the diversity of the team to look at old processes and develop new ways of doing business to accomplish the mission within the pandemic operating environment,” Neitzke said.
In order to help the installation the most, Neitzke encourages his office to provide options to leadership so they can make informed decisions based on their recommendations.
“Safety should be a mission enabler, not a mission deterrent,” Neitzke said.
The safety office is essential to installation mission partners as well, working with various leaders around the base to help eliminate or mitigate possible risks or injury.
“We help reduce risk to mission accomplishment,” Neitzke said. “Safety is also highly involved in the design and development of future technology to mitigate possible hazards.”
One among many other ways the safety office supports and promotes this line of effort is by challenging each other to exemplify how to do day-to-day tasks right, not only for themselves, but for other organizations as well.
“Safety is right there in the first line of the description of the wing’s mission statement,” Neitzke said. “We don’t strive for “good enough;” we strive to be the example of how others want to be.”
Credit: 88th Air Base Wing Public Affair
Credit: 88th Air Base Wing Public Affair
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