Transcript for:
Ergonomics and Industrial Hygiene Integration

[Music] good morning everybody we'll go ahead and get started today uh thank you all for joining us um for our industrial hygiene series um today as you can see our topic is going to be on the Synergy of ergonomics and Industrial hygiene monitoring in the physical workspace and the risks um this series is brought to you by the Southwest Center For Occupational environmental health um we are naos Education and Research Center here at the UT Health School of Public Health and my name is Lacy Davis I'm the new director of continuing education Outreach here um we're very excited to have three wonderful speakers with us today um this webinar is traditionally a bimonthly webinar of industrial hygiene and safety professionals um in which we discuss emerging issues and best practices overall in occupational safety and health so thank you very much for joining us um today we have three um great lineup of experts on us and in between each talk we will be giving a five minute break just in case you need to grab an extra coffee or go to the restroom whatever you need to do um so don't worry about that we'll give little breaks in between um a few housek keeping rols I know we're all experts at webinars at this point um but just remember to keep your devices muted um please wait till after the presentation we're going to give about 10 to 15 minutes after each presentation for questions um so feel free to either raise your hand at towards the end or put it in the chat or just wait um to they're finished and be able to ask your questions all right so we'll get started started first we have Steven Mills he's a safety specialist at KBR NASA he holds a masters in public health in occupational environmental Environmental Health Science um specializing industrial hygiene a past trainee here as well of UT Health of southw Center which is great um he's currently working in the Aerospace industry for KBR Inc and he's contracted by NASA on the human health and performance contract as a safety specialist on site at Johnson Space Center so Stephen go ahead and take it away for us all right thank you for the introduction bear with me real quick as I um try to share my screen okay it's good all right welcome everyone my name is Stephen Mills I go by Austin and uh as Lacy said I'm a master of Public Health in occupational and environmental health science specializing in industrial hygiene from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and a safety specialist for KBR on the human health and performance contract at NASA Johnson Space Center and today we'll embark on a journey Beyond the Horizon venturing into the Realms of office ergonomics at NASA's Johnson Space Center uh this morning we'll explore the potential hazards of poor office ergonomics and the measures we take through the human health and performance contract to mitigate these risks and Safeguard our valued Workforce to give a little bit of a background the human health and per performance contract um we are dedicated to ensuring the health safety and performance of astronauts throughout all phases of space flight this includes researching the effects of space flight on the human body developing counter measures to mitigate those effects and providing medical support to astronauts during missions our activities enable Mission success optim optimizing uh human health and productivity in space flight before during and after the actual space flight experience of our flight Crews and we also provide uh ground support based functions as well one of our sayings here on the human health and performance contract is um we put the human in human space flight uh the human health and performance contract we Safeguard a vast and diverse Workforce at NAS Johnson Space Center so this encompasses a wide range of personnel including Engineers scientists administrative staff and support personnel with such a diverse group ergonomics becomes even more critical in preventing muscular skeletal disorders which can affect people in various job functions ergonomics which is the science of Designing the workplace to fit the worker plays a mission critical role here at Nasa uh this involves optimizing workstations tools and tasks to minimize physical stress and strain on employees by incorporating ergonomics ergonomic principles we can improve Comfort we can boost productivity and most importantly reduce the risk of developing muscular sculle disorders here at Nasa ensuring a safe and healthy work environment is Paramount and ergonomics allows employees to perform their critical tasks effectively whether supporting missions on Earth or ensuring the success of future space endeavors musculoskeletal disorders or MSDS for a brief background um for individuals that do not already know what a muscul skeletal disorder is muscul skeletal disorders are injuries or conditions that affect the muscular skeletal system uh this includes muscles tendons ligaments nerves bones and joints common examples of muscular skeletal disorders include carpal tunnel syndrome uh lower back pain tendinitis and many others um muscular skeletal disorders can cause anywhere between mild to significant pain discomfort and even long-term disability for affected individuals this can lead to Lost work days reduced productivity and ultimately a significant impact on both the employee and the organization so several factors can contribute to the development of muscular skeletal disorders and we can categorize these factors as occupational and non-occupational occupational risk factors so let's focus on the occupational risk factors that are most relevant to poor office ergonomics uh these risk factors include repetitive tasks so performing the same movements repeatedly especially with awkward postures or forceful exertions can lead to muscular skeletal disorders um common examples in office settings include typing data entry uh these repetitive emotions can lead to conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome tendinitis and neck pain awkward postures is another risk factor so maintaining awkward postures for extended periods can put excessive stress on muscu muscles and Joints this can include hunching over a keyboard reaching for objects in awkward positions or sitting for long periods of times so without braks uh these postures can lead to back pain neck pain shoulder pain Etc static postures we would like to take into consideration as well sitting for long periods without breaks can lead to tight muscles and discomfort um it's important to get up and move around regularly throughout your work day improper workstation setup an improperly set up workstation can contribute to various muscular skeletal dis muscular skeletal disorders this includes incorrect chair height monitor positioning that strains your neck keyboard placement that forces awkward wrist positions or a lack of proper armrest to support your forearms other occupational risk factors that exist such as forceful um exertions uh lifting pushing pulling vibration from tools or equipment and working in extreme temperatures um Can impact the body and may result in muscul uh muscular skeletal disorder development if those are not mitigated in the future however the ones we've discussed um previously are the most relevant to office settings for non-occupational risk factors um there are non-occupational risk factors that can contribute to muscle SC Cal disorders such as age as we age our bodies become less resilient to stress and strain pre-existing medical conditions certain medical conditions such as arthritis obesity they can lead to the likelihood of um muscular skeletal disorder development if those are not mitigated in uh for the Future Fitness level lower Fitness levels can make individuals more prone to muscular skeletal disorders um so maintaining good muscle strength and flexibility can help protect U individuals against injuries leisure activities are recreational activities so repetitive motions are a postures from Hobbies or Sports can contribute to muscular skeletal disorders and by understanding these risk factors both occupational and non-occupational we can take steps to prevent muscular skeletal disorders and promote a healthy muscular skeletal system our approach um through mitigating ergonomic risks so through the human health and performance contract we take a proactive approach to mitigating ergonomic risks and preventing muscular Cal disorders at NASA Johnson Space Center here is how we achieve this uh one thing that we do we provide ergonomic assessments so upon request we conduct comprehensive ergonomic assessments for both new and existing individuals um this involves evaluating work stations tasks and individual risk factors to identify potential hazards as previously mentioned this is the form that we utilize on the human health and performance contract when performing an ergonomic assessment for our employees prior to conducting the assessment we allowed the employee to fill out the assessment sheet um down to section F so the employee will provide us their name manager um their job title department the location in which they're working email or phone number and if they are a full or part-time employee we also would like to know their ergonomic history so new employees we would like to know if this is a new or an existing employee maybe they relocated to a new workstation and they would like to get their workstation evaluated so it's best fit for them from an ergonomic standpoint so is it a new workstation is it an existing workstation and do they routinely experience pain or discomfort and Below we would like to identify the areas in which these individuals are experiencing pain or discomfort because if we don't know what's going on um then we're going to have a difficult time addressing um their concerns so we would like to know are they experiencing pain in the neck shoulders elbows forearms hands wrists fingers ankles feet thighs um maybe they're experiencing headaches um lower legs and then we would like to know the frequency you know are you experiencing these symptoms seldom often or do you always experience these symptoms and then the severity as well so is it mild is it moderate severe and unbearable this information is critical because it drives whether or not um we should follow up with the employee after performing this ergonomic assessment and then whenever we do Implement our mitigation measures has this assisted in reducing or mitigating the pain and the frequency in which these individuals are experiencing yeah and we would like to know do they do the individuals feel like the pain they're experiencing as a result of their workstation if not what do they believe the pro what what what do they believe is causing the problem you know do they perform any outside activities um recreational activities maybe they play tennis and their elbow starts to hurt you know that could be a non-occupational risk factor and that could be a result or a contributor to their pain and eventually muscular skeletal disorder development if we do not mitigate um the risks while they're in the occupational setting uh do they have pre-existing injuries so for me I played football um throughout my life I've had two shoulder surgeries on both my shoulders I've had two ACL surgeries so I know that I have a non-occupational risk factor that um might impact me and I take steps through our ergonomic assessments I I do ergonomic assessment that way we can evaluate my workstation because I know I'm already predisposed to muscular sculle disorder development we would like to know how much time do you spend on electronics let's say this individual is a sonographer or maybe they are a flight controller and they work 8 to n hours a day on a computer and they experience headaches or dry eyes frequently well if you're experiencing this at work then we'll do our best to mitigate that um while you're here but if you're also going home and you're playing Call of Duty Minecraft you know you're performing these recreational activities for greater than two hours one to two hours you're spending excessive amount of time on electronics that non-occupational risk factor can exacerbate those conditions you we would like to know do you smoke um we'll go through and we'll say okay how long do you spend at a computer a day um for my previous example a flight controller a sonographer they're going to be at the computer they're going to be at their workstation 8 to nine hours a day um we would like to know how long do you spend at this particular workstation do you get up do you move around do you have the equipment needed to kind of help um Locate materials so that you're not being put in awkward postures do you have a document holder do you have headsets um we would like to know how how often do you get up um so most individuals they don't take the time to get up after they or get up walk around stretch once they have um been working for prong periods of time and I will address that um later as we move along we would like to also know present conditions so we'll evaluate the individual's posture so whenever I go through these ergonomic assessments I'm going to have the individual actually perform their tasks for me so if they're working in an office environment okay perform your task I'm going to do observation and I'm going to analyze um what's your posture like is your head and neck upright or in line with your torso um is your head or your trunk facing forward and you're not off to the side looking like this you're looking like this and you're experiencing neck pain you're in an awkward posture we we would like to try to um address your posture um is your trunk perpendicular to the Flor shoulders and upper arms are in line with your torso are your forearms and your hands in a straight line and parallel to the flo maybe you're experiencing shoulder issues but you also kind of work like this where you're chicken winged out and it's causing a little bit of shoulder impin um let's see are your thighs parallel to the floor maybe you're experiencing knee or leg issues but you're not at one a 90° angle whenever you're sitting and your feet aren't flat on the floor so that could be exacerbating some issues whether it be existing or um non-existing and then as previously mentioned do you stand for an hour and then we would like to know okay what kind of equipment are they do they have already provided to them and then are they utilizing this equipment properly so it's a wrist rest being utilized properly some individuals don't have wrist rests um which can lead to the um development of carpal tunnel syndrome if they're put in an awkward posture some people don't have Mouse rests uh so we do provide rist and mouse rest individuals and on the next slide or in the previous slides we'll go over types of um ergonomic equipment that we distribute to our employees and that we have permission to distribute or is that is there something that we need to provide where we're going to have to get approval for submission you know is the indiv individual's keyboard and mouse directly in front of the employee we'll move on to the next slide yeah is your keyboard and mouse on the same level you know if your keyboard is up here and your mouse is down here that's kind of putting yourself at awkward posture that's putting you at risk for muscular scul disorder development is your keyboard uh if you're utilizing a keyboard tray is your keyboard tray used properly is it at the proper height um and is your mouse Within Reach of the user if you're overreaching you could be at risk for um upper upper back trapezius um discomfort in pain maybe shoulder impingment is the monitor directly in front of the employee so we can after we evaluate the individual's posture we go ahead and we evaluate their monitor and their visibility um is the monitor glare holder in place or clipboard that's being utilized uh what I see most often and individuals at home you're at you're in your office environment right now so you're in an office setting you're at your work workstation so as we follow along feel free to evaluate your own workstation as we're going through this because I can most likely guarantee from my assessments of individuals here on site that your monitor level we would like to see it where the topmost line and where the URL is is directly within your line of sight we would like to see this because if you're looking more upward to view the material on your screen you're looking downward that's causing some neck issues some trapezius issues that puts you at risk for future pain and discomfort um and also risk of muscular sculp disorder development we also um evaluate the individual's chair so is their chair appropriately sized is there proper padding proper lumbar support seat pan depth is it adjustable it slides out it slides back is the height adjustable it goes up it goes down and and then we will um go ahead and we will adjust the chair for the individual that were performing ergonomic assessments for so that it properly fits them that they feel comfortable and that we are confident that these adjustments are going to reduce the risk of muscular sceletal disorder development or it will mitigate their pain from then um we go ahead and we get measurements of the individual's workstation so so we're going to get dimensions of the desk surface the length we like to know how long the desk is the depth how far does the desk go back and the height as well the height is crucial um you know does this individual have sufficient uh knee or feet space um we recommend at least 15 to 24 Ines for a user's knees uh we would like to get the size of an individual's Monitor and then their viewing distance as well well we recommend anywhere between 18 to 30 in from you viewing your monitor if you're less than 18 in um we'll adjust the monitor to where it sits further back if you're further than 30 in we try to bring you or the monitor closer towards you that way it helps out with digital ey strin it helps out with headaches which can also lead to uh additional conditions down the road keyboard height so how far up does the keyboard come this is going to play a role in part eight C we're going to calculate keyboard height uh from the computer desk surface height so if I have a my my desk surface is 30 in and my keyboard height is half an inch um my my measurement for my workstation would be like 30 and2 in from there we will go to section eight and we'll get the measurement of an individual's tip of their elbow to the floor so we'll measure we'll have them um rest their arms as if they're typing and we will get that measurement um if that measurement between your tip of your elbow and the um overall desk height for your workstation uh is greater than 2 in then that puts you at improper posture if it's greater or what uh greater than 2 in you know it could be you're sitting lower and your arms are like this which puts strain on your wrists or it's too high which also plays puts strain on your risk uh putting you at risk for carpal tunnel syndrome potentially from there we move on to our bindings and corrective actions so once we have all this information we'll put it in this area um and if an individual has a greater than two inch um deviation between their 90° U tip of their for their uh elbow to their workstation we'll go ahead and we'll put in a request to um JSC furniture or KBR furniture that way we can lower or raise their desk to get them within that 0o to 2 inch um Dimension so that the likelihood of that individual developing Caron syndrome is mitigated and then we also have information at the very bottom here of ergonomic equipment so we can provide document holders ergonomic keyboards which I have um an ergonomic Mouse an ergonomic Mouse can be kind of tilted upward so that your wrist isn't at an awkward posture and it's not laying flat on the death surface and it's more kind of the the side of your arm so it's kind of angled or you have a track ball wheel as well that you can uh provide to individuals we provide foot rests or Mouse Bridges um foot rests are pretty crucial um for our shorter individuals sometimes they like to be they need to have their raised so that they can be within that 0 to 2 inch March uh Mark for their their variation between their elbow tip and their desk height um so allowing for the foot rest to be accommodated will have their feet flat on not not the floor but it will be flat on the wrist rest or not the wrist rest the foot wrist uh we have glare filters for individual who have sensitivity to blue light or experience digital ey strain which we will discuss later we also provide keyboard trays for individuals and lar support seat cushions and that's all the equipment that we can distribute uh without approval we also provide monitor risers and wrist and mouse wrists almost every time I per ergonomic assessment I provide wrist and mouse rest to individuals um that cushion helps prevent carpon syndrome and most of the time individuals do not have a wrist and mouse rest so it's it's crucial that we uh provide those to our employees so ergonomic equipment that we will need approval for we have anti fatigue mats we have ergonomic chairs uh monitor arms numeric keypads uh the Highlight here is sit stand workstations so for tall individuals or for individuals who are working 8 to 9 hours and they feel like they don't have the time to take that five minute ergonomic break every hour um providing a sit stand workstation will allow them to be able to get out of their static posture get out of their um their seated posture and to be able to stand helping helping alleviate any strain on the back for S workstation we require that our employees provide us a Physicians note that says that they do not have any pre-existing conditions that will be exacerbated due to them having a San workstation so not that they do have a condition that will require them to have it but that they do not um have a condition that will be exacerbated a little bit different we also provide other specialty items as well but essentially that is our ergonomic assessment and a nutshell our approach to mitigating ergonomic risks we also provide um based on the assessment findings we provide personalized recommendations to optimize workstations and work practices for each employee so as previously mentioned this may involve adjustments to chair height um position or monitoring monor monitor positioning uh keyboard type so the ergonomic keyboard and we might even suggest alternative work practices to minimize repetitive strain we also offer brief one education or one slide educational resources that are called zero harm moments um your areas might call them safety moments um they can they can be called various things but they're all interchangeable essentially so our zero har moments are tailored towards a variety of occupational and non-occupational topics uh including ergonomics uh these can cover a VAR cover various subjects such as combating eye strain or proper lifting techniques uh these resources are a great way to promote awareness and encourage healthy habits among employees um it's also where it's a brief one one slide information um it's it's easy to go over whenever you're having meetings so if you're having staff meeting if you're having a management meeting it's it's a quick five minute topic that engages our audience and safety and we like to provide that information that way it's accessible to everyone and we'll go over a few um zero harm moments that I have created with you all so here we have an or yeah an ergonomic topic for our zero harm moment it's called neck pain and office ergonomics so poor office ergonomics contributes to the issues of neck back and shoulder stress through prong postures without breaks making sure if your topmost read line on your computer monitor is not directly in your line of sight it might cause you to look up or down which might put you um in an awkward posture resulting in neck or shoulder stress um as well as inadequate chair support and seat height which could cause unnatural head and body positions forward head posture um caused by poor off office ergonomics can uh cause stress on the neck back and shoulders as well forcing the neck to support the uh weight of the head straining neck muscles that can create a rounded shoulder position leading to shoulder tension and discomfort it can overload the trapezius muscles in the upper back resulting in pain and stiffness and it can increase pressure on our spinal discs the solution to this um frequent braks and movement make sure that you take regular brakes to stand stretch and walk reducing strain from prolonged sitting um monitor height adjustment so make sure you set your monitor at a eye level to promote a natural head position uh reducing next strain and uh posture awareness maintaining good postures by keeping your head neck and back a line while working and consider using ergonomic accessories like keyboard trays or monitor STS to facilitate this in regards to our previous slide uh ergonom with the ergonomic assessments almost every time that I complete an ergonomic assessment I ensure that I provide the uh employee with information on micr brakes so regardless of your position I always recommend taking a 5 minute micr break every hour either to stretch to walk around and stand up and if you do not feel like doing those to um maybe take a ergonomic break for mindfulness um a lot of individuals have a lot of tasks going on here at Johnson Space Center uh they feel like um sometimes they can't take that break because they have so much going on or they're just so into their job that they just want to ensure that they get everything done and they don't take the brakes they're sitting there for a few hours and that can result in muscular skeletal disorders if you're not taking those breaks so I always ensure you know 5 minutes every hour stretch and I do offer ergonomics uh tip tips for stretches so if you're at home you have I could almost guarantee that that most of us have not stretched today some good stretches that we can go across so making sure that you have your body or your arm across your body put your palm on your elbow bring it in hold for five seconds the other way this will work as well this one put your elbow up to the ceiling and your the palm of your hand in the middle of your back bring your arm around and pull down hold for about 5 to 10 seconds same with the opposite direction this one for you at home if you if you all work in an office environment I can guarantee that you all will feel um this one so Palm for forward kind of bring it back into your body for about 5 Seconds this will help reduce carpal Teno syndrome and down for about 5 to 10 seconds um for neck tension and upper shoulder tension we go side to side with our neck for about five to 10 um five to 10 tilts each side um if you have your own office lucky for you um if you don't have your own office some individuals feel like um whenever they do this stretch they look a little crazy around their peers but it's just a rotation of your head in a full circle five to 10 motions each I I can guarantee you if you do this at home you're following along with me you might feel some pops you might feel um some pulls but that that's totally okay um it's normal and if you're following along I can guarantee you that after you do these stretches you're going to feel so much better you'll notice the difference it'll help alert you it'll help wake you up it'll help make you feel more productive throughout the day um as well as those if you are at a desk you can also grab the front of your desk and kind of roll your chair out a little bit that way um it's pulling under your lower um your upper back and your shoulders and then you'll kind of want to squeeze your shoulder blades together whenever I do this stretch it usually gets a good pop out of my back a couple of other things that you can do is calf stretches so find something that you can put your calf up on um have your toes kind of up into the air a little bit have something that you can pull yourself into once you pour yourself in you'll be able to feel that stretch in your calf and then you can also do a thigh or quad stretch as well yeah sorry about the uh providing these tips but I thought it was crucial I wanted to share that with you all before we move on to our next zero arm moment so for our next zero harm moment we have uh combating eye strain so there's a good chance that you spend a lot of hours staying staring at a some kind of computer monitor whether it's a computer laptop a smartphone so focusing on any type um of the above for a long time can cause um eye string fatigue and headaches eyes can also feel parched red gritty eye strain is a common condition that occurs when a person's eyes get tired from intense usage um people who look at screens for two or more hours in a row every day have the greatest risk of having ey stram one way to comat combat I strain is to follow the 202020 rule I always provide this information for individuals who are working in office setting as well after I do my um ergonomic assessments so take a break every 20 minutes by looking at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds this allows your eyes time to relax um to focus on something else besides a computer monitor and there are also other tips to prent iin as well well so you can keep your screen at Arms uh length make sure it's within that 18 to 30 inch range you can adjust the font size if you feel like you're squinting too much if if the font's too small enlarge it you can avoid screen glare from lighting uh you can close nearby blinds or use a matte anti-glare screen to reduce uh glare um if you're if your if your work allows for you to remove um light bulbs in the area or to provide something called a cozy shade which kind of has magnets that go over a lighting source with a polyester material that's flame retardant so it will not cause a fire that um reduces The Light Within that area and we provide those that is good as well to mitigate digital I String um it you can avoid dry eyes keep eye drops handy and to lubricate your eyes and with within a nearby area so you can have accessibility to that and you can adjust your screen's brightness as well a couple of other things um that you can do to mitigate digital eye strain so as long as your hands of clean are clean of course rub underneath your eyes for about 5 to 10 seconds in little circular motions this will help reestablish blood flow in the area um it will also help with the lubrication of your eyes as well you could rub your eyes in little circular motions something you can also do if you feel like your eyes are getting dry if you're getting headaches if you need a break you can close your eyes and then it's called palming and you can Palm over your eyes and just like kind of press in for about 5 to 10 seconds and that will help again um lubricate your eyes it allows your eyes to have a break from staring at uh computer screens for prolonged periods of time and and it can assist with the mitigation of digital I Strand and headaches as well another topic that we have this will be our final zero harm topic that we'll go over today is uh lower back pain and office ergonomics so what factors result in poor office ergonomics well we have inadequate Lumar support incorrect chair height prolong periods of sitting poor posture and lack of movement so poor office ergonomics may result in a variety of muscular skeletal disorders including lower back pain uh pain can rage from moderate to severe due to various factors including muscle strain poor posture pre-existing injury or current injury and underlying medical conditions the solution to this you can adjust your Lumar support um chairs with insufficient or non-adjustable Lumar support can cause um the lower back to curve straining the muscles and cause discomfort you can also adjust your chair height uh if a chair is set too high or too low it can lead to awkward postures causing a strain on your lower back poor postures well leaning forward slouching or hunching over can disrupt the spine's natural curvature straining the lower back and we want to ensure that if you are experiencing this pain and discomfort due to poor office ergonomics that our employees contact us shio is the safety health environmental office uh I'm one of two safety specialists in shio on the human health and performance CL ra and we have a large Workforce so I often get to perform these ergonomic assessments and most of the time I am able to actually I don't believe there has been An Occurrence where I haven't mitigated an individual's pain and that is that's satisfying for me to know that an individual was uncomfortable to know that they were experiencing pain and then to come back two weeks later and that what I have provided them and my adjustments and information that I've provided them has alleviated that pain that's really gratifying we also have a ergonomics committee so to ensure a comprehensive and effective ergonomics program we have a dedicated ergonomics equipment that meets bonly um this committee comprises representatives from various departments and disciplines uh which include industrial hygienists safety Specialists and employee health Representatives um we also include individuals who are not in this these fields as well if you want information on ergonomics and you want to join the ergonomics committee then by all means please join us we will gladly provide you with the information and the committee Works collaboratively to discuss ergonomic issues and concerns raised by employees or identified through assessments uh we can review and update ergonomic program policies and procedures through our uh committee meetings with collaboration and we develop and Implement new strategies for promoting a safe and healthy work environment for our staff something that we have been discussing so digital I strain uh this is a topic that we have discussed recently in our ergonomics committee um digital I strain is a cause for concern you know looking at digital devices for prolonged periods of time reading without resting your eyes bright light or glare straining to see dim light or underlying eye conditions you know people with uncorrected vision or um dry eyes let's say you did have correctiv Vision you have had lasc individuals who have had lasic are um predisposed to having dry eyes and are at greater risk of digital eye strain and stress and fatigue um if you're experiencing this you know um and you're experiencing pain you're experiencing you're experiencing headaches that can not only impact your physical health it can impact your mental and emotional health as well it can lead to stress and physical fatigue cont those are contributing factors to digital eye string um health and safety there there's three pillars I would like to say in my in my point of view there's physical there's mental and there's emotional you know if we have one of these pillars begin to have a shift uh one collapses all three starts to collapse if you start to experience uh physical issues that can cause pain that can cause discomfort which will change your emotional state of mind and it could also um impact your mental state of mind as well which may result in a loss of productivity um but at the end of the day we would like to make sure that the mental health of our employees are taken care of because a happy Workforce is what we we all strive to have so correcting I Trin we we discussed this previously so 18 to 30 mention 30 in is the ideal range outside of this range eyes have hard uh have to work harder to focus you know be sure your monitors at the correct height topmost line is in your direct field of view I'm adjust contrast on your monitors if you need we've discussed this I'm I'm a firm believer take frequent breaks take the five minutes to stretch if you don't feel like stretching take the five minutes to walk around if you don't feel like walking around take five minutes to um think of something mindful close your eyes think of something that makes you happy think of a loved one think of an activity think of a memory you know you know there's a lot of stress a lot of anxiety that could go on with um working you know we work if you think about it most individuals work eight hours a day five days a week you do the math that's a third of your life you're spending working the other third of your life you're spending sleeping the other third of your life you're spending doing recreational activities spending time with your family eating driving brushing your teeth things of that nature so a lot of a good percentage of our life we're going to be spending here at work so just take the time to take care of yourself if you can't take care of yourself um that can result in um various things you know change of emotional state of mind change of mental health it can impact your relationships with people outside of work and uh just try to try to take care of yourself make sure that the baggage um here at work is left whenever you leave work I strain and adjustment you know adjust the brightness and contrast if you have a dark mode option turn on the dark mode option that this can help reduce glare improve readability especially in low light conditions we discussed this earlier font and text size you can adjust those um if you have if you have um if you're color blind you you can adjust color schemes to opt for higher contrast colors or different colors that um that help you with your your condition if you are color blind you know try to avoid the Reds the greens um and you can utilize anti glare filters as well key exercises if you if you do experience digital eye strain you know palming eye rolls uh just like we did with the neck rolls just do little circles maybe 10 motions each Direction uh refocusing the 20 202 rules look at something 20 feet away every 20 minutes for 20 seconds or um slowly blinking as well the ergonomics committee uh in addition to the uh functions that we mentioned earlier we also uh the ergonomics Comm committee does metrics traing tracking uh the committee tracks key metrics such as the number of ergonomic assessments uh conducted the types of interventions implemented and the reported incidents of muscular skeletal disorders uh by monitoring the metrics we can gauge the program's Effectiveness and identify areas of improvement so in conclusion uh maintaining a safe and healthy work environment is Paramount not just for the well-being of our employees but also for ensuring the continued success of NASA's critical missions through the human health and performance contract we demonstrate our commitment to a compr comprehensive ergonomics program at NASA Johnson Space Center ergonomics plays a vital role in preventing muscul skeletal disorders and promoting a healthy productive Workforce by working together we can create a work environment that allows everyone to perform their best and reach for the stars both literally and figuratively so I encourage everyone to be mindful of their posture um we've been sitting here for a while whenever that F minute break comes up take into mind the things that I was I've discussed um consider the stretches that I shown if you don't feel like stretching take that 5 minutes to walk around grab your coffee um or take the 5 minutes to sit close your eyes do some palming something or think of something mindful a loved one um at fond memory and don't hesitate to request an ergonomic assessment in your workplace if you experience any discomfort so remember everyone has a role to play in preventing healthy work habits and preventing muscular muscul skeletal disorders uh what that being said I want to thank you all for inviting me to speak at this event and thank you all for your time these are my references and if you all have any questions feel free to ask that was great thank you Austin I appreciate it does anybody want to have any questions for Austin open it up for a minute then we can take our five minute stretch breaks I guess I have a question how often are you um giving these ergonomic assessments to people typically I give and me and my group we give about three three to five a week I would say um and sometimes there's uh groups that move to a different location maybe a new building and the managers will ask for um orgonomic assessments for group moves uh for example we recently have a group grp of stenographers who um need low light in order to see their computer screens effectively to do their tasks initially these individuals were in an office setting in cubical areas um but that um caused issues with them being able to perform their their duties so we moved them to um a area seclusive of the cubical areas and provided them with a low lighting environment um lumbar support chairs ergonomic chairs and doing full ergonomic assessments for the team as well so if a manager asks we are gladly um open and able to do these ergonomic assessments for individuals and provide equipment for them as needed all right thank you all and um dur during this five minute break please take take the time to to you know adopt the things that I mentioned earlier that was great thank you all right we'll take a five minute break and we will have our next speaker come on after that thank you so much all right that's about five minutes hopefully everybody got some stretches in or had time to go a coffee break all right so next up we are going to have Eileen Hof oh there she is hello and she is a regional lead uh human factors uh specialist at Shell um she has more than 20 years of experience experience as a human factors practitioner um primarily in the energy sector um but her work has focused on supporting capital and organizational projects and Technology development uh she believes that the best part of her work is learning about the diverse business and energy and the people that she meets and learns from in the process we will let you go ahead and take it away Miss Eileen sure thank you very much so let me attempt to share my screen and put it in presentation mode so hopefully everyone can see my slides and hear me um if for some reason there's a lot of quiet somebody please speak up um my name is e Hoff um I am speaking to you today about some work that is of interest to me and to a larger part of the human factors community so it's not exactly in alignment with my my day-to-day work but it's something that I think is really interesting and and very thought-provoking I do live and work in the Houston area and uh I realized suddenly that I'm coming up on 25 years time has definitely flown uh in my work and I still love what I do every day I hope each of you does too in the work that you do um I also worked in the space Arena when I started my career before moving into an engineering firm and eventually into energy companies and so I very much enjoy the diversity of experience the people that you get to interact with also the people that come from different Industries and that's I think part of will be reflected in my presentation it's part of that idea that uh there are a lot of things that we make and do in this country and so all of those things need to be reflected in how we approach work I also wanted to say because my son made me uh that I have a UT class of 27 student in my household so that's for my my son and my money go to UT um and he said that I should endear myself to you all by telling you to hook them so with pleasantries out of the way I wanted to remind you a little bit about what human factors was in case you have not recently taken a course or done some reading in that space it's very similar to the definition that was shared a little earlier um so when I think about it it's about the interaction of humans and the elements of a system so maybe a little broader than the the definition that was mentioned earlier but when you break it down you know what is that system it's the work that people do so everything from their actual task to their preparation for that to the activities that come after the work so the cleanup uh the reporting out all of those really important things it's the equipment so you know the things that make it go right the Machinery the tools the resources that that are actually involved in production of aircraft of documentation in the banking industry um the movement of medications and tools in the the hospital and surgical spaces when we think about the environment it's a huge overlap with our industrial hygiene colleagues so it's light and noise and environmental temperatures contact temperatures it's about chemical exposures um exposures to other hazards in the workplace and how we protect people because sometimes how we protect people from other hazards can create challenges from uh human factors ergonomics perspective if you're wearing a big bunny suit uh you may not be as likely to get things done in the same way organizationally we think about uh the people what people do we need what do we need them to do we think about how they communicate how they're organized the processes and procedures that make those organizations go and their culture is another huge part of that the final aspect or we call them factors when we think about human factors is the people right all of us that are out there making up the workforce today what skills resources uh knowledge experience do we have what capabilities do we have what are our limitations how does That Vary within a population how does That Vary within different demographic sets um you know a 50 60y old has different capabilities than a 20y old when generally speaking so when we think about human factors those are the lenses that I try to make sure that I approach all of the work with so what we're going to talk about today now that you're all in that human factor frame of mind is the impact of innovation um the challenges of automation Auto is primarily how we see um manufacturing and a lot of movement of tools resources and equipment in the future and then problem solving approaches because I think it's always good to remember at the end of the day that we have the tools to solve the challenges that are out in front of us so the impacts of innovation uh for those of you who are maybe my age you would remember 2001 A Space Odyssey where how basically took over the spaceship that was going to Jupiter if you didn't see it I won't spoil it but let to say that technology thought it was maybe a bit more important than the human beings that were on the spaceship so that was at one point what some people thought the vision of technology in our future might be there's another joke that's been around almost as long that says that in the future assets will be uh manned or overseen by a man and a dog so we can be a bit more modern and say a person and a dog but a man and a dog so the man is there to feed the dog the dog is there to make sure that the man does not touch anything so it's this idea that in the future everything will be hands off that at least at most of the workfront the day-to-day operations won't really happen there controls and automations will allow us to remotely operate facilities and there really won't be a lot to do there except take care of the dog so in the future though as we've evolved we don't have dogs that necessarily have to be fed so uh this is an image similar to some of the technologies that you may have seen for robot dogs I saw a great picture yesterday of one that they've made actually made like a a furry dog uh costume for the robots to wear but maybe we don't need the man there to feed the dog anymore maybe the dog doesn't have a person to keep out of the circumstance but maybe interrupt you I I I don't think your slides are moving oh they're not it's still showing the there we go okay sorry to interrupt yeah there we go now we can see it okay well let me put it back in presentation mode and see do you see the man and the robot yes now we do uhhuh okay I don't know um but you know now when we think about potentially having the man and the robot in the plant maybe while the man is taking his five minute stretch break or his daily nap the robot is actually out in the facility collecting air samples taking noise readings uh collecting other information about the equipment the tools and the resources maybe in a more Hospital type setting or a aircraft manufacturing setting maybe that robot dog while the man is out doing whatever else he does is uh coordinating and doing quality inspections and making some of those other checks so while this isn't maybe entirely the asset of the future and what that looks like there is the potential that there's going to be a good mix of some of this in that space so I hope it's updated to the next slide please let me know if it didn't uh so how are we going to get to this feature I think it didn't move again sorry sorry it didn't move again it's not okay we'll just not worry about presentation wi then okay there go I'm not sure what the challenge is um so when we think about how we're going to get to this future the reduction in human intervention the hands-off approach is really driven by a number of things and these are the issues that come up in conversations that I have with people in different Industries other human factors practitioners some of it's reflect in the literature around the ideas about Innovation some of them I think are not in the same way and so I wanted to talk about these a little bit uh as far as instrumentation the evolution of high reliability cost effective instrumentation is moving very quickly and so while we don't want to instrument everything in a facility or in a production space there is the potential to use higher quality higher reliability instrumentation of different kinds in different ways than we currently use them today to get the information that we need it may be product count it may be something about process flows but the instrumentation has definitely made advances that we can then feed back into our data analysis our methodology our modeling and of course this is going to have an impact on the physical environment as well as well as workloads and all those things cameras drones and things like the dogs that expand our vision specifically in the space around Vision but certainly other capabilities as well one of the things that we talk about in So Many workspaces is having good situational awareness and for a lot of us who are very visual that means really seeing and understanding what's happening in the space so if we have a person sitting in one room who can see 50 cameras or 10 drones that are moving around a warehouse or a plant that potentially allows that individual to develop a stronger set of situational awareness paradigms about the work that they're doing than if they had to actually go out and physically walk all of those spaces so especially from the perspective of situational awareness which is you know just understanding what's happening now so that we can predict into the shortterm future and the longer term future when we think about that there's a lot of exciting spaces and information that will help us to move into that future State thinking about analyzer technology uh different people analyzer means different things to them so it can be analysis of quality information it can be analysis of count or manufacturing it can even be analysis of product flow if we have a liquid or a gas product but we've seen significant improvements in analyzer technology a lot of it around reducing the space that those analyzers take in our work spaces um integrating different Technologies including cameras and so there's a lot of opportunity there for us to make a step forward and getting better information higher quality information more real time valve actuators is something that comes up a lot when you talk to people who work in processed Industries um or who are involved in pipeline or other energy trans for systems uh valve actuators have historically been fairly large sometimes cumbersome uh some of them are not as reliable as we would like them to be and we're seeing improvements in that technology so why is that important well if I have a valve actuator and I don't have to send a person out to physically manipulate a flow system then that is protecting that person from hazards it's keeping them in a space where they can move on to the next task more quickly and it's potentially reducing the physical exertions that they have to conduct as part of their daily activities so also a really interesting space remote start and stop is something that we've had for a long time I think most people have seen start stop buttons on everything from uh amusement rides to equipment that they have in their own homes but automated start stop is something that doesn't exist in every industry and so the idea of being able to do that in certain industries where maybe we're currently not allowed to for regulatory reasons for process safety reasons for personal safety reasons as that as we integrate and move forward there's actually some industries that are very excited about the potential of getting remote start stop there's also certainly advances in process automation as we move toward more automated systems there's more disband for the control systems that run those and how they evolve how they become more user Centric which of course is really important and the data historians that we have in different types of Industries so some of our data historians are very evolved and capture millions of data points at at every moment almost uh other data historians are currently more manual and while we're keeping track of input and output quality information those types of details it's not automated and so it can tend to lag a lot which is not helpful if we're trying to optimize some of our Solutions so advances in data historians not only to move toward optimization but also they're becoming smarter like everything else and so now they're able to provide us with some information that maybe we were having to go to another application to actually mine that data those spaces are evolving certainly the application of data analytics is something that we expect to Boom in the future whether it's complex data analytics to things like keeping track of more data and uh specific kpis those types of things uh key performance indicators around count quality volume defects as we create more of that data the analytics will come with it some of them will be very complex some of them will be simple but we need people who are going to understand understand how to do them how to apply them and how to interpret them as we move our businesses forward and last but not least is artificial intelligence you know some people would say it's the elephant in the room depends on you know is it a good elephant or a bad elephant but it's certainly something there that's taking up a lot of space in conversation on people's minds um so how will artificial intelligence impact all the things in this list and things far beyond it we don't know there's certainly a lot of potential so we have to see the short story on uh artificial intelligence though is and Automation in general that I think it's not going to replace the person in our manufacturing production banking um medical operations I mean practically any industry that you think about Aviation I don't think the people are going away so what does that mean that means that we need to make sure sure that we are accommodating them in the facilities that exist today and that will exist tomorrow so so what do these new assets look like um I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about some of the details of what that might look like so remotely controlled we've talked about that a bit the idea that maybe we have people sitting outside of the facility whether it's a warehousing operation a discrete production facility or even a continuous production facility maybe they're just outside the plant walls maybe they're just outside the perimeter of business maybe they're sitting somewhere else in the United States maybe they're sitting somewhere else in the world but the idea that people will actually have to be physically collocated is quickly I think going to become something that moves way that we move away from we're even seeing it today and I think it'll just accelerate over time one of the other things that's been talked about a lot by human factors folks in particular is this idea that we would move toward campaign style maintenance so the idea that we will send in a group of skilled and knowledgeable people with all the appropriate resources to go in and work very intensely for a very short period of time to restore refresh repair care equipment or systems and bring them to current Technologies um align them with other developments that are happening within the asset but the idea is high intensity short duration work so what does that mean from a human Factor's perspective if we have a lot of people in potentially a smaller space trying to get a lot done it has an impact on layout it has an impact on how we do the work uh timing fatigue RK all of those different challenges and then we talked a little bit earlier about surveilled by cameras drones robot observers again taking the person potentially out of the space but providing them with more information than they had when they were potentially out there walking around in the hospital on the production floor so the work is potentially more analytical and data driven more problem solving and less the data they run and maintain which would be handled by the system itself which is great because that potentially reduces our health hazards in our physical work so hopefully in as we look at you know the hierarchy of controls and we think about the idea of eliminate hopefully we'll be able to eliminate a lot of exposures which is great from an IH perspective from a human Factor's perspective from a medicine perspective uh just across the board the physical work reduction is also something really interesting um there are lots of different ideas about what the workforce will look like in the future demographically as well as what they're willing and able to do and so potentially by reducing the physical work that actually happens in the field we bring more people into our Workforce pools so it's a really interesting idea at least I think when we talk about the workplace uh there's this idea that we might consolidate in to larger industrial sites so this is for a number of reasons uh one commercial real estate is can be very expensive especially the commercial real estate that we would need to support these types of production facilities manufacturing hospitals medical and even some of the banking production is probably still going to stay out more in the communities where they're closer to their target audience but there are a lot of things that we can bring together um move potentially to larger tracks of land so if we consolidate these things they have economies of scale in delivery production uh economies of scale that can potentially come from sharing stair sharing stores from a people perspective and a human Factor's perspective it allows us to create consistency it allows in processes and procedures it also allows us to be really thoughtful about how we provide accessibility workpace there's some things that we'll talk about a little later about lighting noise and some of the the spaces where human factors and Industrial hygiene overlap but there's potentially this idea of consolidating into larger industrial sites that have less impact on communities because they could be pushed a bit further out smaller Footprints is also something that people are very excited about as we think about this it goes back to that campaign pain style maintenance so if we only require a small group of people to go in and do very targeted work on a very targeted system that potentially has an impact on how we lay our facilities out and so if we have a smaller footprint that is taller and we're making use of the vertical space more there are opportunities to reduce Spight pollution and noise pollution because we can contain those things within our structures we can also provide since it's going to be campaign style maintenance temporary access from the exterior of structures that will give us all the space that we need to access from that perimeter with potentially a limited set of access and eress on an interior kind of grid designed facility so we can integrate Materials Handling we can integrate some of the component that we need uh to crossover between systems so there's a lot of potential there with a smaller taller footprint and then of course we've talked about instrumentation and automation as we see instrumentation and automation increase that potentially allows us to pull people back so the workplace then becomes more of an office environment so for a lot of our folks who work in production manufacturing um process uh type Industries their workplaces actually in the plant or the facility now as we move into this space potentially they're moving into an office environment where it's climate control where we can manipulate light noise and all the good things that make us comfortable uh but there will be those times of short duration high intensity in the field again we can better manage those especially uh as I look outside and think about how warm it it's getting heat stress can potentially be really well managed in their Circ ances because we know how long we're going to be there we can put in air movers we can take work rest Cycles the same thing uh for our folks who are up north where it gets particularly cold in the winter and we need to manage their thermal stress as well just in the opposite direction uh even those office spaces are going to be really controlled and automated this will help with potentially energy conservation some of the other things that have those longer term Greenhouse impacts and then we also think about the data in the workplace there's going to be a ton of data and um well we talked a little bit already about the the structures and the common work volumes so I think the spaces that we build in the future will actually look very different and there is that opportunity now to make sure that people are thinking about the user and the people who will be in the spaces even though they're not there often how do we make sure that they can be safe when they are there the last part of kind of that Triad is thinking about the worker so in the future the idea is that it's going to be a technical worker who has a good background in analytics potentially also in probability Theory but also still has the ability to go out and do the electr mechanical work so potentially thinking about how do we move into that space because the Technologies and our ability to do these things will get here long before we have all of the brand new shiny facilities for them to work in so thinking about data analytics probability Theory how do we teach that what do we need to teach exactly we don't need to make everyone a PhD on probability Theory but we do need to identify what's going to be useful for us as organizations in looking to optimize our features we talked a little bit about working remotely I think there's some interesting aspects of that uh you may have someone who sits on the GF coast and supports the gulf coast region you may have someone who sits in Nebraska and supports all of the United States you may be more Reliant upon technical Specialists who come from different organizations that manufacture the conveying systems and the pumps and the processors uh who come in at hoc to support us in doing different campaign style maintenance so physically people could be anywhere what are the impacts of that we'll talk about that a little bit but that has an impact too because what spaces do they need is work from home really a long-term solution for a lot of Industries there's a lot of conversation around that it's good for some maybe not good for all of them so when we think about work spaces um how do we manage that and uh we were talking a little earlier in our conversations today about ergonomics in the workplace ergonomics at home if we're now all working from home what does that mean we need to do what are the responsibilities of organizations to support that the physical requirements uh can also potentially go down for folks if we have the ability to integrate Materials Handling and some of the other things that make our work challenging again good accessibility is a huge part of that so the physical capability piece can also potentially change in some very positive ways for our Workforce so as far as the hardware and the physical Works Space I have some notes that I want to grab real quick to make sure that I hit all my points um when we think about rotating equipment this is likely in many scenarios to become about a temporary replacement uh potentially a hot swap instead of repairing and place which is what a lot of our facilities do now so as we become potentially taller skinnier and we have better access we may be going in and removing failed equipment or removing problematic equipment and putting in a replacement that's ready to go to reduce our downtime increase our production increase our our profits in the end and so there are lots of things that go with that so we have to have the proper supports for the systems we have to have the right Materials Handling to allow us to do that we have to have the right skills for the people who go out and remove these pieces of equipment especially the larger rotating systems for the valves as we think about these you know we talked a little bit about the actuators and how that technology is allowing them to come smaller and potentially easier to exchange out um that's definitely going to be a an opportunity the valves themselves depending on the industry that you're in are potentially becoming smaller because we're able to better control and meter product um even when you get into wa for manufacturing and things like that airf flow can now be really carefully controlled to allow us to do those quality control activities so the other thing that we think about with valves is the trim so we talk about how they're built and the trim affects how they flow it affects the noise and so as we move into this space where we're becoming better at managing all those things the trim and the design of valves itself is potentially going to improve Metallurgy is probably not going to change very much and Metallurgy is what drives a lot of the size of most spells uh or the material of construction but I think there's a lot of opportunity around valves and there's a lot of work from a human Factor's perspective associated with valves uh in all types of Industries instrumentation uh We've mentioned before the point that I wanted to make around instrumentation is as we evolve in this space we're going to learn better how to use instrumentation I was talking with someone recently and he pointed out that during the Apollo 13 mission they had a much much smaller set of data when that mission was coming home than when it went up and data that they thought that they needed to make good decisions and to control the return to Earth turned out they could find other ways to make those decisions they could find other ways to infer some of that data and so I think as we look to reduce footprint as we look to be really smart about how we collect and process our data I think instruments are going to be a huge part of that not only putting more out there but potentially putting the right instrumentation out there and thinking more about how we use that um piping uh different types of systems for conveyance the the big thing there I think is that as we look at better and more thoughtful design we can reduce those systems so we can reduce the linear feed of pipe we can reduce the space that's necessary for conveying that reduce cost that reduce reduces weight that speeds up processes um it also as a human factors practitioner I find pipe tends to end up in the place that I want it to be and so the idea of reducing piping conduit conveyance all of that is appealing from that perspective thinking about tools I think there will be a focus more On Tools because we have so many things in particularly when I think about discrete manufacturing that are there for the occasional use and if we're doing campaign maintenance we can go out and we can bring those tools with us they don't have to be integrated in process that will increase slightly our Materials Handling but hopefully we have the facilities in place to manage the Materials Handling better we do in a lot of our facilities now and so I think there's definitely an advantage there the last thing on my list is structures and so as we change you we talked about them being potentially more co-located um potentially taller bit skinnier that will have an impact on how their design materials of design it will have an impact on you know the sub trinian civil work so what we need to go deeper uh in the Earth the PO pilings and Foundations what environmental impacts will that have and again the idea that we need to make sure that we preserve space for people to work so how do we make sure that we're driving that message home as the basic space required for our structures is developed so we talked about operations and and the equipment and those types of things but what does that mean for maintenance so we talked about campaign maintenance in a linear facility design potentially a tall skinny grid stacked up several layers um it does have the potential to reduce plant noise on a regular basis because we can contain that it also has the potential to reduce light pollution again because we can focus the lighting in the spaces that we need it to be when we need people there this is also a potential for the folks who are in the facilities so if we know know and it is planned when people will be there and where they're going we can look at other things in the plant and potentially reduce the overall exposure in the facility as well as reducing their individual exposures when they're working on particular pieces of equipment or working in particular units similar with the lighting we can be a lot more targeted use task lighting that is really fit for the task that is fit for the group and does potentially have an impact on larger environment um some of the other technologies that we might be using as far as infrared or other things to help us with gathering information and then the last thing about this tall skinny stack of matrices is increased work at Heights and a lot of people get very concerned when we talk about work at Heights I'm one of them but I think that one of the CH the opportunities that we will see that is a challenge that's turned into a benefit is that if this is the approach that we have to structures and maintenance then we will have the right equipment in place we will have the proper training we will have the right approaches to working at Heights for me personally the biggest challenge around work at Heights is when people are outside of those guard rails when they're in the transitional spaces whether it's stairs or ladders so we can manage that better using um temporary elevators we can build scaffold decks and and other temporary Decks that can be relocated and put in the right places so that we give people the room that they need even though it's at height if we manage well how they get there and put card rails run everything so that they're safe I think this is really going to be an opportunity not as much of a negative thinking about that campaign style maintenance I talked a little bit about the increased use of tools that will have lots of advantages you know reduction in equipment but it's also going to give the folks who go out to do that mainten a better feel for the work and it will allow them to better understand as they're breaking things apart they'll have those opportunities to see the details that now we're not potentially going to see on a day-to-day basis when folks are not out in the units out on the plant floors out in the warehouses um a little bit about the common space I think this is a fantastic opportunity because it's going to allow us to standardize the work the processes the procedures the knowledge base that people need standardize the tools so that we know if someone is going out to um replace a particular piece of equipment we're going to have a really strong understanding of what the people need and what they're going to do and how they're going to do it safely so I think there's in addition to the financial and the story warehousing cost I think there's there's some really good benefit there I think one of the other things and I hear this especially from service providers is that they anticipate a much stronger relationship in the future so if we are pulling out equipment to send it out and not necessarily repair it in place which we do for some equipment in some Industries that's going to build that bond with our service providers they're going to be much more aware of the equipment that we have have what our facilities look like how they run and how we can most effectively work together to reduce the downtime for equipment and Facilities so there's a huge opportunity there not only do those service providers typically have Knowledge and Skills and information that internally we don't but now there's that opportunity to see it transition because maybe they're sending more people into our plants and warehouses maybe we're sending more people out to learn how to do this work so that we can understand better how to predict for failures so I think there's a lot of really exciting stuff in the maintenance space as well so when we look back at the the five parts of human factors the five factors uh we talked about the work we've talked about the equipment we've talked about the people I just wanted to briefly mention the environment and the organization U so certainly from an environment Al perspective we've talked about lighting more Tas specific lighting we've talked about ways to make changes in elevation air movers is is one I haven't touched on um I don't just mean the big blowers that we tend to think of in certain industries for moving air as people are no longer inhabiting certain environments on a regular basis or maybe not at all uh we can think about air movement versus HVAC so maybe there are circumstances is where we currently have HVAC because there are people working in the environment I think about warehouses in particular for this um where we have high levels of HVAC primarily for personnel comfort that we can potentially still maintain our product uh in that warehouse with a lower you know higher levels of humidity higher temperatures or potentially lower temperatures depending on where you are and what time of year so we can look at the potential to use air movers or ventilation uh in a different mix with HVAC so there are exposure potentials that are reduced with that there's certainly cost savings when we think about maintaining that equipment so there's I think that's a really interesting space that we'll be able to investigate as we move into this future State Environmental Protections are certainly going to be a place for evolution you know if we can move move our production and Manufacturing spaces out that's going to have a huge impact on communities where we can remove some of the things that are negative about those facilities from the places where people live work and play and uh improve upon air quality and some of those other things that might be impacted by not only the facility but the traffic of employees and deliveries and receipts and the things that go out from them noise and we talk about earlier you know we can potentially contain potentially remove from from communities and another interesting one that I personally experienced recently was the return of nature I was recently had the opportunity to visit a facility that is not currently manned it's it's doing some uh downtime probably for a year or so and it was amazing how quickly nature was moving back in so not only plant life which comes back pretty quickly and Vines can come back with a lot of tenacity but we also started to see insects in places that we had not seen before we saw a lot more Wildlife so the rabbits the coyotes lots of birs and so this is something that we have to think about if we only have you know the person and the dog uh what does that mean for wildlife that may potentially move back in if there just Runing around and they don't stay very long that's maybe not a problem but uh if we have Birds nesting in openings under vessels or on the tops of tanks in the rafters of warehouses bars lik to leave things behind that are potentially harmful to human beings uh not only slip trip fall eyes but potentially disease wise and so the same things with other animals that live out in the um so other things will come to be there and how are we going to manage that what does that need to look like organizationally um if we think about smaller staffs that are working independently what is that going to mean for our organizational culture also if they're working remotely how do we build teams if you have one person on the East Coast one person on the west coast one person in Europe and maybe only that one person that's actually at the location for most of the time we're going to have different needs for communication when we think about it so not everybody reads emails I think we all can testify to that uh but the communications are going to be different there's going to be a lot more data that's passed back and forth that has to be turned into information so how are we going to communicate the data versus the information what's most important for different people at different times how are we even going to communicate basic things like the need to be vigilant around safety when we think about team building team building is really foundational for good communication how do we do that when people are only maybe together every three years for a campaign maintenance event processes and procedures are going to come much much more important we already know that 30 about 33% of incidents in Industry at large are related to insufficient or unavailable procedures now when we only do something every five years every 10 years how critical does it become that that procedure was really well documented the last time that any changes that happen as equipments been updated or technologies have advanced how are we going to make sure that we're keeping those really crisp and of course the processes that help us to manage the work that we do at a larger scale ways of working also going to change um primarily associated with the ideas around communication and remote location also going back to that partnership with service providers and third parties but there's a lot that's going to change from an organizational perspective it's not just producing High count the last part is around the individual themselves so I know personally when the pandemic hit it was really easy for me to stay at my computer for a very very long period of time before realizing that the day had passed and I was well past 8 10 hours from my day uh as we see people move from the field more into the the office spaces and the analytical spaces how are we going to help to develop those good boundaries how are we going to identify first we have to identify an employee value proposition and then how do we make that go and employee retention is also going to look different if you talk to HR profess they talk about the average tenure for someone in an organization being three years as we move into the future we won't see The Operators and the maintainers in our plants and in our production facilities who have there been there for 25 years and can tell you about you know the last time that we had to maintain this or the last time we had to change this out that organizational knowledge is likely not going to be something that is part of our culture in the future and when we do things very infrequently you know how are we going to maintain that knowledge and bring it forward so a lot of things in that space as well so briefly because I think I've covered um a lot of the the topics already when we think about the challenges I think personally and and really talking to a lot of people who work in industries that that are long standing we have this challenge of we're building new facilities and we have facilities that have been around since the early 1900s so how do we balance working in those two very different environments how do we bring existing assets into the future but not neglect all of the opportunities for the newer assets another big question and this is one that I think the IH Community is also really aware of is um how are we going to manage the regulations that are currently on the books so a lot of folks may remember when OSHA updated for the first time basically ever um the 191020 on through Section the basic oer requirements that had not ever happened large scale like it did in 2016 we're going to have to find ways to make incremental change or significant change in regulation to support support these different types of organizations that work in different ways and so I think that's also a big concern for a lot of people I'm just going to highlight a few of the challenges these are questions that when we sit down and talk in different communities that are coming up over and over again so um I wanted to share some of them with you around the work itself for the existing assets because again the challenges are going to be different how can we optimize the information that we have already into better Solutions and then what does that mean for the work itself what new software and Hardware are we going to need to support the philosophies that we have going forward I'm concerned in a lot of ways from a hardware perspective because again I'm really interested in making sure that people can get to the places they work and work safely I think a lot of folks in the human factor space are really concerned about that right now but from a software persp perspective as well there is a lot of variability in software development some of it is really in tune to user needs some of it is not some of it is is very process driven and not really focused on the individual so we need to balance that for our newer assets um as we move away from potentially a 247 scheme into Consolidated work hours what is that going to look like how do we choose that work that can doesn't have to happen at night anymore how can we choose work scheduling so that it reflects the needs and not necessarily our historical approaches to things and then how much work and how often will this occur in the field I talked about this idea of campaign style maintenance that's going to work for some organizations it's going to work for some Industries not necessarily for all of them so how will those philosophies break out and how will we see um maintenance when it becomes less of a day-to-day thing and more of an occasional thing how will we see those philosophies develop as far as equipment when we think about the additional instrumentation and equipment for our existing assets how are we going to get that into the space uh are we going to be able to take things out I'm hoping that that's part of the solution is to be really smart about what we use and potentially take out things that we don't uh another thing is how do we talk about the benefits in terms of risk and exposure and help the business to quantify them because I think when we think about um all this Innovation everything comes with a cost and it comes at a cost in every perspective so a cost for safety a cost for bottom line dollars a cost for production a cost for people how can we help them to quantify and identify those risks communicate them in a way that the value is truly recognized for our new assets it's really about in my mind optimizing layout optimizing how we design the facilities thinking about what how we're going to implement our maintenance philosophies what that operational philosophy is going to look like how can we best support people in developing good situational awareness and giving them the data the tools and the resources that they need to do their work the other thing is you know how again how will regulation reflect these low occupancy workspaces there are a lot of requirements um from the oceia perspective from a PSM perspective from an environmental perspective that really have underlying the fact that we have people that are regularly present in Fairly large numbers and so how is that regulation going to change how can we influence particularly around regulation that is specific to different Industries how can we influence to reflect the things that we still think we need to keep people safe versus the things that maybe will be a little different uh environmentally you know what can we change potentially there is a huge array of things that we can do that will have environmental impacts not only for the people in the workplace but for our larger communities it's really I think going to depend on how we optimize the existing sites so can we potentially if we can get smaller move toward the center of our Footprints and give ourselves more buffer space to the communities and the existing folks around us I think we also have to think about what hazards are being created in a task the specific resourcing model so having folks go out and do different things to me a lot of the hazards are the things that we know exist but because people will not be doing the work on a regular basis they won't have the appreciation for them and so you can tell someone that there's a potential exposure to uh a chemical or to an environmental concern like a a contact type situation um if they haven't had that experience if they if they're not familiar with the system it may not be considered as big a hazard as we know it is from a professional perspective so I think in our existing assets that's going to be an opportunity for the new assets again you know as the environmental space changes how do we influence EPA how do we influence some of our state and local environmental organizations to understand what we're trying to do and how there are improvements that we can make that will be easy and others will still be hard and around the impacts to our environment and the the community if we go in with a new asset you know traditionally there have been a lot of concerns from communities wanting to understand impacts how are we going to communicate that it's not what they might have thought of from 30 50 years ago that this is something different and we can talk about lighting levels and we can talk about noise levels uh because a lot of us have that experience and and know what one Lux looks like versus 100 Lux and know what 100 DBA sounds like versus 10 DBA but how do we communicate that to a community who potentially has some ideas that are not really kind to us in uh in mind organizationally this is our last one um the roles what roles are going to change what's work is going to be eliminated and moved into more of an automated space how are those changes and other changes going to impact our cultures for our new assets what competency skills experience and capabilities do we need from our Workforce and how are we going to manage those critical processes and procedures which are going to become all the more important as the maintenance criteria potentially draw those activities out further and further apart oh doesn't want to work for me uh the people challenges you know how are we going to train people what is the organizational Legacy going to look like for existing assets for our new assets communication and capabilities like we talked about before so I want to think I'm doing okay on time I wanted to talk briefly about problem solving approaches because there are lots of challenges there are lots of opportunities out there I think it's always good to remember that we have good tools that we can use to start thinking about these things in developing approaches I have four that I wanted to highlight there's that old joke that if everything is if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail well I think from a human Factor's perspective I have five tools and I feel like those five tools can address so many of the challenges that I run into um four of the tools are listed here hierarchical task analysis tools and equipment analysis human reliability enrolling analysis and I wanted to just briefly if you're not familiar with these um provide you with just a little bit of insight hierarchical task analysis is really what exactly what you would think it is it's starting with your outcome or your goal and breaking it down subsequently to higher levels of granularity until you really understand everything that has to happen for you to get to your end goal or accomplish the production of your product or movement of your uh inventories once you understand that we can put together information as far as knowledge skills and experience equipment the time that's required all the things that help us to understand better what the work is and so this is particularly helpful when we are trying to understand work and the work is changing and so I think Hier task analysis will be very helpful uh the graphic here is from a pap by ro Bob fields around Thea which is a human reliability methodology that we'll talk about but just to give you an idea that hierarchical task analysis also flows into some of these other tools because it's just such a fantastic foundational piece when we think about tools and equipment analysis what I have shown for you here is actually the Materials Handling piece of it it starts before this when we look at what the equipment is what its requirements are for operations for maintenance for when we don't need to touch it at all what do we need to provide what are the space requirements what are the Power air all those other consumption requirements and then how do we actually interact with it and so this is from a human Factor's perspective how do we get the space around it that we need how do we provide the appropriate labeling Hazard and warning signage that makes it safe to work on that equipment and some the tools that we need to work on the equipment or to work in the in the environment we identify all of those different components and then particularly if we're moving to this more campaign style approach we have to think about how we're going to move all of this around I'm also very concerned about Materials Handling because I don't want people throwing out shoulders and backs and uh all the other things that's can sometimes happen when we're not super concerned about field ergonomics so a Materials Handling study starts with a large piece of equipment or system and breaks it down we look at weight size we think about how we're going to move it we think about how we're going to lift it where it's going to go and then we think about the path along the way how can we make sure that we're keeping people safe as they do the work and as well as the folks who are working around that so do we need Solid Plate on the path of travel to make sure that we can distribute those loads better across a um or do we need a j crane to make sure that we have the appropriate lifting capacity so um those studies are also I think really important as we're looking particularly toward the retrofits of facilities and we look at different ways to address maintenance and approach maintenance human reliability analysis is very similar to equipment analysis if you're familiar with that basically we're trying to get to a number that tells us the problem probability of failure there are many many methodologies in the human factor space to address this some of them are more tailored for different Industries than others um there are some that are very generic and I think very powerful but the idea is that you start by understanding the work or you start with the procedure you break it down and you understand what the requirements are where your hazards are where your opportunities are you identify mitigations or improvements and then we can take it from that qualitative step to a further quantitative step and actually assign those probabilities and there is some regulation in some parts of the world that is moving toward this more probabilistic approach um potentially with the idea that they marry it um from a regulatory perspective as well as from an industry perspective with machine reliability and try to get the idea or the concept for the system Rel ability we know the human is likely the least reliable part of that system that doesn't mean that we need to throw the human out it just means that we need to do everything we can to support the human and being the most reliable and effective that they can be a role analysis is a great tool when we start to think about people so um not only do we have to put roles together but potentially we'll be looking to take roles apart and reconfigure them in different ways the role anal is about thinking about our highlevel goals for a role and breaking it down so situational awareness I think I've mentioned several times before very important from my perspective so you start with this major responsibility or task you break it down into component tasks and you identify knowledge skill and experience capabilities time where people have to be to do these things and also the information and data that they need to get it done physical resources are also important um but they tend to tie back more to location and so what this allows us to do is understand what we are asking of an individual in a role uh is it appropriate you know is it the right skill set that is required for this role that we're asking them to then have those same skills for the task as we eliminate tasks from roles because they move into automated or AI uh systems for addressing them you know how do we cross these lines out in different role analyses and combine them in different ways we have to be very careful that we don't just say hey you know a technician can take these other three things on do technicians currently and will they in the future have the right experiences have the right resources have the right knowledge to do that work so I think this is also something that we're going to have to look at very carefully maybe not something that across many Industries we do really well right now and um the last tool that was not on that list but I think is just an incredibly powerful one is a requirements analysis and this is also not any kind of rocket science a requirements analysis is basically sitting down and looking at your activities and then thinking about the processes that make up the activity and then what requirements there are for each of those things to happen so it's similar to a hierarchical task analysis but at a higher level and it helps us to identify their requirements and then we can go out and find the solutions and the designs and the tools and equipment and resources without maybe biasing ourselves in the beginning of the process so in summary uh I know that was a lot and and I hope that you'll go back and look at some of those ideas and things in the future um thing is we don't know what the future is going to hold we don't know how fast it's going to come we don't know what it's actually going to end up looking like we do know that every day there's new innovation and Discovery and that is constantly changing how we think about the world how we think about work how we think about what products we will need in the future you know will we move away from uh disposable type items and go back to some of the more permanent items that are reused and so that changes some of our philosophies from an energy perspective will we change the sources of energy that we use that will all Impact where um we go in the future but I think for now the message is at least for the foreseeable future we need to consider the human in anything that we produce manufacture move send out into the world because the human is the one thing that is going to be a constant at least for the foreseeable future and so now I want to send you all out into the future with lots of good things to think about um primarily just don't forget that people need space to be they need good data and information to make good decisions and so I'll open it up to questions great thank you so much I that was great do I have any questions other there I guess I'll go first I have a question um I was curious when you were talking about the worker study that they were only staying at jobs now for around three years versus 25 or lifelong jobs did they was there any reason like a explicit reason that they said why or what was the cause of that and was there any kind of solution to that as well yeah so um talking with folks in the human resources space they believe that people will have multiple jobs where we might think about having a career because there's a a greater importance put on Learning and Development by the current young gener younger generations and so they are not necessarily looking for the same things long term that the current you know we'll call them mature Generations are looking before um they're they're less interested in stability and predictability and they seem to be more interested in the adventure and learning so um I I think three years is pretty quick I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be closer to five to seven but we have to go with the data that they're giving us at this point for sure right thank you all right hopefully everybody is back at this point and now we have last but not least we have Alex Cardone as our last speaker today um he is working with the Department of Defense he is a certified industrial hygienist who leads Air Force Premier industrial hygiene team with a strong commitment to worker health and worker safety uh he volunteers organizations such as worker Health Without Borders and aa's um noise noise committee and most recently he's been asked to be a special guest speaker by AI to better prepare the presenters at the upcoming ai ai contest in 2024 uh he tailors an emphasis on continual professional de and professional development and strives to drive Innovation and training in worker health so take it away for us Alex all right um hey everybody uh can you hear me everything everything coming in all right it's a little quiet I don't know if there's a way to turn up just a little bit um I will see if I can I might just have to get really close any of you that have okay any of you that have worked with the government uh you know that we have the most topnotch State ofine equipment I believe I'm rocking like Windows 6 I believe so this is going great please let me know if anything breaks up I'm more than happy for uh criticisms as long as it's not my fault um okay but I'm very excited to be able to chat with youall um I'm sure that I'm sure that uh we possibly have cross paths in the in the past and I'm excited to be able to talk about really whenever it comes to ergonomics one thing I really wanted to talk about was a was a concept that we've held very dear to us um at my current location at Hill Air Force Base we'll talk a little bit about the specifics that have kind of led us here but it all has to do with the Synergy or what we found the the overlapping materials that have allowed us to excel in our our ergonomic evaluation program and a lot of it had to do with how we've been able to gather similarities from our industrial hygiene monitoring program as well um we believe that this is something that really all of our career field whether industrial hygienists or safety Specialists EHS professionals um there's a lot of current talents that are emphasized within our normal industrial hygiene type monitoring plans that can easily be able to reach into our ergonomics plans which is often an overshadowed or overlooked uh element on how much it's emphasized um whether that be to to background or or really anything else um but I did want to be able to First go into uh just some initial questions I would love to be able to just kind of understand as well who am I speaking to so we just have two questions right here so what industry are you currently um currently affiliated with or have experience in feel free to just respond in the chat and then I would also be able to love to be able to know what's your experience with ergonomic style evaluations whether that be you've performed qualitative evaluations you've performed quantitative evaluations qualitative and quantitative you've had just training or education on it but you haven't performed anything or you may think ergonomics is a town in Michigan um just really trying to gauge kind of where you're at um so I see a few people um already typing in I also hope as well is that three that is fair Dr Sue thank you for that I also hope is that I don't I realize I am in between you guys and lunch so hopefully it'll be not only entertaining but we can also be able to to learn something and and get out on a reasonable time um higher education uh both types of evaluations good good academic University performing qualitative fantastic at Town in Michigan um that's also that's also I've heard it's it's related to that I think I typed up that Wikipedia page this morning actually Joe um higher ed qualitative okay fantastic um feel free to keep on responding as well um this helps me as a presenter just so that I can better understand who am I talking to how do I gauge and better understand some of this material um so I really appreciate your participation if you have questions don't feel like you have to wait until the end feel free already kind of reach them out as you're going along and then we'll Circle back to them uh oilfield just a new ergonomics they'll have participated with those screening e ergonomics fantastic I don't know if I just said economics but that's different okay so fantastic let's dive in a little bit more so wanted to be able to just make sure that we all have a foundational background um on one of the biggest challenges that at least we face at our organization I imagine we also encounter with other organizations and that is OSHA's ergonomic quote unquote standard um so whenever we have to tackle or whenever looking at ergonomics we can't really roach it in the same kind of Firepower or the same kind of teeth that we have with other industrial hygiene type measures whether that be noise or chemical exposures one of the biggest things that they those specific hazards have going for them is they have a a specific regulatory guidance that is able to help back us up we need to make these improvements because X Y and Z legally we have a responsibility we do however it's it's a little looser whenever it comes to ergonomics and it's kind of a situation that we're put in there was there was a standard that was put forth however it was it was rejected in the early 2000s and right now if uh necessarily if a corporation or an industry were to be cited for ergonomics it typically Falls underneath the general duty clause which again states that we have to have a workplace that's free from recognized hazards that could cause likely death or physical harm that does fit into the criteria however again it's not very specific and as based upon interpretation it just gives us as occupational health professionals a little less teeth unless we have a lot of supervision and participation from our customers to be able to to improve but this is something that we're seeing nowadays that's a very big emphasis item one of them specifically I believe it's it's been probably the last four years has been Amazon if you have looked on the OSHA at all it looks like Amazon is referenced throughout it they might as well be advertising on the oia website they have been hammered and pinpointed in several States throughout the entire us been cited for hundreds of thousands of dollars for just issues dealing with both ergonomic uh stressors or ergonomic conditions that are present but actual ergonomic related injuries that are occurring within the workplace this is something that OSHA does emphasize look at even though it does have that weird stipulation that there is not a specific standard that governs it one of the biggest concerns that they have is of course MSDS and those were um talked to previously by the um previous presenters as well I won't go into that too much but again we're looking at some of the highest risk occupations that we may be dealing with such as registered nurses nursing assistants firefighters laborers we often think of these individuals whenever we think about ergonomics or ergonomically stressful situations however there's a lot of other occupations that could also mirror similarly related occupational stresses it's not just physical labor or highly intense and explosive movements that you might find in these three Industries or these three J related jobs but even spaces such as truck drivers ads housekeepers cleaners production workers stock clerks order fillers I'll tell you I did door dash for a little while and I don't think my back has been the same just from sitting in my car and staying still all of these things and that's what makes ergonomics such a very interesting element to really discuss and further look into and investigate it's occupational health professionals is that ergonomics are everywhere and they can be impacted stressed and um I mean honestly for lack of a better word they're they're ubiquitous like mold it's constant and ever present um so with that being said um wanted to talk about some of the early benefits that we typically hear whenever it comes to an ergonomically or an ergonomic Hazard management system that whether it be a private industry or the government industry these are the typical things that we hear whenever it comes to the benefit of having an ergonomic based program that being reduce muscular skeletal disorders so implementing ergonomic interventions they can help reduce the incidence of MSDS like back pain repeative strain injuries or repetitive working tasks um same thing increase productivity ergonomic improvements often lead to more efficient work processes and that's something that's sometimes harder to be able to actually characterize or or explain some of the organizations that we're that we're reaching out to especially if we're trying to do it proactively before there are any signs or symptoms that might be might show up same same and fair related to that is lower absenteeism and turnover that can be present through reducing workplace injuries and discomfort ergonomic programs they can contribute to employees being able to be at the company performing work much longer as well as potentially reducing other Financial savings which is a later one and having to do with increased health insurance costs or other lost time that might be there another item is improved employee morale and J job satisfaction this is something that especially whenever we're looking at the government um typically we get a bad rap whenever it comes to morale and job satisfaction I don't know why I think it's the DMV um but improved improved employee morale that's something we're going to be going into a little bit later on how and int focus on ergonomic evaluations how we' go about them has been able to further increase the participation that we have with our customers and then as well compliance and reduced legal risks that can come from it as we can be able to see from Amazon or other companies that may be involved with various lawsuits or um just other sorts of uh time now devoted um management of of risk or I guess kind of legal confrontation so substantial Financial benefits is something that wanted to be able to spend a little bit of time on um just because this is something that's very good for all of us to be able to to again keep in mind keep in our back pocket especially as we're communicating with other individuals trying to get them on board for why ergonomics can easily have a a great return on our investment they can have substantial Financial benefits both from direct so cost savings from reduced the there was a study by the Washington State Department of Labor and industries they estimated that the savings of implementing an effective ergonomics program um was that for about every $1 invested you saved in returned about $100 which is that an easy estimate to be able to to portray to our customers to um upper leadership who might be more focused on what is that return what am I going to get out of any sort of investment into a new program or revamping any existing programs similarly the Journal of Occupational environmental medicine um they had found out that ergonomic interventions they could be able to return roughly about a three to a $6 return on investment for every $1 invested so again it's highlighting that as far as actual interventions moving forward most of that was seen from decreased absenteeism lower turnover rates just allowing the workers to be able to continue to do their job and to do what they do best rather than just focusing on a reduction in MSDS um other case studies that have been able to find out so um there's a large Manufacturing Company um it didn't specifically State who it was in this study however they estimated that there was an annual Savings of about 1.5 million total both having to do with fewer injuries lower compensation claims um as well as that that insurance cost um especially whenever it comes to the uh lower compensation Claims can really pay out a lot and as well improved productivity possibly due to increased morale or as well we're keeping people on the floor they can do and keep doing their job there was also a logistics company um that OSHA further investigated and they had seen a 75% reduction in MSDS as they in or applied an intervention system for an ergonomic system it was it the return on investment that they saw was close to about half a million dollars so again highlighting reiterated there are some Financial benefits that can be able to come from an economics program so if you were curious is this effective or will this help out our organization it very well can as long as it is actually implemented effectively but alongside this there are are some difficulties that we have with this and so difficulties with actually implementing any type of ergonomic program um or managing ergonomic programs as well one of the biggest being that Financial benefit it does take money to be able to invest into certain projects and as well uh we're not blind to that especially in our profession where at the end of the day a lot of industrial hygiene or Occupational Health a lot of our return on investment is something that we'll see months or even years or decades down the line we may not see it the immediate return on investment at this moment and so there is a a capital that's put now so that we can invest into our future same thing lack of training or decision on how to approach hazards or controls whether that be from both Occupational Health Specialists not being uh able to accurately evaluate or train or Implement control within their specific workplace one of the biggest issues that we have is that very last bullet each problem whenever it comes to economics this is one of probably the golden issue that we have each problem requires a unique Solution that's something that we typically don't find with some of the other hazards whenever it comes to chemical hazards for example um one of the almost ubiquitous things we can do for an overexposure well a lot of times we can just Implement some sort of ventilation that can usually be able to solve most of our issues however with ergonomics it really depends on such a variety of factors which further increases the difficulty of why ergonomics can have a harder time not only selling the point of why it's important but how these things will financially benefit the organization um I wanted to be able to talk about uh Hill Air Force Base uh in our perspective uh really quick we are actually very similar to a lot of a lot of Private Industry despite us being associated with the government um so Hill Air Force Base we have roughly about 28,000 employees on our base we are a massive uh installation so again for um as far as scope with that we have both active duty and civilian members we are a Deo level base so any fighter aircraft that the Air Force U creates or maintains that's basically us who maintains it so we do the equivalent of whether it's an oil change for it or we're completely ripping these aircraft apart to nuts and bolts and rebuilding it back together there is a lot that we have to deal with but one of the very unique things that we have on this base and really it's almost all uh DOD or or government Affiliated uh Affiliated installations is we have a very unique population because our employees our Personnel our customers that we're serving most often they're reaching close to about 40 to 50 years within service um so I I really liked the point that in Private Industry a lot of what we're seeing is a high turnover rate of about three years that's that's true to an extent in the government especially on the dod side but we're actually seeing the other side where we're having a lot of individuals who stay within the certain organization or the certain types of jobs a lot of it has to do with due fulfilling their 20-year obligation as they were serving active duty and they immediately turn around and go into civil service that way and then extending close to about another 20 or even 30 or 40 years and continually doing the exact same job throughout that entire time in fact I know of an individual we actually sampled him yesterday uh for methylene chloride but he is close to about 82 years old and he is still puttering around um but it's a very unique situation that we have where individuals they they don't leave and as well they they typically stay with this but that further emphasis on their long-term exposure we also have a better or a not a better a larger emphasis on ergonomics as that has almost a longer could have a longer latency period with some of these uh these issues the other thing that we um that's a further hurdle that we have to tackle so not only is there not a specific OSHA standard that deals with ergonomics but being part of the dod we are not vulnerable to OSHA fins we have OSHA come onto our site roughly uh once a year sometimes close to like three or four and there are times that a notice of violation um is given whether we feel it's warranted or not um conversation and such like that however at the end of the day OSHA can't site us which one of their biggest uh as far as motivating factors for Private Industry is their citations of finds as well as the negative remarks that they can not that they directly put on their oal website but the reputation that that can be associated with it for the most part that's not something that the Department of Defense necessarily cares about but it's something that further um Can hamper how effective we are in communicating and stressing to our customers why ergonomics is important as there is not that very direct driver um one of the positive things it's not all negative I swear is that we also host um we're still trying to be a to validate this but what we believe is the only certified professional ergonomist within the dod fortunately we actually have him here on site currently there's only about 1,400 certified professional ergonomists in the world uh you don't have to be a certified professional ergonomist to be able to do um ergonomic evaluations however as far as having someone with that specific credential can be able to add further validity in the type of recommendations that we have um we as well have recently adopted an emphasis item um in conducting ergonomic evaluations during every type of IH monitoring that we perform our base performs roughly about 250 chemical and noise related evaluations throughout the entire year it's quite a few and in addition to those we almost double the amount of evaluations that we do to almost 400 to 500 because we perform orgonomic evaluations at the same time that we actually perform any other IH monitoring or even shop visit out in the field and we've seen and we will discuss a little bit later why we kind of came to that how we came to see that these things do coincide and then as well discuss how that cohesion necessarily works and how we've been able to to further emphasize that within our organization um so one of the things that wanted to be able to highlight is again how did how did we discover these things that they are intertwined and how do they intertwine so this is very very simply industrial hygiene Basics that every occupational health professional should be able to know both technical knowledge and some soft skills that are acting in the background um throughout this entire time so technical knowledge being sampling trains calibration infield observations analytical methods statistical analysis reporting results you need to have these hard skills in order to effectively do any type of industrial hygiene monitoring it's not an exhaustive list there's plenty more to it however this just gives a very good idea to it however there's also in the background these soft skills that further enhance our work um such as communication scheduling time and project management analytical thinking working independently flexibility how well we can be able to interact and work together um and as well as uh seek to be able to communicate both risk management um working with various different um scheduling as far as for our customers managing multiple projects and time sensitive information orderly as well as thinking about ideas complexly and being able to further deduce as far as sampling results that come in so that we can better recommend appropriate controls as well as working independently it's not just loan wolfing it do you have the resources to be able to do your job effectively and to find the answer if you don't know it and then flexibility don't worry this isn't touching your toes because I would probably fail that as well but it more has to do with we're are constantly changing in Dynamic Workforce uh we're very very unique in that aspect of we are constantly changing and updating our practices and so with industrial hygiene in any sense we have to have that flexibility very similar if we were to be able to look at this very um the same thing with ergonomics there's technical knowledge that needs to be in the background in order to effectively and appropriately assigned controls evaluate hazards and perform an evaluation so that technical knowledge or hard skills that we we need to have some exposure and knowledge in anatomy and physiology biomechanical analysis infield observations assessment tools um physical and cognitive ergonomics so that not only includes as far as how exactly lifting techniques manual handling practices um how to be able to optimize both comfort and efficiency but it's also having a have a emphasis on mental work load attention decision making um this also could be seen as that human computer kind of interaction uh user Define design interface um or other sort of cognitive task analysis that may need to be performed in addition to this is ergonomic Solutions how effectively can we be able to both design or work to improve work pro processes or existing or Implement new engineering controls or training that may be effective and again this is all with the applying this information in a unique setting almost every single time these soft skills you'll notice though are almost are are actually the exact same all of them demand the exact same amount of communication scheduling project management that we have which makes sense as ergonomics is a um a division or a branch of industrial hygiene monitoring however in addition to ergonomics there is an even greater emphasis that we have on this soft skills which is customer service especially one thing that we had identified is that industrial hygiene noise chemical monitoring even just a hazard evaluation it has elements of customer service however the greatest emphasis that it has on is through ergonomic evaluations customer service that is our ability to be able to understand people their thoughts their backgrounds their unique situations and because of the uniqueness that ergonomic controls demand customer service is one of the largest soft skills that we have to be able to have whenever it comes to performing evaluations and also implementing effective controls because it requires that uniqueness and customer service is all about discovering and finding that uniqueness as well and so I did have a video I I'm going to actually forgo this um I I had added this afterwards if you would like a copy of these slides just let me know I'm more than willing to be able to to provide this and there's a link there I think it's a great um example of one of the principles that that I'm going to be issuing and and talking about here in a little bit as well um but we're going to foro forgo that right now just to make sure everybody can be able to get to lunch at a reasonable hour as well um so further discussing into the Synergy of ergonomic and IH monitoring again how do these things how do they meld together one thing we found was that there was an overlapping of skills in the infield observations both that technical hard skill and then almost in every soft skill that is needed in order for us to effectively do our job as as an occupational health specialist but especially with that hard skill again almost all the hard skills are unique to the type of monitoring that's performed however the one that was cross referenced between both actually had to do with infield observations how we approach observing or understanding uh analyzing Hazard how we we go about actually evaluating the hazard at hand um we also we gained inspiration from one of the the tools that nios actually puts together with which is the health hazard evaluation U if you're not familiar with health hazard evaluations they are a very intense study about one specific aspect whether that be a chemical aspect or a company aspect or a specific process or more commonly it's a specific process with a very specific hazard that's present they take a a really all hazards approach whenever they they come in so a team comes in and they perform observations of a process that is being conducted they mark down every single Hazard that's there taking an all Hazard approach and then at the end of the entire analysis a very thorough document is provided to the organization and released publicly that goes into every Hazard that has been associated with that task and with that process we we had discovered this a few years ago that these were even available and that they were there and as we we read them we loved that all Hazard approach whenever it comes to conducting any sort of interaction that we have with a customer and so we we try to be able to see what are the ways that we can be able to implement this this same concept and this same look that led us to being able to look at this overlapping skills between ergonomics and every single other type of industrial hygiene monitoring method that we have and it all centered around not setting blinders on the analy of interest that we have one of the things that our biggest Hazard that we have currently on our base is hexavalent chromium uh in the Aerospace industry hexavalent chromium is ubiquitously used as it's a very good corrosion control measure um so that these aircraft can be able to to stay uh in flight and as well maintained for a longer period of time however there is as well the the very obvious concerns that OSHA has and the health hazards that are associated with hexil chromium and for a period of time my organization was very uh very had tunnel vision almost on hexaville chromium almost every shop that we visited and we have hundreds of shops and thousands of processes we were almost only looking at hexan chromium rather than anything else and it wasn't until a few years years ago we had this this almost um I don't know brain realization really um at this time that we had discovered the uh the health hazard evaluation uh evaluations that were were produced that this was an incorrect way of of going about it hexel and chromium evaluations are very very important and we need to keep an eye on that however there are other very real hazards that are present and so not only geared by a motivation that we need to analyze and investigate all these other hazards we need to do so quickly and so we had discovered that we can be able to not only go out and Sample for aluminum or xylene and talling and noise on top of that we can also be doing an ergonomic evaluation at the same time it'll just require what is a tool or what is a training that we can provide to our technicians to be able to assist to them and I would love to talk about as far as our our Personnel that we have in the office we we have one other unique element um that we have to our organization um most likely your organizations or you've worked with early career professionals um who have less than uh five years experience individuals that a lot of times they just need to be coached um they may be very eager and that's great that's fantastic however they're missing some of the the long-term experience that's come from the wisdom of making mistakes and being able to to improve from them they require a lot more Hands-On training un before they can get up to that point very interesting thing about a Department of Defense especially the Air Force about half my office of 38 Personnel are active duty members with that half a predominant number of those individuals are junior Airmen being roughly about 18 to 20 years old most of these individuals they've graduated high school however that's it in addition on top of that a majority of them did not choose this career field so we not only have a difficulty in not having very experienced individuals that are performing these evaluations but we have an additional hurdle where it's that motivation factor of you need to do a good job this is why it's important that they don't inherently have whenever it comes to sometimes formalized training or education that comes from uh the private sector or as well traditional hiring approaches because we also don't get a decision on who we get we are told who's coming to our uh to our installation and it's not to be able to complain it just means that we have to adapt and improvise our approaches on how our technicians go about evaluating and so this all hazards approach really looking at that it's it's something that we're continuously working on we're trying to improve even more one of the biggest tools that we have adopted is the use of checklists that's traditional about everything um and I mean even step had pointed out a checklist that they had developed for NASA having to do with office economics as far as looking at specifically uh certain certain risk factors with your chair settings with your chair off the setup to be able to help out very similarly I don't think we developed this I think like a good government agency I think we stole it from someone but that's okay I mean in the the field of Occupational Health as long as I admit that we stole it it should be all right right uh but this is a very very brief look at of what our checklist necessarily um looks at a lot of the times we're not looking at uh necessarily an office setting we have purely industrial um industrial areas that we are serving um completely where whether they're painting an entire aircraft or they're ripping out uh landing gear of the aircraft or we have um we have areas that have almost six miles of overhead track that are constantly uh dipping Parts into thousand gallons of uh dip tanks we have every sort of process here um and we've found this so that it could be able to assist us in being able to better isolate the frequency um as well as the intensity or duration um of the the process that that's going on looking at specifically isolating where are most likely the the hazard risk factors actually localized on the body we've taken a better approach as that has helped um our technicians to better understand and visualize how these types of interactions actually affect their body um so this this table is split up in both like shoulder and neck um various different um body positionings that may impact as far as U 1.2 repeated Arm Forces as far as uh roughly equivalent or I apologize um as far as adding stress onto a piece of equipment um utilizing a tool or holding or carrying materials exceeding a certain amount of weight um even hand and grip forces in the hand wrist and arm localizing hazards into specific body regions so that we can better understand um not necessarily the type of ergonomic Hazard as far as stress um or forceful exertion that might be present or vibration but more looking at if we are providing information to our Occupational Health doctors where should they be looking at and targeting for these individuals this goes on to as far as other elements such as again focus on the back and torso how are they moving and how are they how their legs and I guess performing their job so I wanted to be able to provide as well some additional how are we actually um emphasizing this how are we utilizing this um and as far as what makes our our approach unique checklists they're not unique they're not something that necessarily um only the Air Force does but it's how we utilize our approach to performing observations and infield observations that we've seen a large amount of success in implementing our ergonomics um ergonomic management um out here on the base one of the um well I guess we'll just go into this very first so I have two different scenarios that have been able to help us as we've been able to look at and have an emphasis on ergonomics um and Performing ergonomic style evaluations one of the biggest things that we've highlighted actually had to deal with the entire purpose of the sampling event as far as us going out was not related to ergonomics we did not go out for an ergonomic assessment we actually went out for a chemical Hazard evaluation this very first one um had to do with uh chromium 6 for example scenario one that we had was that there was an aircraft sanding process so these individuals are crawling all over this aircraft using orbital sanders to be able to remove Coatings or to Scuff the outside of the aircraft for few future painting operations that are going to be performed in total there were five Personnel sampled for chromium 6 and of those five Personnel whenever we got the results back four of them were two to three times over the Pelt for chromium six and again this has nothing to do with the hazard necessarily we have other controls and processes to be able to evaluate that don't worry if you're with oia don't worry about that but one of the things that we thought was very unique was that there was one individual who's nearly 25 times the pel astronomically astronomically higher than the other individuals his other cohorts even though they did all the exact same job on about the exact same area but it was just this one individual and again one of the most difficult parts of sometimes writing a report or anything like that has to be from not actually performing the sampling uh not conducting the analysis but is better digesting the analysis and why are the results the way that they are we ran through the situations was this individual was it because he was next to everyone else no that wasn't something that we saw um same thing it was okay well maybe he was standing on a very unique part of the aircraft it was no that that wasn't it he actually had a a sister um sister Personnel or sister employee uh as this individual was laying on top of the wing of of an aircraft and he had someone else on the other Wing who's performing the exact same job with the exact same tools and so we were kind of stumped and we were kind of we didn't have an easy answer on what to do and it wasn't until we were reviewing our notes that we' seen that the um technician who' went out um I as well just want to be able to emphasize that why is well it took us so long to be able to discover this is we have a very unique problem in that it takes roughly about 3 months for us to get any of our sampling data back from the lab we have to use a very specific lab they have a very long back order it takes a long time so if it makes sense on why we had to ReDiscover what our observations were that's a hurdle that we had got to jump through of remembering what did we do three months ago um but we had found out that we had conducted an ergonomic assessment we looked at that ergonomic assessment and we had realized that all four of those individuals they were either standing or they were kneeling um they were performing their job however it was this one who due to his body positioning he was actually laying on top of the aircraft so he was just laying down on his stomach sanding for the entire shift unlike everyone else and so from that his body positioning we were able to deduced most likely his pump was just acting as a little vacuum just sucking up all the chromium six dust that was on the on top of the aircraft this is something that helped us to be able to understand not only emphasizing the importance of hey we need to get better at our observations but can be able to help further justify our infield observations for chemical Hazard exposure as well but what it took was we needed to actually be looking for those types of things our ergonomic evaluation of this as well emphasized that the other individuals as far as the his sister employee that was on the other Wing most likely had a larger amount of stress on his back and also his knees and legs due to his positioning um and as far as being on his hands and knees the entire time opposed to laying down however there's of course that confounding Factor we weren't able to get accurate chemical results due to this individual laying down and so it's able to provide us more information as one solution may not be a solution for all scenario 2 will go through it really quickly it was a painting operation it was not um a follow-up painting operation after the sanding process but a different one employee one his chemical results that came back lower than the limit of detection for xylene employee two came back for xylene just below the pel again it caused us we needed to be able to look at what were our actual observations that we were looking into and this led us to a a principle that we'll talk about a little bit later ultimately led to us whenever we had interviewed and talked to the employees we had discovered that employee 2 was actually brand new he had just started almost a month ago employee 1 has been doing this for several years so possibly having to do with work practices training however it was during the ergonomic evaluation as the technician was closely looking at and observing how the individual was uniquely performing his process they noticed that he did a little wrist flick whenever he did did his uh whenever he did uh his uh movement with the spray gun and it was this wrist flick in both a um uh an Inward and outward direction that most likely caused him to be able to spray his sampling tube or sorbent tube potentially causing him to have an overexposure above the P that we hadn't or just below the pel that we hadn't seen before but it caused a um again a greater EMP is that if we were not looking at it from an ergonomic perspective of how these joints are interacting or how this individual is uniquely performing this process we may not have noticed that in better describing um our chemical Hazard and why the results are the way that they are and those could seem like that's kind of a stretch uh but at the same time it's able to provide some sort of rationale it's able to provide something so that we can come back to the shop with maybe even more questions but a better reasoning as far as why we need to further look at and investigate it these are just some some quick examples to be able to further highlight um how we've sought to be able to improve not only our chemical Hazard evaluations but our ergonomic um evaluations as well we have fully implemented a ergonomic assessment checklist our system that we feel is appropriate for our specific installation that our technicians they bring out a checklist every single time be able to remind them of all of these various different risk factors and target areas um on the human body for them to be able to look at we also added an emphasis having to train what we refer to as an intensive watch for each single task and so whenever our individuals whenever they're observing they're not just out there they're not just they're looking after the pumps and they're waiting until they can take the pumps off at that time we encourage and we actually demand our technicians that every single process for every single Personnel that's performing a process you do what's called an intensive watch of how they're uniquely performing and working at their process for this it's five uninterrupted minutes of course some processes aren't that long you they can professionally judge how they're going to do that but for five minutes no note taken it is just focusing and hyperfocusing on how this individual is uni is performing their process involving mimicking their actions focusing on joints that you feel stressed even just watching them being able to move focusing again how are their wrists actually moving is it in a neutral position or are they actually moving it along with the tool that they're utilizing how are they stepping how are they stooping how are they arching their back helping them to better recognize what Target areas may we need to focus on because they may be experiencing stress actually performing this the overall characteristic with it is we tell them to be able to watch it until you can replay it in your mind of how they were actually working in and how they're actually interacting with their environment while they're performing their task and then equally important and after this the only effective way that we can be able to gauge did we do an intense enough watch with it is talking with the employees most of these things are unique questions to them on how exactly they're working specifically having to deal with hey I noticed you are arching your back during this specific portion why is that hey I noticed that everyone else is spraying up and down and you're going left to right why is that what are you doing during this time this we've not only been able to see from a um a data Gathering emphasis and importance with it but we've also been able to see that it's helped us to be able to connect with the employees which is huge inside of our workplace our individuals or our customers that we're seeking to be able to serve and Personnel that we're monitoring a lot of times they don't want us to be there they don't they feel that we're kind of in the way but we've been able to see on the back end how emphasizing and even mentioning to them that we're performing an ergonomic evaluation asking them how they're feeling and asking some of these Target questions that um that we'll go into in here in a second has helped us to be able to build a rapport with them they're more willing to share and that not only helps us fulfill what we're trying to look at economically but naturally leeches into they start then probing the questions of other hazards that they're around and other concerns that they have and a lot of it has to do with honestly casualness but having to do with focusing on the tasks and hazards that they may actually be performed with some of my favorite questions to be able to ask individuals and that goes for ergonomics or anything has to do with what is the sketchiest thing the Air Force requires you to do there's sketchy things that every company requires us to do sometimes sometimes we just don't know it as a professional and the same thing if you ever want to get someone to talk have them talk about themsel if you want to get them to not stop talking ask them about a complaint that they have and they will talk your ear off um same thing another good question to be able to ask them is by lunchtime where are you hurting the most like what what are you feeling by the time that you get home same thing what process or task do you feel that makes you feel the most drained it's oh dude if we have to do this task I'm done I'm done for the day we I I have to take a minute and settle down this helps us to be able to Target in again we are not experts whenever it comes to their job that that's the customer that's the Personnel that we're looking at and it's uncovering almost uh undoing that onion almost of what are what do we specifically need to focus on and another golden question that can apply really to anything whenever interacting with someone is where do you see your next incident or near Miss occurring where do you see that this is going to happen everyone inherently does care about their health whether they know it or not they do and so everyone can be able to see where is that sketchy part that we can be able to look into but it a necessity and a necessary item is that we have to have that Rapport and have to have that relationship with them for them to be able to open up and fortunately we've been able to see as we emphasize ergonomic assessments and making sure that our customers are aware that we're doing and we're performing ergonomic assessments out there in the field we tell them every time I'm going to do an ergonomic assessment while I'm doing this and that immediately perks them up that's something that everyone has a foundational knowledge or at least a buzzword knowledge of the word ergonomics even if they don't use it correctly some ergonomic desks are not very ergonomic if you ask me but everyone generally knows about it and they can further see us as being a resource and a benefit to not only them but also to the organization some further benefits just wanting to be able to emphasize again this is I don't know why that was there benefits that we have from this new redefined approach approach of emphasizing ergonomic Assessments in everything that we do as well as emphasizing that while we're out there for a chemical um chemical Hazard evaluation or a physical hazard evaluation that we still take the time to intentionally watch intensively watch rather um the processes and the individuals and how they work is we have improved rationale for a chemical and noise exposure evaluations naturally we have further justification why are the results the way that they are we can be able to further justify is it truly body positioning is it um potentially having to do with hey as time goes on people are feeling fatigued and so naturally they're um uh they they posturing or how they perform their job is going to impact their um chemical exposure how well they're following um as far as PP Dawning Doling procedures um those things can be able to play into our overall characterization of other hazards that we have out in the field as well as increased specificity with control recommendations Um this can be able to really help out and increased customer buy off we had a system um for reporting ergonomic evaluations that we had which was a very template driven thing that based upon the the hazard area that it was if it's your shoulder all right we have XYZ recommendation and the biggest thing that we had coming back was how does this apply to where I'm at and so dealing with the specificity of making specific control recommendations for specific hazards can really be able to help us not only in better controlling the hazard that's present but also in customer buy off implementing these controls um with other organizations it can be a little bit different you may have a little bit more teeth and Authority whenever it comes to the decisions of implementing process changes however at least in our current um side of it we have no Authority we can be able to illustrate there's an issue here that needs to be fixed but at the end of the day it's completely up to the customer on whether they actually Implement a control whether they actually take any step um into improving their the Occupational Health um of their their personnel out in the shop and so the more that we can do in providing very specific recommendations so that the customer feels more confident in our actual approach and it feels like we are actually providing a personalized and unique um document and recommendation specific to the observations that we can now better produce that's that's something that can be able to further help that interaction and that cohesion between our organizations as well as customer support employee participation again as we've been able to see and it takes it took a little bit of time we didn't directly go for it for this reason it was a natural occurrence is that individuals were a lot more willing to be able to speak to us because they could relate to ergonomics a lot of the times it's harder to be able to relate to noise or to chemical hazards uh Beyond an acute exposure whenever we're dealing with chromium 6 and these individuals again they've been working and doing this for 20 years and sometimes it's hard to be able to tell them hey if you don't do XYZ control you're going to get cancer 40 years from now that can be a harder thing to be to to conceptualize however ergonomics one of the beautiful things about it is that it both has chronic and acute effects that can be readily seen and readily experienced with out well sometimes sometimes there's lasting lasting uh issues that can be be permanent but um they can readily see how this implementation can help them right now rather than hoping that they that they get the the spirit of our uh recommendation in the end and so that employee participation is a is a huge thing and it's a massive asset whenever it comes to performing occupational health related work as we largely depend upon our customers upon our other employees to provide us meaningful data um I love that there's a uh there's that typical definition of industrial hygiene having to do with it people who anticipate identify and recognize workplace hazards there's also like the evaluation that typical standard definition but a better one has to do with that industrial hygienists are people who do Precision guest work based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge sometimes and that sometimes we wish the people doing the process had our educational background because then they would know what information to give us but we're not privileged in that all the time but this is a stair step in something that can help us so that they're consciously occupational health-minded in not only their approach but also in providing our in information back to us um at the end of this be able to to summarize there's one of the biggest things that we've seen uh as far as impacting our success in implementing an ergonomic program has to do with necessarily picking an idea in and going forward with it um it's very similar to how ergonomic hazards you need to need to be uniquely controlled ergonomic procedures or the process C and how you manage your ergonomic program similarly has to be very unique to your organization just because this checklist system and this emphasis on on training or observational skill training um works for our organization doesn't mean it's going to work for any other organization but this is something that we've been able to see to be a great benefit to our uh to our individuals and but thank you so very much um I appreciate your time and i' would love to able to go over uh some of your questions that you have um I'm seeing a all right um there I think that was yeah I think that was the last one having to do with the the oil field and participating in ergonomic screenings uh Stephen Mills uh vibration and static posture will indeed get you uh while commuting in Motor Vehicles yes absolutely again it's it's one of those things things of often times we may stress or really look at the um those very intensive or very explosive or dynamic movements but sometimes as well ergonomics it has to do with sometimes no movement at all um it's not necessarily the answer to any sort of to issue that we have um indication of similar exposure groups in relation to regions of the body impacted by performing a task absolutely one of the things that we um had identified the Air Force they have a a database known as doors if you've ever worked with that I'm sorry it is a cobbled together thing it the concept is beautiful but it's the execution there are some wonky things one of the things was that they did not emphasize um dealing with ergonomics they emphasized the hazard so for example thermal stress um or mental stress um or forceful exertion or vibration but whenever it comes to us that doesn't really help us whenever it comes to we need to understand what is this actually impacting and how does this actually play into um in into how they're performing their operation so that we can provide an accurate control because you know just doing a uh antivibration gloves yeah that's not going to help out the individual that's doing uh that's a truck driver and so we realized that there's there's information that that we were kind of lacking on our end as far as our database um curious about the number of uh cpes many cpes use other titles like chfp uh like myself and titles in Europe and Asia are different if you only looking at cpes you may be liming yourself absolutely that's a very great Point um as well I will admit I am not the uh the foremost authority whenever it comes to the certification routes for uh ergonomists but there are very other or multi of other certifications that are present for it um that was mostly to be able to to illustrate as far as a a weird dynamic that the the government sometimes has as far as not having an emphasis on that certification or even education uh in general for their trained staff and so we were very unique and fortunate at least that we were able to secure someone who least has that sort of specific designation for economics but that is a very great point I thank you so much um and any other questions looks like few people were typing okay can you briefly describe your chromium 6 sampling and Analysis method and procedure do you use a special analysis method to detect chromium 6 absolutely um I love non-ergonomic related questions because I feel more comfortable with chemical evaluations but yeah so um uh for hexa chromium we utilize nios uh nios method 76 05 uh with that it's a modified Air Force version um that we we utilize as far as the specific analysis method that is conducted I'm sorry I can't remember that you should be able to to find the information on it n 7605 um for it uh it typically allows the the flexibility like most nios methods we can be able to uh range from about 1 to 4 lers per minute um with the biggest caveat in limiting factor being the max volume load and it only being 400 L and so most of our processes they're occurring for 8 to 10 hours a day a lot of split sampling has to be able to occur um but that's the the analysis that we utilize to be able to detect uh chromium 6 there are any other specific questions related to that please let me know um I might have missed something if you had a a specific Target answer that you were looking for and I'm also open as well let me go to the um to the the very beginning just my email if you guys have any other questions that you didn't think about right now or you just don't want to type it out U maybe you'll feel better typing out in an email um just right there at the very bottom alex. d. cardone.com I'm more than willing to be able to answer any questions both related to ergonomics or as well perspective with the Air Force or other industrial h monitoring um that we perform uh the thing I love if you've never interacted with the military or been on a military base it's like a little city and so there is every type of job imaginable on on a base that you would find working for a municipality or anything else we have our own water treatment systems typically um that includes I guess wastewater treatment um including as well hazardous wastewater treatment that that might be president as well as other extended missions we have groc Stores um where we have meat departments that are cutting um cutting meat all day um we have almost any type of uh specific job uh classification here and so it's a it's a very unique opportunity I would love to be able to brainstorm any other questions that they might have with other um uh specific fields or Industries as well great thank you so much Alex anybody have any last questions before and I guess but well thank you all three of you for speaking today I think it was really great um I really enjoyed listening to everything that you guys have had to say and share with us today um just I was going to just remind you quickly um please don't forget to complete the session surveys that are going to be mailed out to you shortly um and then upon the completion um certificates will be uh sent out as well for those of you that are interested in those and yeah we like I said this is a reoccurring um series we'll probably take the next couple months off I think our next one is going to be in September um so keep an eye on our um website of all the different courses that we offer and we would love to have you guys join us again all right well great job today guys and thank you so much and I hope you all have a great rest of your dayk you [Music]