BOS 3001 Unit IV Journal Reflection

Journal Reflection BOS 3001 Unit IV

BOS 3001, Fundamentals of Occupational Safety and Health

Columbia Southern University

Journal Reflection BOS 3001 Unit IV

For this journal entry, I was asked to reflect on if was a safety manager. How would I respond to the overlap in OSHA standards and local or state building, electrical, and life safety codes? Then to explain my response.

Luckily for me the Air Force takes safety very seriously. For ease of understanding I will briefly break down the chain of command to make my explanation make more sense. We will start at the base or wing level the sub level to the wing is called groups usually there are three to four groups in a wing. After group the sub level is squadrons, similar to groups with a wing there are usually between three to four squadrons with in a group, following that there are flights within a squadron just like the previous there are usually three to four sometimes up to seven flights in a squadron. Within each flight you have work sections or elements that you can break them into depending on job structure but for this scenario we will stick to the flight level. Now each wing has a safety office that can have two or more safety managers for the base, these are the people that the group safety managers report to with concerns or issues. Now each group, squadron, and flight have safety managers or monitors. I have had the privilege to hold this job or additional duty at almost all locations I have been stationed so I won’t have to reflect on if I were one because I have been one multiple times at several locations. For the second question on how would I respond to overlap in OSHA standards and local or state building, electrical, and life safety codes? Our Air Force Instructions often times overlap or go more in-depth that OSHA Standards. Similar to our chain of command where everything kind of follows the hierarchy structure so too does our military instructions structure. It starts out at “Big Air Force” level very broad and the lower it gets the more details or stringent rules you have to follow. In the case of safety, the Air Force uses OSHA as it’s guidance and references it frequently. For me it is an easy decision, I follow the guidance that has the safest and strictest guidance. An example of this would be: based on OSHA requirements when a new member starts working in a hazardous noise area they must have a reference hearing exam within 30 days of starting that job. Our standard at my previous assignment was to have the new employees complete the reference hearing exam within 3 days of staring that new job. Now OSHA’s standard meets the minimum requirement for safety and that is what our Air Force regulations stated as well, but as the guidance got to the lower levels and based of a history of injuries related to hearing loss the requirements were raised to help heighten safety procedures.