Heart to heart - a custodian journal on grassroots ergonomics
When we first requested to speak at the American Society of Safety Engineer`s Professional Development Conference in Seattle, Washington, the theme we had in mind for this program paper was quite different. It definitely was not anything like our title, `Heart to Heart` implies. It was more formal and traditional. Give you figures, diagrams and the like. But two years later, we have come to another conclusion, to tell you the story about how a group of custodians and health & safety professionals dreamed big dreams and they came true. In order to understand what occurred, we first need to start at the very beginning with the Custodian Quality Improvement Team (CQIT). This group had been formed by the Plant Engineering Department at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) located in Livermore, California. LLNL is operated by the University of California for The U.S.Department of Energy. It is the premier applied physics research laboratory in the world. Plant Engineering (PE) is much like a Public Works Department. PE has all of the crafts, such as plumbers and electricians, who do maintenance-type work, as well as the engineering and construction employees. PE maintain the utilities, constructs new buildings and takes care of old ones. They take of the roads and clean the buildings and landscape the campus. So the Custodian Shop and its some 150 employees is a member of the PE family so to speak. The CQIT had decided to investigate ways they could reduce the number of injuries they were having. They invited health and safety professionals, David Zalk (an Industrial Hygienist) and Jack Tolley (Safety Engineer) to consult with them about this. They are both Hazards Control Team 4 members at LLNL. They were both interested in ergonomics and suggested that an approach to reducing their injuries might lie in studying how the custodians actually do their work. David has extensive training in ergonomics, and Jack simply had a long-time interest in ergonomics for some 30 years, describing himself as a `learned layman.`
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety, and Health, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 672734
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-130572; CONF-9806110-; ON: DE98058819; BR: YN0100000
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Safety summit `98, Seattle, WA (United States), 14-17 Jun 1998; Other Information: PBD: 4 Mar 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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