JOSEPH MACRI
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Winchester, Virginia

In my 28-year federal career, first as an active-duty Air Force officer and then a Department of the Army civilian, I’ve seen a lot of “great ideas” come and go — from new uniforms to innovative business processes that were going to revolutionize how things were done. So, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) announced its new Corps of Engineers Safety and Occupational Health Management System (CE-SOHMS), I probably wasn’t the best person to write an article introducing it across our enterprise. But in my role as a public affairs officer, it’s my job and so, if I had to pretend to be a true believer, pretend I would. At some point, however, I realized I wasn’t pretending anymore.

CE-SOHMS is designed to change an organization’s safety program from compliance based to one where it is second nature to every employee. Rather than just following a regulation or checklist, the entire organization takes an ownership role. Organizations implement CE-SOHMS in three stages.

• Stage 1 — With the help of all employees, develop policies, processes and systems, and ensure employees are aware of roles and responsibilities.
• Stage 2 — All employees implement the policies and processes and utilize the system’s ownership.
• Stage 3 — Continuous improvement of processes and systems through employee feedback.

Organizations within the USACE are assessed through validation, and completing each stage is considered an achievement. I believe it's the stages of implementation that make the program successful. Because even if an employee is a skeptic like I was, they are still being bombarded with messaging on safety and the implementation of the new safety system as they strive to reach the next level of maturity.

At some point, going through the motions to reach the next step becomes a real shift in their mindset. It was a shift I wouldn’t have believed had I not experienced it. During an event at work, I needed to put a photographer on our roof to take photos. They weren’t wearing the protective equipment needed to be on the roof close to the edge, and someone took a photo and reported it to the safety officer, who chewed me out. I had a good laugh about it later and that was the end of it.

A few weeks later in a meeting, we were briefed on a fatality where someone used a riding lawnmower and didn’t put the rollbar in place. Something the safety director said clicked in my brain: Often, it’s small, everyday things we’re not paying attention to that can lead to serious mishaps. We wear the proper fall protection equipment when we’re on an active construction site because it’s on the safety checklist. But we don’t do it when we’re on a flat roof at the headquarters building or when working on our roof at home because we’re not actively considering risk if there’s no checklist or other reason for compliance. Once that clicked and I understood how the new system was supposed to work, I began to see its effect throughout our organization. I realized that the safety officer wasn’t the one who reported the unsafe conditions on the roof; it was a fellow employee who witnessed it and did something.

Cultural change was happening. Contractors working for us who rarely reported near-miss incidents began reporting them more often because the reports were viewed as a success and a way to improve rather than a failure. After routinely publishing safety information in our command’s newsletter in preparation for our CE-SOHMS assessments, I received the following email: “I was going to say that your section on red lights prompted me to think about that in the town I live in. They have implemented ‘no right turn on red’ on a bunch of exits from Walmart, etc. I would imagine that every day there are probably 2-3,000 cars that run the red light in that way. At first, I was resentful and ran it as well, but now I adhere.”

Safety classes offered by our command that were previously hard to fill now had waiting lists. While the cynic in me questioned whether all of this was for show, to reach the next CE-SOHMS step, the believer in me realized it didn’t matter. Our organization shifted from one where the safety program was managed by a program manager through compliance inspections to one where every employee took an active interest in reaching our safety goals. As the corps chief of safety and occupational health told me once, “I don’t care if our employees know what CE-SOHMS stands for; I care that they are implementing it.”

So, how do I know the CE-SOHMS program is effective? After reaching CE-SOHMS Stage 3 maturity, we were recently evaluated and awarded the Army SOH Star, which recognizes Army organizations for having a high commitment to safety. The process to earn the Army SOH Star is a long one involving multiple assessments with employee interviews and a deep dive into an organization’s culture. But the award wasn’t the measure of effectiveness. I knew we were effective when one of our employees asked the assessors, “How do we maintain this?” If that doesn’t convince you, take it from me, a lifelong, new-process cynic who felt the need to write a 900-word, let-me-tell-you-about-this-awesome-new-safety-system article for no other reason than I’ve seen it work.

FYI

CE-SOHMS is the Corps of Engineers’ version of the Army Safety and Occupational Health Management System (ASOHMS). ASOHMS is a framework for Army organizations to systematically manage SOH programs to enhance mission capabilities, reduce mishaps and improve readiness through effective risk management. The ASOHMS framework is comprised of six distinct capability objectives that include 48 measurable criteria elements:

1. Leadership Engagement and Personnel/Soldier Readiness
2. Investigate and Report Mishaps, Incidents and Illnesses
3. Conduct SOH Training and Promotion
4. Conduct Inspections and Assessments
5. Conduct Hazard Analysis and Develop Countermeasures
6. Health Protection and Readiness

Army organizations incrementally implement ASOHMS through three stages of maturity: documentation, implementation and execution, and sustainment and continuous improvement. Successfully completing a comprehensive maturity evaluation will result in the organization being recognized with an Army SOH Star.

Army Directive 2024-09 dictates Army commands and organizations adopt ASOHMS by the end of calendar year 2030. For more information on ASOHMS, click here to check out the framework guide.

ASOHMS vs. ASMIS

KEELEY GARCIA
ASMIS 2.0 Training Manager
U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center
Fort Novosel, Alabama

The Army Safety and Occupational Health Management System (ASOHMS) and Army Safety Management Information System (ASMIS) are synergistic. Synergistic is defined as two or more entities that can produce an effect greater than the sum of their individual effect. So, while both can exist alone, the effect of working the systems in conjunction will create a complete and whole safety management system.

There are some misnomers about the two systems that need to be dispelled.

1. ASMIS is ASOHMS. No! As stated above, they complement and support each other.
2. ASMIS is only about inputting mishap and near-miss reports. No! In fact, there are two other applicable modules: the Inspections, Surveys and Assessment module (where the actual surveys being conducted are inputted) and the Hazards Management module (hazards identified and tracked for abatement). If we must input a mishap, then were the inspections or risk management being done and were hazards being controlled?

So, let’s talk about how the two are synergistic. ASOHMS can be considered as the “human” side of the two. Army Regulation 385-10 and Department of Defense Instruction (DoDI) 6055.01 outline what is needed in our programs, but they don’t tell us how. ASOHMS has six core objectives that will ensure a competent safety program:

• Leadership Engagement and Personnel/Soldier Readiness
• Investigate and Report Mishaps, Incidents and Illnesses
• Conduct Safety and Occupational Health Training and Promotion
• Conduct Inspections and Assessments
• Conduct Hazard Analysis and Develop Countermeasures
• Health Protection and Readiness

These objectives should be the focus of the safety manager to ensure they are providing a healthy and safe work environment. Safety managers should conduct the surveys, actively manage the hazard abatements, provide training to personnel, and investigate those near-misses or mishaps. ASOHMS is the qualitative aspect, meaning it is a way to measure, “Are they buying what you’re selling?”

ASMIS is the “IT” side of the two. It is the repository of all the “what” we do in managing our safety program. It’s a one-stop shop! That means no more finding the right folder on your desktop. What about the four Excel spreadsheets to keep up with inspections and hazards? Nope! ASMIS does all that for you and the Army as it standardizes inspections and hazard lists and, unfortunately, inputs our mishaps to find the root cause so they will not happen again. ASMIS is the quantitative aspect, meaning it is a way of measuring if the work is being done.

The proof is in the pudding. If you have 50 buildings that need to be inspected and you can see 30 have been done, what’s going on with the other 20? ASMIS allows the commander and safety professional to have the pulse on the SOH program with an accurate, up-to-date synopsis of the subordinate UICs at their fingertips.

“ASMIS was created to optimally meet the emerging needs of the Army,” said John Nelson, ASMIS director and U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center deputy chief of staff. “ASMIS 2.0 is built upon a modern platform that provides the foundation on which to field new capabilities incrementally. This means it will be able to adapt and grow well into the future to support the safety and occupational health requirement of the Army as a whole.”

In conclusion, when ASOHMS and ASMIS are used together, their synergism begins by feeding each other the pertinent information needed to have a well-rounded, accurate, robust safety system. For more information on ASMIS 2.0 and ASOHMS, visit https://asmis2.safety.army.mil/Home and https://asohms.safety.army.mil/CACLogin.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2f.